Tag: animals

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s Jezebel essay “A Theory of Animals” is a gut punch. Read it.

They perform daring escapes from slaughterhouses, zoos, and laboratories. But animals on the run are only as free as we want them to be.

A trip to Key West becomes an unexpected journey involving a sacred bird, a beloved dog, and the challenge of coming to terms with the nature of fate.

Hunter-gatherers tended to think of pets as part of the family, and so do we. But in other time periods, intimacy with animals has been more taboo.

A refugee from Nazi Germany has trouble adjusting to life in America, so she decamps to the countryside, where she discovers that the war follows you in unexpected ways.

Meet Fred. He’s cold-blooded, beady-eyed, a picky eater, and likely to outlive us all.

In one Alaskan town, the bone pile is a bounty for hungry polar bears and enterprising tour guides.

Scientists closely monitor the last member of a species. Is there space in a creature’s DNA to consider the prospect of no tomorrow?

In Outside magazine, Bob Shacochis profiles Lya Battle, creator of Costa Rica’s Territorio de Zaguates, an open-air shelter home to hundreds of dogs.

This story is very short, but it’s ridiculous and wonderful. Derek was a magician and I thought I’d convince him by saying a mini pig would be perfect for his act. The two of us had met at a smoke and rib house where I worked as a waiter. But when Derek came home he […]

Sy Montgomery, author of the book “The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness,” reflects on the uncanny intelligence, intuition, and surprising sex lives of octopuses.

“In the long run, the best thing for people and the best thing for wildlife will be the same.”

In November 2015, I adopted a dog. Harley. These 12 pounds of mostly shelter-raised animal cracked open the harder parts of my heart and I found myself sobbing into my coffee, almost daily, while reading the latest stories about rescue dogs. I’d gone so far as to set a Google Alert on “rescue dog,” and […]

In this lighthearted portrait of his family’s rescue dog, author Richard Gilbert explores the larger bond between human and animal.

  In a 2009 paper for Administrative Science Quarterly, J. Stuart Bunderson and Jeffery A. Thompson studied zookeepers and found that the profession was about the closest anyone in the modern, secular world comes to having a calling—the sort of intensely meaningful career that Martin Luther said could turn work into a divine offering. Zookeeping is dirty, repetitive, […]

Hawks aren’t social animals like dogs or horses; they understand neither coercion nor punishment. The only way to tame them is through positive reinforcement with gifts of food. You want the hawk to eat the food you hold – it’s the first step in reclaiming her that will end with you being hunting partners. But […]

In a recent piece for Outside, Tim Zimmermann spoke at length with three former animal care workers about their experiences at SeaWorld. Animal care workers, who are responsible for the health of mammals at marine parks, are privy to the best and worse that goes on, with unique access and responsibilities. In the excerpt below, […]

This is a story about an American dog: my dog, Dexter. And because Dexter is a pit bull, this is also a story about the American dog, because pit bulls have changed the way Americans think about dogs in general. Reviled, pit bulls have become representative. There is no other dog that figures as often […]

Zoos contact Virga when animals develop difficulties that vets and keepers cannot address, and he is expected to produce tangible, observable results. Often, the animals suffer from afflictions that haven’t been documented in the wild and appear uncomfortably close to our own: He has treated severely depressed snow leopards, brown bears with obsessive-compulsive disorder and […]

The writer confronts her inability to have children and explores how humans’ behavior with reproduction compares with other animals: Like ours, the animal world is full of paradoxical examples of gentleness, brutality, and suffering, often performed in the service of reproduction. Female black widow spiders sometimes devour their partners after a complex and delicate mating […]