Animalkind: Remarkable Discoveries About Animals and the Remarkable Ways We Can Be Kind to Them

The founder and president of PETA, Ingrid Newkirk, and bestselling author Gene Stone explore the wonders of animal life and offer tools for living more kindly toward them.

In the last few decades, a wealth of new information has emerged about who animals are — intelligent, aware, and empathetic. Studies show that animals are astounding beings with intelligence, emotions, intricate communications networks, and myriad abilities. In Animalkind, Ingrid Newkirk and Gene Stone present these findings in a concise and awe-inspiring way, detailing a range of surprising discoveries: that geese fall in love and stay with a partner for life, that fish "sing" underwater, and that elephants use their trunks to send subsonic signals, alerting other herds to danger miles away.

Newkirk and Stone pair their tour of the astounding lives of animals with a guide to the exciting new tools that allow humans to avoid using or abusing animals as we once did. They show readers what they can do in their everyday lives to ensure that the animal world is protected from needless harm. Whether it's medicine, product testing, entertainment, clothing, or food, there are now better options to all the uses animals once served in human life. We can substitute warmer, lighter faux fleece for wool, choose vegan versions of everything from shrimp to sausage and milk to marshmallows, reap the benefits of medical research that no longer requires monkeys to be caged in laboratories, and scrap captive orca exhibits and elephant rides for virtual reality and animatronics.

Animalkind is a fascinating study of why our fellow living beings deserve our respect, and moreover, the steps every reader can take to put this new understanding into action.

"A fascinating look at animal behavior, as well as a treatise against cruelty toward animals... Newkirk and Stone's informative survey effectively nudges readers to think twice about their own use of products sourced, perhaps less than ethically, from the animal kingdom." Publishers Weekly

"Animalkind is a much-needed antidote to viewing other animals as second-class citizens and offers a fresh look into the cognitive and emotional lives of other animals... It could be a game-changer." Marc Bekoff, Ph.D., author of The Emotional Lives of Animals

"Humanity's survival depends upon our learning to live in harmony with all other species. The second law of ecology is the law of interdependence.... Ingrid Newkirk and Gene Stone have done a wonderful service to us all with their stories of kindness and compassion." Captain Paul Watson, CEO and founder of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

Ingrid Newkirk founded PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), the largest animal rights organization in the world, with affiliates in eight countries, in 1980. She is the author of Save the Animals! 101 Things You Can Do, Kids Can Save the Animals, The Compassionate Cook, and several other books available in multiple languages.

Gene Stone has written, cowritten, or ghost-written more than forty-five books on a wide variety of subjects, including the bestsellers Forks Over Knives, How Not to Die, Living the Farm Sanctuary Life, and The Engine 2 Diet.