Nonhuman animals (animals) and human animals are constantly dying for a wide variety of reasons. Each individual's death is a loss, and while most people I know have thought about their own and others' deaths, many, for one reason or another, haven't given as much, if any, thought to the death of nonhumans, predominantly caused by humans. This is one of many reasons why I was attracted to, and learned a lot from, an eye-opening and heart-opening new book titled When Animals Die: Examining Justifications and Envisioning Justice edited by Drs. Katja M. Guenther and Julian Paul Keenan.

While the essays don't offer a universal understanding of what "death is," I cannot imagine anyone, after reading this wide-ranging book, will look at animal death in the same ways they did before reading the contributors' essays. The truth is, we are surrounded by, and immersed in, animal death, and many people don't know about, think about, or believe, for example, the undebatable fact that countless otherwise healthy nonhumans are killed by humans for food, by cars, or because they don't fit into the breeding programs of zoos. Often, the deaths of food animals, zoo animals, and wild animals are written off and sanitized as being examples of euthanasia—mercy killings—which they're clearly not.1 I totally agree with part of the book's description: "A groundbreaking collection that explores human–animal relations and deaths with depth and hope."

Here's what Katja and Julian had to say about their seminal and wide-ranging book.

Marc Bekoff: How does your book relate to your backgrounds and general areas of interest?

Julian Paul Keenan: My background is in neuroscience, psychology, biology, and philosophy. I look at death as a neurological process, and my colleagues see death in animals, for example, as a forensic crime to be solved. Evolutionary biologists see death as not the end, but as part of the process........

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