Why Dogs Hump and Bees Get Depressed by Marc Bekoff

Why Dogs Hump and Bees Get Depressed by Marc Bekoff is an insightful look into how animals live and have emotions, too. If you are a pet owner, animal rights activist, or simply enjoy playing with your dog, cat, reptile, or looking at your fish… this is a book you should read!

Book Description

“In 2009, Marc Bekoff was asked to write on animal emotions for Psychology Today. Some 500 popular, jargon-free essays later, the field of anthrozoology — the study of human-animal relationships — has grown exponentially, as have scientific data showing how smart and emotional nonhuman animals are. Here Bekoff offers selected essays that showcase the fascinating cognitive abilities of other animals as well as their empathy, compassion, grief, humor, joy, and love. Humpback whales protect gray whales from orca attacks, combat dogs and other animals suffer from PTSD, and chickens, rats, and mice display empathy. This collection is both an updated sequel to Bekoff ’s popular book The Emotional Lives of Animals and a call to begin the important work of “rewilding” ourselves and changing the way we treat other animals.” – Why Dogs Hump and Bees Get Depressed

My Thoughts

Why Dogs Hump and Bees Get Depressed is a collection of short essays on a variety of topics of animals and their emotions. It is a very interesting book that will teach you a lot about how animals really live and feel a vast amount of emotions.

As someone who has owned dogs, cats, fish, birds, reptiles, and hamsters, this was such a fun book to read. I never knew so much about my animals, but I always suspected that they did feel and think much more than the average person may have thought about them. After all, they are the ones who see us off in the morning, wait for us at home patiently until we arrive, and are there for us when we are happy, sad, lonely, and depressed. We have those emotions - but so do they! Reading about this solidified how amazing our pets and the animal kingdom are.

This collection of essays doesn’t cover all of the animals equally. For example, it seems to focus a lot more on dogs than cats (or any other animal). I would have liked a more even collection, but it is still a very good book that animal lovers will enjoy.

I highly recommend this book for everyone who has a pet, or simply likes animals. It is definitely something that will teach you more about them, and appreciate them even more.

* Thank you to the publisher of Why Dogs Hump and Bees Get Depressed, New World Library, for providing me with a copy of this book for review. All opinions expressed are my own.