Animal Minds and Life
in a More-Than-Human World
What does the science of animal intelligence mean for how we understand and live with the wild creatures around us?
Honeybees deliberate democratically. Rats reflect on the past. Snakes have friends. In recent decades, our understanding of animal cognition has exploded, making it indisputably clear that the cities and landscapes around us are filled with thinking, feeling individuals besides ourselves. But the way we relate to wild animals has yet to catch up. In Meet the Neighbors, acclaimed science journalist Brandon Keim asks: what would it mean to take the minds of other animals seriously?
In this wide-ranging, wonder-filled exploration of animals’ inner lives, Keim takes us into courtrooms and wildlife hospitals, under backyard decks and into deserts, to meet anew the wild creatures who populate our communities and the philosophers, rogue pest controllers, ecologists, wildlife doctors, and others who are reimagining our relationships to them. If bats trade favors and groups of swans vote to take off by honking, should we then see them as fellow persons―even members of society? When we come to understand the depths of their pleasures and pains, the richness of their family lives and their histories, what do we owe so-called pests and predators, or animals who are sick or injured? Can thinking of nonhumans as our neighbors help chart a course to a kinder, gentler planet? As Keim suggests, the answers to these questions are central to how we understand not only the rest of the living world, but ourselves.
A beguiling invitation to discover an expanded sense of community and kinship beyond our own species, Meet the Neighbors opens our eyes to the world of vibrant intelligence just outside our doors.
Honeybees deliberate democratically. Rats reflect on the past. Snakes have friends. In recent decades, our understanding of animal cognition has exploded, making it indisputably clear that the cities and landscapes around us are filled with thinking, feeling individuals besides ourselves. But the way we relate to wild animals has yet to catch up. In Meet the Neighbors, acclaimed science journalist Brandon Keim asks: what would it mean to take the minds of other animals seriously?
In this wide-ranging, wonder-filled exploration of animals’ inner lives, Keim takes us into courtrooms and wildlife hospitals, under backyard decks and into deserts, to meet anew the wild creatures who populate our communities and the philosophers, rogue pest controllers, ecologists, wildlife doctors, and others who are reimagining our relationships to them. If bats trade favors and groups of swans vote to take off by honking, should we then see them as fellow persons―even members of society? When we come to understand the depths of their pleasures and pains, the richness of their family lives and their histories, what do we owe so-called pests and predators, or animals who are sick or injured? Can thinking of nonhumans as our neighbors help chart a course to a kinder, gentler planet? As Keim suggests, the answers to these questions are central to how we understand not only the rest of the living world, but ourselves.
A beguiling invitation to discover an expanded sense of community and kinship beyond our own species, Meet the Neighbors opens our eyes to the world of vibrant intelligence just outside our doors.
Interview with the Author
From "It" to "You"
A Process Philosophy of Animal Minds
“What does the science of animal intelligence mean for how we understand and live with the wild creatures around us? Honeybees deliberate democratically. Rats reflect on the past. Snakes have friends. In recent decades, our understanding of animal cognition has exploded, making it indisputably clear that the cities and landscapes around us are filled with thinking, feeling individuals besides ourselves. But the way we relate to wild animals has yet to catch up. In Meet the Neighbors, acclaimed science journalist Brandon Keim asks: what would it mean to take the minds of other animals seriously?
One virtue of Whitehead’s philosophy is that it offers conceptual categories for affirming, appreciating, learning about, and learning from the minds of other animals as individuals—that is, as “concrescing subjects” with their own feelings, emotions, intelligence, and value for themselves. They are subjects of their own lives and not just objects for others. They have their own first-person perspectives; they enjoy and suffer, both consciously and unconsciously; they respond to given situations with creativity of their own. They have—or better, are—souls, just as we are. And in many instances, they possess forms of intelligence that we humans lack—forms of intelligence they possess not merely as members of a species, but as individuals in their own right. They are not simply instances of a type, but centers of experience, each with its own way of inhabiting and interpreting the world. They are not third-person “objects,” but second-person singulars: yous, not its.
To recognize this is not only to revise our theories; it is to awaken certain dispositions of the heart and mind. A genuine acknowledgment of animal minds elicits admiration for the many ways of being intelligent in the world, humility about the limits of human understanding and superiority, and a deep sense of amazement at the richness and diversity of life. It widens the sense of family and kinship.
A Single Honeybee
A Whiteheadian approach invites us to see not only species-level capacities but the intelligence of individual creatures—this honeybee, this bird, this octopus, this elephant, this rat—each a concrescing subject with its own way of taking account of the world.
A single honeybee, for example, participates in and contributes to the remarkable collective intelligence of the hive. Through her waggle dance, she communicates the location, distance, and quality of food sources, offering her own experience into a shared deliberative process. The intelligence of the colony depends upon the felt perceptions and expressive activity of individual bees, each playing a role in the eventual consensus about where to move.
