Dr. Temple Grandin is a professor at Colorado State University.  She studies animal science and is a consultant to the livestock industry and to zoos.  She is also known as an autistic person who leads a successful, even famous, life.  After I recently heard her interviewed on a Commonwealth Club radio broadcast, I picked up the first of her books (coauthored with Catherine Johnson) I came across: a 2009 book well worth reading today.

Animals Make Us Human is an insightful book.  Her clear-headed, factually based observations are compellingly presented in accessible language.  Both adults and students will appreciate this book.  Grandin seems open to learning in a way all scientists are supposed to be.  She describes times when her experiments contradicted her own beliefs and even contradicted her doctoral advisor’s own work.  I admire her willingness to follow the data where they lead.

Grandin explains what animals need:  a good mental life as well as physical health.  Animals need to be happy.  She has learned the importance of animals’ emotions, not just their behaviors.  From gerbils to tigers to people, we share core emotional needs of SEEKING and PLAY (which are pleasurable), RAGE when captured or frustrated, FEAR, and PANIC.  (The capitalized terms come from neuroscience.)

Grandin explains the emotions and how they physically change brain structure.  She then applies the insights offered by understanding core emotions to dogs and wolves, cats, horses, cows, pigs, chickens, and other wildlife.  Throughout the book, Grandin describes both animal and human behavior, and includes many personal stories.  She also offers a lot of training advice.

Here are a few examples from the book:

• Grandin’s analysis of (the popular Dog Whisperer) Cesar Millan’s techniques and what they say about dog and wolf behavior is interesting.  There is a big difference between dogs (and wolves) living as a family versus a pack of unrelated animals.  “Whether you think of yourself as mom, dad, or the pack leader probably doesn’t matter as long as you’re handling your dog right.”
• If everyone leaves the house all day, that household shouldn’t have a dog, or should find good doggie day-care, or have two (preferably related) dogs, or choose a dog with lower attachment needs that is likely to sleep all day.  “Dogs are too social to be happy staying alone for hours on end.”
• “People with Asperger’s or dyslexia are often good with animals because their thinking is more sensory-based than word-based.”  Good trainers can feel an animal’s emotional state, understand the behaviors associated with different emotions, and have excellent timing with rewards or cues.  These skills can be difficult to teach or even describe.
• Out of 148 large mammals that might have been domesticated, only 14 were.  All these successful large domestic animals are herd animals; sociable and peaceable by nature.
• Zebras injure more people in zoos than tigers do, because zebras have such a strong fear response.
• A study in France of non racing horses found 66.4% died between the ages of 2 and 7, most put down because of behavior problems.
• Herd animals make decisions about moving democratically, not when a dominant animal moves.
• The animal welfare audits required by McDonalds, Whole Foods, and others have improved conditions in slaughter plants since the 1990s.
• Egg laying hens have the poorest welfare of any farm animal, but their lives can be made better with simple, inexpensive changes.
• Grandin teaches her students how to observe.  Animal research is getting “abstractified”.  Instead of studying animals, researchers are creating and studying statistical models.  (This comment remands me of what my college statistics professor said: everyone loves making models; its fun.  No one likes validating them; it’s hard and sometimes you disprove your model.)
• Grandin says a great frustration is visiting a facility where she implemented her techniques and finding they have reverted to old, cruel habits.  Even when the new techniques saved them money!  She discusses training and motivating workers, how to transfer equipment and techniques to industry, and even how to manage patents so innovations do not get shelved.

I even enjoyed Grandin’s afterword.  She explicitly answers the question of why she still works for the livestock industry and eats meat.  She says she has seen cattle raised right, given a good life and a painless death.  She also acknowledges that, had she seen a different side of the meat industry in her youth, she might have different opinions.

She says she has concluded that “our relationship with the animals we use for food must be symbiotic… None of the cattle [at a slaughter plant] would have been born if people had not bred and raised them… People forget that nature can be very harsh.”

Her description of a tour for the general public of a well-run slaughter plant should be read by everyone, whether opposed to using animals for meat or opposed to regulating the industry.  It may not change a moral or philosophical position, but it will provide facts.