article thumbnail

Sentient: a book review

10,000 Birds

The vampire bat is the vehicle for a discussion of what Higgins calls the human sense of pleasure and pain (but not, as to the latter, for the reason you might think). As late as 1963, Higgins says, there were various theories that sought to explain the hunting prowess of owls – smell, night vision, the ability to detect body heat.

Humane 257
article thumbnail

Book Review: Spillover – Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic

10,000 Birds

He introduces ideas and slowly builds on them, staring with the outbreak of Hendra in people and horses in Queensland before moving the story to his own experiences of great ape die-off when he was covering Michael Fay’s Megatransect in the Congo Basin. The disease had killed a tourist like ourselves. This lake is close to the cave.

Humane 165