A migratory bird, as an individual, undertakes journeys of astonishing precision and endurance. She navigates across continents and oceans, guided by a sensitivity to the Earth’s magnetic fields, the position of the sun and stars, and subtle environmental cues. This is not abstract knowledge but an embodied attunement—a lived orientation that belongs to her own experience of the world.
An octopus, in its singularity, displays a form of intelligence that is fluid and exploratory. With a decentralized nervous system—much of its neural activity occurring in its arms—it solves problems, manipulates objects, and engages its surroundings with curiosity. Its intelligence is not centralized but enacted through its whole body, as it encounters and responds to the textures and possibilities of its environment.
An elephant, as an individual member of a social group, exhibits profound emotional and relational intelligence. She remembers, grieves, cooperates, and responds empathetically to others. Her awareness is not only cognitive but affective, shaped by long-term bonds and a deep sensitivity to the well-being of those around her.
Even a single rat—so often dismissed—can reflect and anticipate. At moments of decision, he may pause, as if replaying past experiences and projecting possible futures. His behavior suggests a form of “mental time travel,” an ability to draw upon memory in order to navigate what lies ahead.
From a Whiteheadian perspective, these are not merely instances of species-wide traits but expressions of individual subjects taking account of their worlds in distinct ways. Intelligence is not a single hierarchy with humans at the apex, but a plurality of forms—each rooted in a particular way of being, each revealing a different mode of feeling, knowing, and responding.
Animal Friendship
One quite prominent Whitehead-influenced theologian, Thomas Jay Oord, speaks of this way of affirming and appreciating the minds of other animals as “animal friendship.”
To be sure, many people around the world know about “animal friendship” in their relationships with pets or companion animals. These friendships are forms of social and spiritual bondedness, and they can be immensely rich for human and animal alike. Consider, for example, a dog who greets a person at the door with unmistakable joy, attuned to that person’s moods and offering comfort in times of distress; or a cat who chooses to sit quietly beside someone, sharing a space of calm companionship; or a horse who develops trust with a rider over time, responding to subtle cues and forming a relationship shaped by mutual sensitivity. In each case, there is more than utility or projection—there is a relationship between subjects, a felt connection that carries emotional and even spiritual depth.
And these friendships can last a lifetime—and perhaps more. They remain in the memories of human beings long after their companions die, shaping who they are and how they feel the world. The bond does not simply vanish; it lingers as affection, gratitude, and a quiet sense of presence. And perhaps the remembering is not one-sided. If animals, too, are centers of experience, it is at least imaginable that something of the relationship endures for them as well.
It is not surprising, then, that when human beings imagine a continuing journey after death, they hope—often quite deeply—that their animal companions will be there, too. The desire is not merely sentimental; it arises from having known these companions as subjects, as yous, not its. And perhaps, in ways we do not fully understand, they will be.
But as a nature photographer as well as a theologian, Oord is also interested in friendships with wild animals: human friendships with wild animals, and divine friendships, too. He writes:
“As a nature photographer, I’ve had plenty of ‘God moments.’ When composing a scene, I sometimes feel a Jolt. I felt close to the Creator while photographing a moose and her calf, a grouse and chicks, and two Gopher snakes copulating. I consider these creatures my companions, and I greet them, ‘Hello, friend.’ This animal friendship, as I see it, is prompted by the Friend of all creation. But a photographic experience can be revelatory.”
Oord is drawing upon Whitehead’s understanding of God as a companion to the entirety of creation—not to human life alone—in his speaking of God as the “Friend of all creation.” The emphasis is not on God creating the world or creating the conditions for life to emerge on earth, but on God as a universal Spirit of love who is the very Mind of the universe, with a life of his/her/their own, and whose very nature is to emphathically share in the experience of all sentient beings.
From this perspective, animals are not merely objects of study or resources for use; they are fellow participants in a living cosmos, each with its own interiority, its own aims, and its own forms of experience. A lived interiority which is felt by God who is "a fellow sufferer who understands." Indeed, this interiority adds to the ongoing life of God. Whitehead speaks of God as "many" as well as "one." The idea is not that God controls the behavior of other minds, but that God receives their feelings into God's own mind and they become part of God's ongoing life. God's life is enriched by the honeybee, the bird, the octopus, the elephant, and the rat. And by our minds, too.
Animal friendship begins in perception. It asks us to see the bee, the rat, the snake, the crow, the fox, the deer, and the spider not as background scenery, not as pests or resources, but as neighbors. It asks us to become available to their presence. And if, like Thomas Oord, we have religious sensibilities, animal friendships includes a sense that the ultimate Mind of the cosmos is wide enough to include the each and the all of the evolving whole of creation in an understanding way, recognizing that this mind is not to be feared, but is instead a friend to all minds, including animal minds.
Ethical Implications
And once we become available, the ethical question follows: How shall we live among them? Not as masters, not merely as protectors, but as fellow creatures learning the difficult art of coexistence.
