Our Wild Calling: How Connecting with Animals Can Transform Our Lives―and Save Theirs

Description

“A book that offers hope.”  —The New York Times Book Review “Richard Louv has done it again. A remarkable book that will help everyone break away from their fixed gaze at the screens that dominate our lives and remember instead that we are animals in a world of animals.” —Bill McKibben, author of Falter   Richard Louv’s landmark book, Last Child in the Woods, inspired an international movement to connect children and nature. Now Louv redefines the future of human-animal coexistence. Our Wild Calling explores these powerful and mysterious bonds and how they can transform our mental, physical, and spiritual lives, serve as an antidote to the growing epidemic of human loneliness, and help us tap into the empathy required to preserve life on Earth. Louv interviews researchers, theologians, wildlife experts, indigenous healers, psychologists, and others to show how people are communicating with animals in ancient and new ways; how dogs can teach children ethical behavior; how animal-assisted therapy may yet transform the mental health field; and what role the human-animal relationship plays in our spiritual health. He reports on wildlife relocation and on how the growing populations of wild species in urban areas are blurring the lines between domestic and wild animals.   Our Wild Calling makes the case for protecting, promoting, and creating a sustainable and shared habitat for all creatures—not out of fear, but out of love. Transformative and inspiring, this book points us toward what we all long for in the age of technology: real connection. Cover ALSO BY RICHARD LOUV Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents Introduction: A Mystery Part 1: Beautiful Acts: Life-Changing Encounters with Species Not Our Own 1. In the Family of Animals 2. The Aching Heart Species Loneliness An Altered View of Human Exceptionalism 3. The Mind-Altering Power of Deep Animal Connection Habitat of the Heart The Land of Giant Ants, an Unexpected Urchin, and a Moving Protozoan Crossing Over 4. The Octopus Who Stopped Time Time Bending Resetting Our Sense of Wonder Part 2: What the Wild Heart Still Knows: The Art and Science of Communicating with Other Animals 5. Becoming the Grasshopper Wearing the Shoes of the Snake (Critical Anthropomorphism) 6. Intimacy Is All around Us Beyond the Threshold Have You Ever Seen a Box Turtle Drink? 7. Earth’s Oldest Language Call and Response Hanging Out in the Tatooine Cantina The Song of the Wild 8. How to Talk with Birds What the Animals Say Awakening the Seventh Sense Back to the Garden 9. Playing Well with the Others The Labrador Retriever of Primates How Elephants Taught Sven Everything He Needed to Know about Business Part 3: How We Co-Become: Wonderdogs and Werecats, Therapy Lizards and Robot Pets 10. More Than Human The Wild, the Domestic, and the Distorted 11. The Animal Lover Who’s Raising Whom? The Dog Who Taught Ethics Homo homini lupus 12. Reptiles and Ambivalence Wild Blood Transfusion Herping, USA 13. The Boy Who Said Horse Naomi and Koba Animal-Assisted Self-Care Wildlife, Therapy, and the Pet Effect 14. The Replacements: Do We Really Need Animals? Digital Dog and the Internet of Cows Escape from Uncanny Valley An Alternative Universe Do They Love Us Back? Part 4: The Age of Connectedness: Creating a Home for All Creatures 15. New Ways to Live Together Notes from the Animal Underground Can’t We All Live Together? A New Contract for Cohabitation 16. The Betweens Arrival of the Neophiles How Coyotes Conquered America That’ll Be a Caramel Macchiato for Me and an Espresso for the Bear 17. Welcome to Symbiocene City Designing for Peaceful Coexistence Doglandia Texting Pachyderms and the Bats of Bendigo The Raccoons Next Door 18. The New Noahs Zealandia Mammoth Thoughts Lost World Found Part 5: Wild Souls: Love, Humility, and the Principle of Reciprocity 19. Dreaming Animals Avatars, Symbols, and Messengers The Man with the Crow Tattoo The Spirit of the Brahminy Kite In Fire and Smoke 20. The Peaceable Kingdom The Right to Be 21. Learning and Teaching in a School of Animals Animal Class Ten Ways to Love the World An Older Way of Learning 22. The Bear Beyond the Horizon Our Calling Acknowledgments Notes Suggested Reading Index