Animals at Play
Rules of the Game
(Animals and Ethics)
(Temple University Press, September 2008)

Dogs chase each other and wrestle. Cats pounce and bite. These animals may look like they are fighting, but if you pay close attention - as world-renowned biologist Marc Bekoff does - you can see they are playing and learning the rules of their games. In Animals at Play Bekoff shows us how animals behave when they play, with full-color illustrations showing animals in action and having fun - from squirrels climbing up a tree to polar bears somersaulting in the snow. Bekoff emphasizes how animals communicate, cooperate, and learn to play fair and what happens when they break the rules. He uses lively illustrations and simple explanations of what it means when a sea lion swims with kelp in its mouth or when two dogs bow to each other. Bekoff also describes what happens when animals become too aggressive, and how they apologize, forgive, and learn to trust one another. This entertaining and informative book will delight every child and show them how animals and humans interact when they are having fun. Recommended for children ages 9-11. In the series, Animals and Ethics, edited by Marc Bekoff.

"Marc Bekoff's ideas about fair play stress the significance of cooperation and justice, aspects of behavior desperately needed in the world today ... Read this book, share it with the children in your life, and incorporate its lessons into your classroom, family room or Board room."
-- Jane Goodall, PhD, DBE, UN
Messenger of Peace

The Emotional Lives of Animals
A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy - and Why They Matter
(New World Library , February 2007)

How Animals Talk
And Other Pleasant Studies of Birds and Beasts
By William J. Long, Rupert Sheldrake, and Marc Bekoff
(Bear & Company, October 2005)

Exploring animal telepathy and communication, William J. Long theorizes that animals are much more intelligent, emotional, and moral than we have thought, and share with us an innate ability to sense the presence of other living beings. Long’s findings on the impact of our presence on animal life--and the cost incurred in separating ourselves from them--is more relevant today than ever before.

Animal Passions and Beastly Virtues
Reflections on Redecorating Nature
(Temple University Press, December 2005)

What is it really like to be a dog? Do animals experience emotions like pleasure, joy, and grief? Marc Bekoff's work draws world-wide attention for its originality and its probing into what animals think about and know as well as what they feel, what physical and mental skills they use to live successfully within their social community. Bekoff's work, whether addressed to scientists or the general public, demonstrates that investigations into animal thought, emotions, self-awareness, behavioral ecology, and conservation biology can be compassionate as well as scientifically rigorous.

In Animal Passions and Beastly Virtues, Bekoff brings together essays on his own ground-breaking research and on what scientists know about the remarkable range and flexibility of animal behavior. His fascinating and often amusing observations of dogs, wolves, coyotes, prairie dogs, elephants, and other animals playing, leaving and detecting scent-marks ("yellow snow"), solving problems, and forming friendships challenge the idea that science and the ethical treatment of animals are incompatible

Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior
Edited by Marc Bekoff
(Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004)

What is it like to be a dog, or a chimpanzee, or an ant? How do animals communicate? Why do they play? Can animals feel emotions like empathy and grief? These and many other questions are answered in the Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior, the most authoritative, comprehensive, and accessible resource on the scientific study of animal behavior. The contributors are an international group of prominent animal behavior scholars and authorities from many different disciplines, including biology, psychology, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, veterinary medicine, law, and religious studies. Entries examine a broad array of different species and behavior patterns, using techniques that range from molecular approaches to the study of behavior to analyses of individuals, populations, species, and ecosystems. Informed by the best and most recent scholarship, entries are written with the lay public in mind, and all material is explained in understandable, jargon-free language. This user-friendly resource will appeal to students and scholars of animal behavior, behavioral ecology, conservation biology, and wildlife photography, as well as animal advocates and anyone with a love for animals.

The Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior includes many features:

Over 200 fascinating topical entries, including Friendship in Animals; Communication in Mammals, Birds, Fish, and Insects; Tool Use in Primates, Elephants, and Birds; Culture; Language; Consciousness; and Mating in Mammals, Birds, and Insects

Over 300 photographs, charts, and diagrams that illustrate aspects of animal behavior

Numerous sidebars on behaviors that help illuminate the more abstract and theoretical concepts

Entries on the usefulness of animal behavior in such careers as conservation biology, zoo research and animal care, and applied animal behavior including animal-assisted therapy in counseling and in hospitals and hospices.