This has obvious implications for how we treat companion animals and how animals are treated in agriculture, laboratory research, wildlife management, and urban planning. If animals are truly subjects of their own lives—concrescing centers of experience with their own forms of feeling and purpose—then they cannot be reduced to commodities, tools, or background elements in human projects without moral cost.
It does not follow that all uses of animals are eliminated; but it does mean that every such use must be rethought in light of their intrinsic value. Questions of suffering, flourishing, habitat, social bonds, and freedom of movement become central rather than peripheral. Practices that ignore or override these dimensions call for critical re-evaluation.
The Suffering of Wild Animals
It also has implications for how we respond to the suffering of wild animals—from predation, disease, harsh weather conditions, parasitism, and natural disasters. If wild creatures are indeed subjects of their own lives, then their suffering is not morally invisible simply because it is “natural.” It is real suffering, felt from within their own centers of experience.
At the same time, this raises difficult and often tragic questions. The natural world is not a harmonious whole in which all flourishing is easily aligned. It is a complex web of interdependent lives, where the survival of one often involves the suffering or death of another. Predation, in particular, is not merely a problem to be solved; it is part of the ecological fabric of life as we know it.
From a Whiteheadian perspective, we are invited into a posture that combines compassion with humility. Compassion, because the suffering of animals matters in itself. Humility, because our capacity to intervene wisely in complex ecosystems is limited, and interventions can easily produce unintended consequences.
This does not mean indifference. It may call for thoughtful, context-sensitive forms of care: reducing unnecessary suffering where we can do so without causing greater harm, protecting habitats that allow animals to flourish, responding to human-caused disruptions that intensify suffering, and developing forms of coexistence that minimize violence. It may also involve bearing witness—acknowledging the reality of suffering without turning away.
Urban Co-Habitation
It also involves rethinking the place of wild animals in urban settings. These environments do not simply belong to us as “our” homes; they are their homes, too. Cities, suburbs, and neighborhoods are shared habitats—places where birds nest, insects pollinate, mammals forage, and countless forms of life adapt and persist alongside human activity. To recognize this is to shift from a mindset of control to one of coexistence. It invites us to design and inhabit urban spaces in ways that are more hospitable to other forms of life: preserving green corridors, reducing harm from infrastructure, and cultivating practices of everyday attentiveness and respect. In this light, urban life becomes not a human-centered domain but a multispecies community, shaped by many forms of presence, need, and agency.
They are our neighbors.
Questions for Reflection
Many questions remain—some theological, some metaphysical, and some practical.
1. Divine Responsibility and Animal Suffering
If we take animal suffering seriously, including the suffering of wild animals, should the Mind of the universe—should God—be held responsible for it? Whitehead-influenced theologians emphasize that God does not control evolution. Rather, God is one among many causal influences in the evolutionary process, present in each mind as a felt potentiality (an initial aim) to respond to given situations in ways that are both individually satisfying and conducive to the well-being of the whole.
Even so, a difficult question remains: was the divine lure, in some sense, a lure toward predation? If so, then even if God is not fully responsible for the course of evolution, God may still seem implicated in its tragic dimensions. The result is a troubling but important possibility: that God is not culpable in a straightforward sense, yet may still be, in some way, indictable.
2. Survival Beyond Death
If human minds are in some sense more than their bodies—and even more than their brains—such that they may have out-of-body experiences or perhaps survive bodily death in a continuing journey, might this also be true of more-than-human animals? If animals are indeed centers of experience, does their subjectivity persist in some form beyond death? Is there evidence—empirical, experiential, or philosophical—for such survival? Or is their ongoing reality found in their preservation within the consequent nature of God?
3. The Scope of Subjectivity
If we affirm subjectivity in mammals, birds, and perhaps even octopuses, what about insects, microbes, and simpler forms of life? Do they, too, have some form of feeling, however minimal? Whitehead’s philosophy suggests that experience, in some rudimentary sense, extends throughout the natural world.
This raises further questions about degree: Are there meaningful gradations in the intensity, complexity, or integration of experience? How do we think about value and agency in a world where subjectivity is both widespread and uneven?
4. Indvidual subjectivity and Collective Subjectivity
In cases such as honeybees hives or ant colonies, where intelligence appears distributed, how should we understand the relationship between individual subjects and larger social wholes? Is the colony itself a kind of subject, or is it better understood as a coordinated society of individuals? Whitehead’s notion of “societies” provides one framework, but the precise metaphysical status of collective life remains open.
5. Distributed Centers of Experience?
Here is another way of putting the question: Can a center of experience be distributed rather than atomized in a single concrescing subject, such that it belongs to the whole? In other words, might there be forms of subjectivity that are not localized in discrete individuals, but are instead emergent properties of relational systems—colonies, ecosystems, or even planetary processes? If so, how would such distributed experience relate to the moment-by-moment concrescences that Whitehead describes? Would it supplement, overlap with, or challenge the idea that each actual occasion is the fundamental unit of experience?
