JONATHAN BALCOMBE believes that we have allowed intelligence to become the measure with which we determine how well to treat animals when what we should be using is how they feel. It is not a new idea – the philosopher Jeremy Bentham originally said in 1789 that how an animal ought to be treated should be dependent on its capacity to suffer. It is a question that has recently been overlooked by biologists, who are instead determined to prove that some species have cognitive capacities akin to our own.
In this engaging book, Balcombe marshals wide-ranging and up-to-date evidence to demonstrate…