More than anything else, the Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior will instill in any reader great respect and wonder for the mysteries of the animal world.

Greenwood Press December 2004 1200 pages in 3 volumes 7 x 10
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The Ten Trusts
What We Must Do to Care for the Animals We Love
Co-authored with Jane Goodall
(HarperCollins, October 2002)
(harperSanFrancisco, November 2003)

Combining their life's work living among chimpanzees and coyotes and studying animals with a spiritual perspective on the interrelationship between humans and animals, world-renowned behavioral scientists Jane Goodall and Marc Bekoff set forth ten trusts that we as humans must honor as custodians of the planet. They argue passionately and persuasively that if we put these trusts to work in our lives, the whole world will be safer and more harmonious for all. The central theme of the trusts is one that both authors have been writing about for years - the importance and value of the individuals of all species. The Ten Trusts expands the concept of our obligation to live in close relationship with animals - for of course, we humans are part of the animal kingdom - challenging us to respect the interconnection between all living beings as we learn to care about them as individuals.

The world is changing. Humans beings are gradually becoming more aware of the damage we are inflicting on the natural world. We are moving toward a world where cruelty and hatred are transformed into compassion and love. At this critical moment for the earth the authors share their hope and vision for humanity and all Earth's creatures. They dream of when scientists and non-scientists can work together to create a world in which human beings can live in peace and harmony with each other, animals, and the natural world.

Simple yet profound, The Ten Trusts will not only change our perspective on how we live on this planet, they will establish our responsibilities as stewards of the natural world and show us how to live with respect for all life.

The Cognitive Animal
(MIT Press, June 2002)

The fifty-seven original essays in this book provide a comprehensive overview of the interdisciplinary field of animal cognition. The contributors include cognitive ethologists, behavioral ecologists, experimental and developmental psychologists, behaviorists, philosophers, neuroscientists, computer scientists and modelers, field biologists, and others. The diversity of approaches is both philosophical and methodological, with contributors demonstrating various degrees of acceptance or disdain for such terms as "consciousness" and varying degrees of concern for laboratory experimentation versus naturalistic research. In addition to primates, particularly the nonhuman great apes, the animals discussed include antelopes, bees, dogs, dolphins, earthworms, fish, hyenas, parrots, prairie dogs, rats, ravens, sea lions, snakes, spiders, and squirrels.

The topics include (but are not limited to) definitions of cognition, the role of anecdotes in the study of animal cognition, anthropomorphism, attention, perception, learning, memory, thinking, consciousness, intentionality, communication, planning, play, aggression, dominance, predation, recognition, assessment of self and others, social knowledge, empathy, conflict resolution, reproduction, parent-young interactions and caregiving, ecology, evolution, kin selection, and neuroethology.

Minding Animals
Awareness, Emotions, and Heart
(Oxford University Press, April 2002)

Thinking bees, ice-skating buffaloes, dreaming rats, happy foxes, ecstatic elephants, despondent dolphins--in Minding Animals, Marc Bekoff takes us on an exhilarating tour of the emotional and mental world of animals, where we meet creatures who do amazing things and whose lives are filled with mysteries.

Following in the footsteps of Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen, Bekoff has spent the last 30 years studying animals of every stripe--from coyotes in Wyoming to penguins in Antarctica. He draws on this vast experience, as well as on the observations of other naturalists, to offer readers fascinating stories of animal behavior, including grooming and gossip, self-medication, feeding patterns, dreaming, dominance, and mating behavior. Many of these stories are truly incredible--chimpanzees medicating themselves with herbal remedies, elephants clearly mourning a dead group member--but this is not simply a catalog of amazing animal tales, for Bekoff also sheds light on many of the more serious issues surrounding animals. He offers a thought-provoking look at animal cognition, intelligence, and consciousness and he presents vivid examples of animal passions, highlighting the deep emotional lives of our animal kin. All this serves as background for his thoughtful conclusions about humility and animal protection and animal well-being, where he urges a new paradigm of respect, grace, compassion, and love for all animals.