6. Non-Organic Minds
What about sentient minds that do not have organic substrates, should such minds exist? What about the minds of silicon-based machines? If subjectivity is not reducible to biological material alone, but is instead a feature of organized processes of experience, then it is at least conceivable that forms of mentality could emerge in non-organic systems. This raises profound questions about the conditions for experience, the nature of embodiment, and the ethical status of artificial or synthetic forms of mind.
7. Implications for Psychological Health
What are the implications of recognizing the minds of other animals for human psychological health? Might such recognition deepen empathy, reduce loneliness, and foster a sense of belonging within a larger community of life? Or might it also intensify anxiety and moral burden as we become more aware of the suffering and vulnerability of other beings?
8. Animals in Dreams and Altered States
Can the minds of more-than-human animals appear in dreams and in other kinds of experience—shamanic, psychedelic, or otherwise? If so, how are we to interpret these encounters? Are they projections of the human psyche, symbolic mediations, or, in some sense, genuine relations across species boundaries?
9. Animals in Dreams and Altered States
What are the possibilities for cross-species communication in light of Whitehead’s idea of hybrid physical prehensions of the mental poles of other occasions of experience? If one subject can, in some measure, prehend not only the physical but also the mental aspects of another, does this open a pathway—however partial or fragmentary—for felt communication across species boundaries? Might moments of attunement between humans and other animals involve such hybrid prehensions, where one subject directly feels something of another’s experience? If so, how might this reshape our understanding of empathy, communication, and relationality in a more-than-human world?
10. Artistic Representation and Recognition
Do renditions of animals in artistic form—both realistic and stylized, in children’s art and in adult art—enrich or deplete our capacities for recognizing animal minds? Do they help us perceive animals as subjects, or do they sometimes reduce them to caricatures and abstractions? Under what conditions does art deepen our sensitivity to animal presence, and under what conditions does it obscure it?
11. Land Management and Urban Design
How should it influence our treatment of companion animals, our practices in agriculture and research, our approaches to wildlife management, and the design of our cities? How do we balance compassion with ecological realism? When should we intervene in natural processes, and when should we refrain?
12. Should we eat animals?
Is it ethical to eat animals, given that we know they suffer and have first-person perspectives? If so, under what conditions—if any—might such practices be justified? If not, what changes in diet and culture would be called for? How do we weigh human needs, traditions, and ecological realities alongside the intrinsic value and lived experience of animals?
1. Divine Responsibility and Animal Suffering
If we take animal suffering seriously, including the suffering of wild animals, should the Mind of the universe—should God—be held responsible for it? Whitehead-influenced theologians emphasize that God does not control evolution. Rather, God is one among many causal influences in the evolutionary process, present in each mind as a felt potentiality (an initial aim) to respond to given situations in ways that are both individually satisfying and conducive to the well-being of the whole.
Even so, a difficult question remains: was the divine lure, in some sense, a lure toward predation? If so, then even if God is not fully responsible for the course of evolution, God may still seem implicated in its tragic dimensions. The result is a troubling but important possibility: that God is not culpable in a straightforward sense, yet may still be, in some way, indictable.
2. Survival Beyond Death
If human minds are in some sense more than their bodies—and even more than their brains—such that they may have out-of-body experiences or perhaps survive bodily death in a continuing journey, might this also be true of more-than-human animals? If animals are indeed centers of experience, does their subjectivity persist in some form beyond death? Is there evidence—empirical, experiential, or philosophical—for such survival? Or is their ongoing reality found in their preservation within the consequent nature of God?
3. The Scope of Subjectivity
If we affirm subjectivity in mammals, birds, and perhaps even octopuses, what about insects, microbes, and simpler forms of life? Do they, too, have some form of feeling, however minimal? Whitehead’s philosophy suggests that experience, in some rudimentary sense, extends throughout the natural world.
This raises further questions about degree: Are there meaningful gradations in the intensity, complexity, or integration of experience? How do we think about value and agency in a world where subjectivity is both widespread and uneven?
4. Indvidual subjectivity and Collective Subjectivity
In cases such as honeybees hives or ant colonies, where intelligence appears distributed, how should we understand the relationship between individual subjects and larger social wholes? Is the colony itself a kind of subject, or is it better understood as a coordinated society of individuals? Whitehead’s notion of “societies” provides one framework, but the precise metaphysical status of collective life remains open.
5. Distributed Centers of Experience?
Here is another way of putting the question: Can a center of experience be distributed rather than atomized in a single concrescing subject, such that it belongs to the whole? In other words, might there be forms of subjectivity that are not localized in discrete individuals, but are instead emergent properties of relational systems—colonies, ecosystems, or even planetary processes? If so, how would such distributed experience relate to the moment-by-moment concrescences that Whitehead describes? Would it supplement, overlap with, or challenge the idea that each actual occasion is the fundamental unit of experience?
6. Non-Organic Minds
What about sentient minds that do not have organic substrates, should such minds exist? What about the minds of silicon-based machines? If subjectivity is not reducible to biological material alone, but is instead a feature of organized processes of experience, then it is at least conceivable that forms of mentality could emerge in non-organic systems. This raises profound questions about the conditions for experience, the nature of embodiment, and the ethical status of artificial or synthetic forms of mind.
