By presenting models for understanding animals' moral status and rights, and examining their mental lives and welfare, the author explores the implications for how we should treat animals in connection with our diet, zoos, and research.

Molecular biology has revolutionized our understanding of animals and their evolution. In this Very Short Introduction, Peter Holland provides an authoritative summary of the modern view of animal life, its origins, and the new classification resulting from DNA studies.

How animals behave is crucial to their survival and reproduction. The application of new molecular tools such as DNA fingerprinting and genomics is causing a revolution in the study of animal behaviour, while developments in computing and image analysis allow us to investigate behaviour in ways never previously possible. By combining these with the traditional methods of observation and experiments, we are now learning more about animal behaviour than ever before. In this Very Short Introduction Tristram D. Wyatt discusses how animal behaviour has evolved, how behaviours develop in each individual (considering the interplay of genes, epigenetics, and experience), how we can understand animal societies, and how we can explain collective behaviour such as swirling flocks of starlings. Using lab and field studies from across the whole animal kingdom, he looks at mammals, butterflies, honeybees, fish, and birds, analysing what drives behaviour, and exploring instinct, learning, and culture. Looking more widely at behavioural ecology, he also considers some aspects of human behaviour. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Focusing on highly topical issues such as torture, arbitrary detention, privacy, and discrimination, this book will help readers to understand for themselves the controversies and complexities behind human rights.

To all of these animals we owe respect for their basic inviolable rights.

At the same time, he argues that humans have a greater interest in life and liberty than most species of nonhuman animals.

In this acclaimed book, Scruton takes the issues relating to vivisection, hunting, animal testing and BSE and places them in a wider framework of thought and feeling. Now available in paperback