Marc Bekoff has gone deep into the minds, hearts, spirits, and souls of animals, giving him profound insight into their lives, and no small insight into ours. Minding Animals is an important contribution to our understanding of animal consciousness, a major work that will be a must read for anyone who loves nature.

The Smile of a Dolphin
Remarkable Accounts of Animal Emotions
(Discovery Channel Inc, 2000)

Longtime mates Turbo and Kachina get agitated whenever the other is even briefly out of sight. Kanzi, jealous of his younger sister, throws temper tantrums when she outperforms him. Tulip giggles when she’s tickled and loves to play games. And Ake gets angry when scolded; she once hurled a plastic pipe at her teacher when the instructor rebuked her for failing a task.

Turbo and Kachina, Kanzi, Tulip, and Ake are, respectively, a pair of Arabian horses, a bonobo, a rat, and a dolphin. In each case their devotion, jealousy, playfulness, and anger, their display of emotion, was observed and reported by a scientist—an expert in animal behavior whose formal training has discouraged either anthropomorphic thinking or jumping to conclusions.

In this unforgettable collection of stories, more than fifty experts on animals ranging from great apes to guppies present compelling evidence that, when faced with such circumstances as losing a child; confronting an enemy; choosing a mate; or being tricked, chastised, challenged, played with, or picked on; many animals do seem to have an emotional response, one whose underpinnings may be strikingly similar to our own. What’s more, these familiar feelings occur even in such “unlikely” animals as birds, reptiles, and fish.

Harvard paleobiologist Stephen Jay Gould writes in his foreword: “The authors of this book pursue a . . . lover’s quarrel with scientific convention. They write these case studies from their own experiences --not the luck of casual and fortuitous moments, but the distillation of a best and most revealing particular from a lifetime of expertise....”

Never before has a book on this controversial subject presented the findings of so many distinguished contributors, among them Roger and Deborah Fouts of Central Washington University, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh of Georgia State University, Cynthia Moss of the Amboseli Elephant Research Project, David Macdonald of Oxford University, and best-selling author Elizabeth Marshall Thomas. Combining keen observational skills with a genuine fascination with their subjects, these scientists offer convincing, compassionate evidence for the rich emotional lives of a broad range of species. Engagingly illustrated with 120 photographs, The Smile of a Dolphin: Remarkable Accounts of Animal Emotions will captivate both admirers of scientific inquiry and animal lovers.

Species of Mind
Co-authored with Colin Allen
(MIT Press, 1997)

The authors of this book, a philosopher and a cognitive ethologist, approach their work from the perspective that many animals have minds and rich cognitive lives. They also believe that arguments about evolutionary continuity are as applicable to the study of animal minds and brains as they are to comparative studies of kidneys, stomachs, and hearts. Cognitive ethologists study the comparative, evolutionary, and ecological aspects of the mental phenomena of animals. Philosophy can provide cognitive ethology with an analytical basis for the attribution and assessment of cognition to nonhuman animals. Cognitive ethology can help philosophy to explain mentality in naturalistic terms by providing data on the evolution of cognition.

The heart of the book is this reciprocal relationship between philosophical theories of mind and empirical studies of animal cognition. All theoretical discussion is carefully tied to case studies, particularly in the areas of antipredator vigilance and social play, where there are many points of contact with philosophical discussions of intentionality and representation. The authors make specific suggestions about how to use philosophical theories of intentionality as starting points for empirical investigation of animal minds. They also discuss cognitive ethology's relevance to questions of ethics, as our beliefs about the mental lives of animals strongly affect our attitudes toward their moral status.

Readings in Animal Cognition
(MIT Press, 1995)

This collection of 24 readings is the first comprehensive treatment of important topics by leading figures in the rapidly growing interdisciplinary field of animal cognition. Taken togther the essays provide the nucleus for an introductory course in animal cognition (cognitive ethology and comparative psychology), philosophy of biology, or philosophy of mind.

Selections are grouped in five sections: Perspectives on Animal Cognition; Cognitive and Evolutionary Explanations; Recognition, Choice, Vigilance, and Play; Communication and Language; and Animal Minds. Seventeen essays are reprinted from the authors much cited two-volume collection, Interpretation and Explanation in the Study of Animal Behavior. One essay taken from that book has been subsequently revised, and five additional essays are recent examples of critical thinking in cognitive ethology. The preface and final chapter, Ethics and the Study of Animal Cognition, are new.