7. Implications for Psychological Health
What are the implications of recognizing the minds of other animals for human psychological health? Might such recognition deepen empathy, reduce loneliness, and foster a sense of belonging within a larger community of life? Or might it also intensify anxiety and moral burden as we become more aware of the suffering and vulnerability of other beings?
8. Animals in Dreams and Altered States
Can the minds of more-than-human animals appear in dreams and in other kinds of experience—shamanic, psychedelic, or otherwise? If so, how are we to interpret these encounters? Are they projections of the human psyche, symbolic mediations, or, in some sense, genuine relations across species boundaries?
9. Animals in Dreams and Altered States
What are the possibilities for cross-species communication in light of Whitehead’s idea of hybrid physical prehensions of the mental poles of other occasions of experience? If one subject can, in some measure, prehend not only the physical but also the mental aspects of another, does this open a pathway—however partial or fragmentary—for felt communication across species boundaries? Might moments of attunement between humans and other animals involve such hybrid prehensions, where one subject directly feels something of another’s experience? If so, how might this reshape our understanding of empathy, communication, and relationality in a more-than-human world?
10. Artistic Representation and Recognition
Do renditions of animals in artistic form—both realistic and stylized, in children’s art and in adult art—enrich or deplete our capacities for recognizing animal minds? Do they help us perceive animals as subjects, or do they sometimes reduce them to caricatures and abstractions? Under what conditions does art deepen our sensitivity to animal presence, and under what conditions does it obscure it?
11. Land Management and Urban Design
How should it influence our treatment of companion animals, our practices in agriculture and research, our approaches to wildlife management, and the design of our cities? How do we balance compassion with ecological realism? When should we intervene in natural processes, and when should we refrain?
12. Should we eat animals?
Is it ethical to eat animals, given that we know they suffer and have first-person perspectives? If so, under what conditions—if any—might such practices be justified? If not, what changes in diet and culture would be called for? How do we weigh human needs, traditions, and ecological realities alongside the intrinsic value and lived experience of animals?
Book Review
‘Meet the Neighbors’ by Brandon Keim
Compassionately Complicates
the Narrative About Animals
This story was originally published by Sentient. Click here for original.
In late 2016, a Canada goose was struck and killed by a car in an Atlanta parking lot. For the next three months, his mate would return to that site every day, sitting on the sidewalk in some mournful, mysterious vigil. We don’t know precisely what went on in the mind of this goose — what she felt for the one she lost. But, argues science and nature writer Brandon Keim, we shouldn’t be afraid to use words like grief, love and friendship. Indeed, he writes, a growing body of evidence paints many other animals as intelligent, emotional and social beings — “fellow persons who happen not to be human.”
This evidence makes up the first part of Keim’s new book, Meet the Neighbors: Animal Minds and Life in a More-Than-Human World. But for Keim, while the science of animal minds is interesting in and of itself, what’s most important is what this science implies: a moral revolution in our relationship with wild animals. Geese, raccoons and salamanders are not just populations to be managed, units of biodiversity or providers of ecosystem services: they are our neighbors, entitled to legal personhood, political representation and respect for their lives.
This evidence makes up the first part of Keim’s new book, Meet the Neighbors: Animal Minds and Life in a More-Than-Human World. But for Keim, while the science of animal minds is interesting in and of itself, what’s most important is what this science implies: a moral revolution in our relationship with wild animals. Geese, raccoons and salamanders are not just populations to be managed, units of biodiversity or providers of ecosystem services: they are our neighbors, entitled to legal personhood, political representation and respect for their lives.
What It Would Mean to Treat Animals As Individuals
The traditional environmental movement has focused primarily on species conservation and overall ecosystem health, without much attention to individual animal welfare (with some exceptions). But a growing number of biologists, wildlife journalists and philosophers argue that we need a new way of thinking about wild animals. Sometimes this leads to conflict between conservationists and animal rights advocates, over the ethics of things like zoos and the killing of non-native species.
Keim, however, is less interested in conflict than in possibility; he doesn’t want to throw away the old values of biodiversity and ecosystem health, but instead supplement them with concern for individuals, and not just the endangered or charismatic. His book is accessible and big-hearted, written with humble curiosity about where these ideas might lead us. “Where animals fit into our ethics of nature…is an unfinished project,” he writes. “That task falls to us.”
Keim begins the book far from what we would normally call “the wild,” with a tour of a Maryland suburb “both dominated by humans and overflowing with animal life.” Rather than simply naming and identifying the myriad creatures he sees, he asks us to imagine their minds, what it’s like to be them.
Young male sparrows, we learn, form friendships with specific individuals, spending time with and living near their pals. Newly hatched ducklings seem to grasp the concepts of similar and different, passing tests that are difficult for seven-month-old humans. Turtles vocalize “to coordinate migrations and the care of their young.” Minnows have memory, frogs can count and garter snakes are self-aware, distinguishing their own scent from that of other snakes.
