To really appreciate this book, you need to know something about the author, Temple Grandin. She has autism, she has a PhD, she has been able to make many discoveries about animal behavior, and she has been able to design many humane efficiencies in animal industries. She is something of a systems engineer for anything to do with animals.

If you have never seen the movie "Temple Grandin", take a look at this preview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnI_Y8...
You can find the movie at the Henrico Public Library.

In this book Temple Grandin teaches us about animals and why they behave the way they do. Some of it seems so common sense after she explains her reasoning, but I would have never have thought of it on my own.



Some quotes I like from the book:
“The big companies are like steel and activists are like heat. Activists soften the steel, and then I can bend it into pretty grillwork and make reforms.”

“I believe that the best way to create good living conditions for any animal, whether it's a captive animal living in a zoo, a farm animal or a pet, is to base animal welfare programs on the core emotion systems in the brain. My theory is that the environment animals live in should activate their positive emotions as much as possible, and not activate their negative emotions any more than necessary. If we get the animal's emotions rights, we will have fewer problem behaviors... All animals and people have the same core emotion systems in the brain.”