The Human Animal

'An outstanding work. Brilliant, scholarly, and insightful. Linda Johnson has established herself as the leading art historian of our complex relationship with animals. Her work shows how art can enhance as well as denigrate the status of other species. She has opened up a whole new field of artistic endeavour.'

Join zoologist Desmond Morris in this fascinating documentary series as he goes out into the field and studies, in its natural habitat, the most interesting and odd animal of all: humans. Six-part series shows that, however much we may think we have evolved from our animal ancestors, our instincts and behaviour are still rooted in our animal past. By denying this inheritance we are in danger of destroying everything we have strived so hard to create. Despite the different skin colours, beliefs and rituals to be found in the 5000 million human beings alive today, we actually all share an almost identical genetic heritage.

A Reason to Live explores the human-animal relationship through the narratives of eleven people living with HIV and their animal companions. The narratives, based on a series of interviews with HIV-positive individuals and their animal companions in Australia, span the entirety of the HIV epidemic, from public awareness and discrimination in the 1980s and 1990s to survival and hope in the twenty-first century.

There have been dramatic increases in the financial, emotional, and psychological investment in pets over the past four decades. The increasing importance of animal companions in people`s lives has resulted in growing emphasis on the human-animal bond within academic literature. This book introduces practicing and emerging professionals to vital subject matter concerning this growing specialty area by providing an essential framework and information through which to consider the unique contextual backdrop of the human-animal bond. Such contexts include a wide array of themes including: issues of attachment and loss, success and frustration with making and sustaining connections, world views regarding animal ethics, familial history of neglect or abuse, and cultural dynamics that speak to the order of things between mankind and nature.

There have been dramatic increases in the financial, emotional, and psychological investment in pets over the past four decades. The increasing importance of animal companions in people`s lives has resulted in growing emphasis on the human-animal bond within academic literature.