This was a strange book for me. When I started reading it, I thought that anthrozoologist Hal Herzog would ask and answer questions about why humans relate to different types of animals in different ways. By the end of the book, I felt that he was arguing from a premise I simply don't share, and raising questions in a way that implied certain answers. In the second half of the book, he spends a good deal of time talking about the difficulty of being morally consistent in how we look at animals. I don't believe that's entirely true. It is only true if you start from the premise that animals have moral rights that humans are bound to recognize, and are only arguing about what the parameters of those rights are. If you believe that humans are humans, and animals are animals, and there is a very bright and easily distinguished line between them, the consistency issue doesn't really come into play.