Personalities on the Plate ─ The Lives and Minds of Animals We Eat

Human attitudes towards other species are inevitably complex. We love the dog and eat the pig, or, we love the bison and eat the bison. Who exactly are these fellow creatures? The newest science from anthropology, psychology, and zoology can help us figure out some answers to that question by showing us how the animals we eat-- for some the octopus or the chimpanzee, for many others the chicken and the goat?think, feel, and act as distinct individual beings. Who are we eating? In this insightful exploration of the animals that humans consume, Barbara King does not tell us what or whom we should be eating, but rather she invites us to a smorgasbord of thought and reflection on the sentience and behaviors of the consumed. By getting to know these animals better, we can begin to taste the different ways they experience the world with awareness and intention, and it brings greater connection between us and those animals than we encounter in shrink-wrapped grocery-store products. This book shows us how valuable it is to understand who we eat, no matter how varied that consumption is. From octopi to crickets to chimpanzees, the animals we consume deserve a better appreciation from all who encounter them in a culinary experience, and there is no host of this scientific and behavioral feast than Barbara King.

Barbara J. King is professor emerita of anthropology at the College of William and Mary, where she taught for twenty-eight years. She is the author of How Animals Grieve and Evolving God, and her work has been featured in The Best American Science and Nature Writing and on NPR’s 13.7 Cosmos and Culture blog.