Coyotes
Biology, Behavior and Management
(Blackburn Press, 2001)

This classic of the canid literature, originally published in 1978, pulls together much disparate research in coyote evolution, taxonomy, reproduction, communication, behavioral development, population dynamics, ethology and ecological studies in the Southwest, Minnesota, Iowa, New England and Wyoming as well as studies on livestock damage and research on other canids.

Strolling with Our Kin
(Lantern Books, 2000)

Strolling With Our Kin will encourage the natural curiosity of children in their world, foster a sense of wonder and delight, and a corresponding sense of concern. I hope this book will soon be available in all libraries and on the shelves in many homes. Certainly I shall be recommending it to all 1500 of our Roots & Shoots groups in North America, and in other parts of the world as well. Marc Bekoff has pulled the issues together and written about them with clarity and conviction.
-- from the Foreword by Jane Goodall

Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare
(Greenwood Publishing Group, 1998)

From the use of animals in experiments to develop medicine for people, to the preservation of endangered species in zoos, human beings' responsibility to and for their fellow animals has become an increasingly controversial subject. This book, which Jane Goodall in her foreword calls "unique, informative, and exciting," provides a provocative overview of the many different perspectives on the issues of animal rights and animal welfare in an easy-to-use encyclopedic format. Students, teachers, and interested readers can explore the ideas of well-known philosophers, biologists, and psychologists in this field, such as Peter Singer, Tom Regan, and over 125 others, all of whom have contributed original entries.

Nature's Purposes
(MIT Press, 1998)

Within the natural sciences, only biologists take seriously teleological statements about design, purpose, and adaptive function. Some biologists claim that to understand the complex morphological and behavioral traits of organisms we must say what they are for, which is to give a teleological explanation of why organisms have them. Others argue that the theory of natural selection, in providing statistical explanations for the same phenomena, obviates any need for teleological thinking. If teleology cannot be eliminated from biology, it raises fundamental questions about the nature of biological explanation and about the relationship of biology to the rest of science.

To account for "Nature's purposes" is arguably the most important basic issue in the philosophy of biology. This volume provides a guide to the discussion among biologists and philosophers about the role of concepts such as function and design in an evolutionary understanding of life. All of the contributors examine biological teleology from a naturalistic perspective. Most of them maintain that teleological claims in biology both describe and explain something--but opinions vary as to exactly what is explained and how.

Contributors: Fred Adams, Colin Allen, Ron Amundson, Francisco J. Ayala, Mark Bedau, Marc Bekoff, John Bigelow, Walter J. Bock, Robert N. Brandon, Robert Cummins, Berent Enç, Carl Gans, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Stephen Jay Gould, Paul E. Griffiths, R. A. Hinde, Philip Kitcher, George V. Lauder, Ruth Garrett Millikan, S. D. Mitchell, Ernest Nagel, Karen Neander, Robert Pargetter, M. J. S. Rudwick, Gerd von Wahlert, Elisabeth S. Vrba, Larry Wright.

Animal Play
Evolutionary, Comparative, and Ecological Perspectives
(Cambridge University Press, 1998)

Why do animals play? Play has been described in many different species from reptiles to humans and can give insights into the development and evolution of other behaviours. This unique interdisciplinary volume examines human and animal play in a broad range of contexts. Animal Play is destined to become the benchmark volume in this subject for many years to come, and will provide a source of inspiration and understanding for students and researchers in behavioural biology, neurobiology, psychology and anthropology.

Nature's Life Lessons
Everyday Truths from Nature
(Fulcrum Publishing, 1996)

Putting a spin on evolution, the authors show how basic truths from nature can provide telling commentary on our modern world. Readers will be amused and fascinated to see how the behavior of a wide variety of plants and animals--frogs and flamingos, monkeys and mice, wolves and wattled jicanas--mirrors that of humans and vice versa. With more than 250 life lessons, this fully illustrated book is proof positive of how much we have in common with such lovable beasts as the yarrow spiny lizard and hermaphrodite slugs.