“Every single creature you encounter is a someone,” Keim writes, and the implications can enliven an afternoon stroll: is that bee in a good mood? Is that cottontail enjoying her grassy meal? Those swans on the lake might even be “voting” — research shows that whooper swans will start honking before taking flight, and only depart when the honks reach a certain frequency.
Keim doesn’t just want us to look at wildlife differently, however; he wants to change how we act on both individual and institutional scales. This includes bringing other animals into political decision-making — “We the People ought to include animals as well.”
He lays out the influential approach of political philosophers Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, authors of the 2011 book Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights. In their framework, Keim explains, while only domesticated animals like dogs and chickens would receive full citizenship status, the sparrows and squirrels of suburbia should also “merit consideration and some degree of representation in society’s deliberations.” This would mean “killing [wild animals] for sport or convenience is unjust; so are the harms of pollution, vehicle collisions and climate change.”
If these ideas sound abstract or impossible, Keim stresses that this trust is hardly new. Many Indigenous traditions also emphasized mutual relations and responsibilities with other creatures, representing animals in treaties and decision-making. Taking a long view, Keim writes, “not having animals represented is the aberration.”
And that aberration may be changing: New York City, for instance, has a Mayor’s Office of Animal Welfare that advocates for both domesticated and wild creatures within city government, promoting Meatless Mondays, plant-based meals in hospitals and getting the city to stop killing geese in parks. More speculatively, Keim writes, we might one day see animal ombudspersons, state-funded animal rights lawyers, animal representatives on city councils or even a UN animal ambassador.
While Keim does not dwell on this, it’s worth noting that representing animals politically could transform our relationships with the captive animals in farms, labs and puppy mills, as well as those living freely. After all, farmed animals are also cognitively and emotionally complex, as are dogs and cats — if we should respect the diverse needs and interests of wild animals, we must also attend to domesticated minds. Keim himself extolls the virtues of rats, capable of mental time travel and acts of altruism — if we should protect them from rodenticide, as he argues, we should also protect the millions of rats held in research labs.
The Practicalities of New Animal Rights Ethics
The rest of the book sketches out what an ethic of respect for wild animals might look like in practice. We meet Brad Gates and other wildlife controllers who treat rodents and racoons as more than mere “pests,” using nonlethal methods to promote coexistence. As Gates emphasizes, we should prioritize keeping wild animals out of people’s homes in the first place, preventing conflict before it begins. But raccoons can be difficult to outsmart: once he found a mother raccoon who had learned to operate an electronic garage door opener, using it to go look for food every night, then closing it back up before morning.
Later in the book, we tour Washington, D.C.’s City Wildlife Hospital, which cares for urban animals who may have been orphaned by a car, attacked by other animals or struck by a bicycle. Rather than focus only on endangered or threatened species, as some wildlife groups do, City Wildlife takes in a wide variety of animals, from wood ducks to squirrels and box turtles. Keim reflects on this difference of approach as he encounters two vulnerable baby hedgehogs on a busy path: “I needed help for two specific wild animals — not populations, not species, but beings trembling in my hands — and no conservation organization…could offer much help.” Indeed, at first glance City Wildlife’s efforts, which can only help a small number of animals a year, might seem a distraction from more substantive conservation measures.
But, according to Keim and some of the experts he interviews, these different ways of looking at animals — as species to preserve, and as individuals to respect — can feed into each other. People who learn to care for a particular pigeon might come to appreciate all avian life in a new way; as Keim asks, “is a society that doesn’t see a lone mallard as deserving of care really going to protect much biodiversity, either?”
The Philosophical Question of Wild Animal Suffering
These initiatives are a promising precedent when it comes to caring for urban and suburban wildlife, but debates can be more contentious when it comes to wilder areas. For instance, wildlife management in the United States is largely funded by hunting, much to the chagrin of animal advocates. Keim pushes for a new paradigm not dependent on killing. But, as he documents, anti-hunting measures often inspire fierce backlash.
Keim also challenges the dominant approach to non-native species, which is to treat them as invaders and remove them, often lethally. Here, too, Keim insists that we should not lose sight of animals as individuals, and suggests that not all invaders are bad for the ecosystem.
Perhaps the book’s most provocative discussion comes in the final chapter, when Keim considers not just the good in wild animal lives — but the bad. Drawing on the work of ethicist Oscar Horta, Keim explores the possibility that most wild animals are in fact quite miserable: they starve, suffer disease, get eaten and the vast majority don’t live to reproduce. This bleak view, if true, yields distressing implications: destroying wild habitat might be for the best, claims philosopher Brian Tomasik, because it spares future animals from lives full of suffering.
Keim takes this argument seriously, but, inspired by ethicist Heather Browning, concludes that this emphasis on pain leaves out all the pleasure in wild animal lives. There may be joys inherent to “exploration, paying attention, learning, looking, moving, exercising agency,” and perhaps just simply existing — some birds, evidence suggests, enjoy singing for its own sake. Indeed, a major takeaway of Keim’s book is that animal minds are full and rich, containing more than just pain.
