Description
Book SynopsisNature documentaries often depict animal life as a grim struggle for survival. This book opens our eyes to a different way of looking at the animal kingdom. Including more than one hundred thirty images, it celebrates the full range of animal experience with dramatic portraits of animal pleasure.
Trade Review"An exuberant look at animal pleasure." -- Katherine Bouton New York Times "An irresistible new photo book." -- Maureen Callahan New York Post "Intersperses glorious images of animals preening, grooming and gallivanting with snippets of studies suggesting such behaviours belie an overly utilitarian interpretation." -- Tiffany O'Callaghan New Scientist "Here is a book to put a spring into anyone's step. The Exultant Ark is a celebration of animal behaviour at its most uplifting." -- Stuart Blackman Bbc Wildlife Magazine "All readers of this column must immediately purchase Jonathan Balcombe's fabulous book." -- Leigh Dayton The Australian "One of those rare volumes that will look good on your coffee table but might also change the way you think." -- Harold Herzog American Journal Of Play "This visually stunning book opens our eyes to a different, more scientifically up-to-date way of looking at the animal kingdom... Old attitudes fall away as we gain a heightened sense of animal individuality and of the pleasures that make life worth living for all sentient beings." -- Ian Paulsen The Guardian / Birdbooker Report Blog "This is one of those rare volumes that will look good on your coffee table but might also change the way you think." -- Hal Herzog Psychology Today "The studies he [Balcombe] invokes are hard to explain away... Likewise, the photographs that make up the bulk of The Exultant Ark remind us that we are not as different from other animals on our planet as we like to think; the photos are anecdotal in nature, but they are utterly compelling." -- Scott F. Parker Rain Taxi Review Of Books "Both the stunning photography and Balcombe's masterful prose are welcome additions to the growing literary and scientific evidence that debunk long-assumed myths while continuing to eliminate the gap between 'us' and 'them.'" Veg News Mag
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction 1 Play 2 Food 3 Touch 4 Courtship and Sex 5 Love 6 Comfort 7 Companionship 8 Other Pleasures Conclusion: Implications of Animal Pleasure Notes References Index
