There is an ever-growing multidisciplinary interest in the nature of human-animal relationships.1 When I first learned about Professor Laurent Bègue-Shankland's new award-winning book, The Social Psychology of the Human-Animal Bond, and read the glowing accolades, I couldn't wait to read it. Now that I have, I agree that this book is truly important. As he writes, "This book shows how much our relations with animals—from attachment to abuse—reveal our identity and our relations with others."

Marc Bekoff: Why did you write The Social Psychology of the Human-Animal Bond?

Laurent Bègue-Shankland: My aim was to create a broad overview of our multiple connections to animals from a social psychological perspective. Animals have shaped our beliefs for as long as we’ve existed. They appear in our religions, our myths, and even shared our graves. We’ve relied on their strength, turned them into symbols, and shifted their place in our cultures again and again—sometimes putting them on pedestals, sometimes on our plates. Take cats, for example. In ancient Egypt, they were literally worshipped as the goddess Bastet. Centuries later, in medieval France, people were burning them at summer festivals, and cat pelts were still being traded up through the 19th century. And it wasn’t until 2020 that China officially removed cats from its list of animals considered edible.

While writing the book, I kept wondering: Is there any part of an animal we haven’t transformed into something for our own use—whether it’s goods, knowledge, or symbolism? Humans have found a purpose for everything: droppings, neurons, hooves, feathers—you name it. Even the earliest books about animals were physically tied to them, sometimes bound with glue made from their tendons and cartilage. I also explore how our personalities and political beliefs shape........

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