While we’d need further research to know whether pain or pleasure prevails, Keim allows, these thorny debates shouldn’t stop us from acting in the here and now. He recounts an experience helping amphibians safely cross a road, reveling in “that moment of connection with a frog or a salamander.” The title of his book is meant seriously: these are our neighbors, not distant or alien but relations deserving of care. “Each one I can save is a flicker of light in this world, a grain of sand on the scales of life.”
Dayton Martindale
Dayton Martindale is a freelance journalist covering climate, ecology, animals, and politics. He is the host of Storytelling Animals podcast, and his writing has been published in Vox, In These Times, Sierra, Boston Review, and elsewhere. He is also a PhD student in environmental studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a volunteer organizer with Pro-Animal Future.
This evidence makes up the first part of Keim’s new book, Meet the Neighbors: Animal Minds and Life in a More-Than-Human World. But for Keim, while the science of animal minds is interesting in and of itself, what’s most important is what this science implies: a moral revolution in our relationship with wild animals. Geese, raccoons and salamanders are not just populations to be managed, units of biodiversity or providers of ecosystem services: they are our neighbors, entitled to legal personhood, political representation and respect for their lives.
This evidence makes up the first part of Keim’s new book, Meet the Neighbors: Animal Minds and Life in a More-Than-Human World. But for Keim, while the science of animal minds is interesting in and of itself, what’s most important is what this science implies: a moral revolution in our relationship with wild animals. Geese, raccoons and salamanders are not just populations to be managed, units of biodiversity or providers of ecosystem services: they are our neighbors, entitled to legal personhood, political representation and respect for their lives.
What It Would Mean to Treat Animals As Individuals
The traditional environmental movement has focused primarily on species conservation and overall ecosystem health, without much attention to individual animal welfare (with some exceptions). But a growing number of biologists, wildlife journalists and philosophers argue that we need a new way of thinking about wild animals. Sometimes this leads to conflict between conservationists and animal rights advocates, over the ethics of things like zoos and the killing of non-native species.
Keim, however, is less interested in conflict than in possibility; he doesn’t want to throw away the old values of biodiversity and ecosystem health, but instead supplement them with concern for individuals, and not just the endangered or charismatic. His book is accessible and big-hearted, written with humble curiosity about where these ideas might lead us. “Where animals fit into our ethics of nature…is an unfinished project,” he writes. “That task falls to us.”
Keim begins the book far from what we would normally call “the wild,” with a tour of a Maryland suburb “both dominated by humans and overflowing with animal life.” Rather than simply naming and identifying the myriad creatures he sees, he asks us to imagine their minds, what it’s like to be them.
Young male sparrows, we learn, form friendships with specific individuals, spending time with and living near their pals. Newly hatched ducklings seem to grasp the concepts of similar and different, passing tests that are difficult for seven-month-old humans. Turtles vocalize “to coordinate migrations and the care of their young.” Minnows have memory, frogs can count and garter snakes are self-aware, distinguishing their own scent from that of other snakes.
“Every single creature you encounter is a someone,” Keim writes, and the implications can enliven an afternoon stroll: is that bee in a good mood? Is that cottontail enjoying her grassy meal? Those swans on the lake might even be “voting” — research shows that whooper swans will start honking before taking flight, and only depart when the honks reach a certain frequency.
Keim doesn’t just want us to look at wildlife differently, however; he wants to change how we act on both individual and institutional scales. This includes bringing other animals into political decision-making — “We the People ought to include animals as well.”
He lays out the influential approach of political philosophers Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, authors of the 2011 book Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights. In their framework, Keim explains, while only domesticated animals like dogs and chickens would receive full citizenship status, the sparrows and squirrels of suburbia should also “merit consideration and some degree of representation in society’s deliberations.” This would mean “killing [wild animals] for sport or convenience is unjust; so are the harms of pollution, vehicle collisions and climate change.”
If these ideas sound abstract or impossible, Keim stresses that this trust is hardly new. Many Indigenous traditions also emphasized mutual relations and responsibilities with other creatures, representing animals in treaties and decision-making. Taking a long view, Keim writes, “not having animals represented is the aberration.”
And that aberration may be changing: New York City, for instance, has a Mayor’s Office of Animal Welfare that advocates for both domesticated and wild creatures within city government, promoting Meatless Mondays, plant-based meals in hospitals and getting the city to stop killing geese in parks. More speculatively, Keim writes, we might one day see animal ombudspersons, state-funded animal rights lawyers, animal representatives on city councils or even a UN animal ambassador.
While Keim does not dwell on this, it’s worth noting that representing animals politically could transform our relationships with the captive animals in farms, labs and puppy mills, as well as those living freely. After all, farmed animals are also cognitively and emotionally complex, as are dogs and cats — if we should respect the diverse needs and interests of wild animals, we must also attend to domesticated minds. Keim himself extolls the virtues of rats, capable of mental time travel and acts of altruism — if we should protect them from rodenticide, as he argues, we should also protect the millions of rats held in research labs.
