The Creative Lives of Animals

Carol Gigliotti is Professor Emerita in Dynamic Media and the Department of Critical and Cultural Studies at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, Canada. She is the editor of Leonardo's Choice: Genetic Technologies and Animals.

Carol Gigliotti's The Creative Lives of Animals is a game-changer. Gigliotti not only expands the range of nonhuman animals (animals) who clearly demonstrate creativity in many aspects of their daily social and non-social lives, but she also shows how important creativity--improvisation and invention--is in a wide variety of contexts including expressing different emotions, playing, socially communicating with others, courting, mating, and raising children, and designing and engineering animals' homes. Easy-to-read and science-based, The Creative Lives of Animals will be of interest to a broad audience including researchers and non-researchers alike, and surely will change the ways in which humans view and treat the fascinating animals with whom we share our magnificent planet. * Marc Bekoff, author of Canine Confidential: Why Dogs Do What They Do * In her marvelous book, Carol Gigliotti reveals the astonishing depth and genius of animal creativity, demolishing a common view of animals as little more than robots mindlessly enacting the scripts given to them by Nature. Drawing on a century of ethological findings, the author shows how animals bring deep intelligence, emotions, and even an aesthetic sensibility to bear on their daily challenges. Animals are shown to be not mere "types," but creative individuals and artists of their own lives. This is the rare work that opens our eyes to worlds of experience and being that would otherwise remain hidden from us. * John Sanbonmatsu, author of Critical Theory and Animal Liberation *