Zoobiquity: What Animals Can Teach Us About Being Human

By: Barbara Natterson Horowitz and Kathryn Bowers

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Synopsis: Concerns about the recent explosions of diseases like HIV, the West Nile Virus, and other avian and swine flus that originate in animals have encouraged new efforts on a global scale to bridge the gap between animal and human medicine for the benefit of both. Zoobiquity is the first book to explore many of the human and animal health issues that overlap and provides new insight into the treatment of many diseases including diabetes, cancer, heart disease and mental illness. But Zoobiquity is even bigger than health and academic medicine, and encompasses much more than our diseases and how to cure them. It sheds light on the evolution of hierarchies and similarities between a tribe of apes and a Fortune 500 company. It suggests that the ways we run our political and justice systems may overlap with how animals protect and defend their territories - and that examining this possibility in a scientifically credible way could help strengthen our institutions. It dangles the possibility that human parenting could be informed by a greater knowledge and respect for how our animal cousins solve issues of childcare, sibling rivalry and infertility.