The Practicalities of New Animal Rights Ethics
The rest of the book sketches out what an ethic of respect for wild animals might look like in practice. We meet Brad Gates and other wildlife controllers who treat rodents and racoons as more than mere “pests,” using nonlethal methods to promote coexistence. As Gates emphasizes, we should prioritize keeping wild animals out of people’s homes in the first place, preventing conflict before it begins. But raccoons can be difficult to outsmart: once he found a mother raccoon who had learned to operate an electronic garage door opener, using it to go look for food every night, then closing it back up before morning.
Later in the book, we tour Washington, D.C.’s City Wildlife Hospital, which cares for urban animals who may have been orphaned by a car, attacked by other animals or struck by a bicycle. Rather than focus only on endangered or threatened species, as some wildlife groups do, City Wildlife takes in a wide variety of animals, from wood ducks to squirrels and box turtles. Keim reflects on this difference of approach as he encounters two vulnerable baby hedgehogs on a busy path: “I needed help for two specific wild animals — not populations, not species, but beings trembling in my hands — and no conservation organization…could offer much help.” Indeed, at first glance City Wildlife’s efforts, which can only help a small number of animals a year, might seem a distraction from more substantive conservation measures.
But, according to Keim and some of the experts he interviews, these different ways of looking at animals — as species to preserve, and as individuals to respect — can feed into each other. People who learn to care for a particular pigeon might come to appreciate all avian life in a new way; as Keim asks, “is a society that doesn’t see a lone mallard as deserving of care really going to protect much biodiversity, either?”
The Philosophical Question of Wild Animal Suffering
These initiatives are a promising precedent when it comes to caring for urban and suburban wildlife, but debates can be more contentious when it comes to wilder areas. For instance, wildlife management in the United States is largely funded by hunting, much to the chagrin of animal advocates. Keim pushes for a new paradigm not dependent on killing. But, as he documents, anti-hunting measures often inspire fierce backlash.
Keim also challenges the dominant approach to non-native species, which is to treat them as invaders and remove them, often lethally. Here, too, Keim insists that we should not lose sight of animals as individuals, and suggests that not all invaders are bad for the ecosystem.
Perhaps the book’s most provocative discussion comes in the final chapter, when Keim considers not just the good in wild animal lives — but the bad. Drawing on the work of ethicist Oscar Horta, Keim explores the possibility that most wild animals are in fact quite miserable: they starve, suffer disease, get eaten and the vast majority don’t live to reproduce. This bleak view, if true, yields distressing implications: destroying wild habitat might be for the best, claims philosopher Brian Tomasik, because it spares future animals from lives full of suffering.
Keim takes this argument seriously, but, inspired by ethicist Heather Browning, concludes that this emphasis on pain leaves out all the pleasure in wild animal lives. There may be joys inherent to “exploration, paying attention, learning, looking, moving, exercising agency,” and perhaps just simply existing — some birds, evidence suggests, enjoy singing for its own sake. Indeed, a major takeaway of Keim’s book is that animal minds are full and rich, containing more than just pain.
While we’d need further research to know whether pain or pleasure prevails, Keim allows, these thorny debates shouldn’t stop us from acting in the here and now. He recounts an experience helping amphibians safely cross a road, reveling in “that moment of connection with a frog or a salamander.” The title of his book is meant seriously: these are our neighbors, not distant or alien but relations deserving of care. “Each one I can save is a flicker of light in this world, a grain of sand on the scales of life.”
Dayton Martindale
Dayton Martindale is a freelance journalist covering climate, ecology, animals, and politics. He is the host of Storytelling Animals podcast, and his writing has been published in Vox, In These Times, Sierra, Boston Review, and elsewhere. He is also a PhD student in environmental studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a volunteer organizer with Pro-Animal Future.
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More on Process Philosophy and Animals
- Beyond the Bifurcation of Nature: A Common World for Animals and the Environment, ed. Brianne Donaldson and Daniel A. Dombrowski (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014).
A collection that brings process-relational philosophy into dialogue with animal studies and environmental ethics, challenging the human/nature divide and affirming a shared world of sentient life. - Babies and Beasts: The Argument from Marginal Cases, by Daniel A. Dombrowski (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997).
A philosophical defense of extending moral consideration to animals based on their capacities for experience, comparable in important respects to vulnerable human beings. - Good News for Animals? Christian Approaches to Animal Well-Being, by Jay McDaniel (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2014).
A process-relational exploration of animal well-being within a Christian framework, emphasizing the intrinsic value, subjectivity, and God-relatedness of more-than-human life. - Of God and Pelicans: A Theology of Reverence for Life, by Jay McDaniel (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1989).
An early theological reflection on reverence for life, extending moral and spiritual concern to animals and situating them within a relational vision of the sacred.