Why Widget is Fractious: Animals Make Us Human by Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson

Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals by Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson

We call our little family the Potts/McCoy house, but really, it's the Spike/Widget house. They run things around here. Potts and I can't force each other to make coffee in the morning or clean the bathroom, but the kitties can, and routinely do. If the food bowl is empty in the morning, Widget climbs into bed and pulls my hair until I get up and feed her. If I've let the litter box go a day or two without scooping, Spike will take a spiteful tinkle on the kitchen floor to alert me to the problem.

They're not our children, and they're certainly not our "furbabies" (gag), but when we took them in, we made an unwritten oath to take care of them and make them as happy and secure-feeling as possible for the rest of their lives.

Temple Grandin's books on animal behavior are uniquely useful because they seek to bridge the gaps between scientists, non-academics who work in the field with animals, and anyone who has animals in their lives, which is pretty much everybody. Grandin's insights are also unique because she is autistic, which informs her observations about animal behavior. She's said on many occasions that autism makes her think in pictures rather than words, and causes her to become highly attuned to the small details in her environment -- and these thought patterns place her more closely in synch with animal behavior than most other people.

Early in her career, Grandin was best known for her work in slaughterhouses, which puts some people off right away. However, it's worth looking closer. Grandin observed that in many slaughterhouses, cattle were going to their deaths in a state of terror and panic, forced along with electric prods. So, she designed the center-track restrainer, which nearly every cow will walk straight through without fear. It's now used in most slaughterhouses in the U.S.

If we're going to eat meat, she reasons, we at least owe the animals that we eat the best life possible, and a humane death.

In Animals Make Us Human, Grandin expands her scope to include domesticated animals, wildlife, and animals in zoos, as well as a wider range of livestock, including horses, pigs, and poultry. The premise of the book is that animals do experience four core emotional behaviors: RAGE, FEAR, SEEKING, and PANIC (Grandin always writes these out in all-caps in the book). Our job is to encourage the positive seeking and play behaviors, and to properly manage animals' environment so that FEAR, PANIC, and RAGE play as small a role in animals' experience as possible.

With a well-socialized, easy-going dog that gets a lot of attention and exercise, this is pretty easy to do. With a large animal confined in a zoo, it's a lot harder.

Grandin's chapter on zoo animals is particularly upsetting, especially when she's talking about the conditions faced by the large animals. For example, polar bears are ranging animals that will travel over 5 miles a day in the wild. So, when they're confined in zoos, it tends to affect them badly. One polar bear she writes about would spend up to 80% of his waking hours engaging in what Grandin calls "stereotyping," or abnormal repetitive behaviors. After an animal behaviorist was called in to enrich Gus the polar bear's environment, the zoo was able to get his stereotyping down to about 10%. However, these kinds of observations really call into question the ethics of keeping large animals in zoos.

On a happier note, if you have dogs or cats, you'll likely learn a great deal about their own behavioral quirks, what you can fix, and more importantly, what you probably can't.

Grandin writes that animals with light skin and eyes tend to be a little more neurotic than those with darker skin and eyes - they're recessive traits. When I read, "I've noticed that neutered orange males and females can be very affectionate. Some orange cats will rub on you all day. However, orange cats startle and scare easily," I looked up at Spike and said, "She's TALKING about you." And then Spike nuzzled my hand, and ran away. And when I read, "Sarah Hartwell, a shelter worker in England, calls black cats "laid-back blacks" and tortoiseshell cats "naughty torties," I looked up at Widget and said, "Now she's talking about YOU." And then Widget stuck her butt in my face and started to attack my feet for no good reason.

Ah, my little darlings.

It's an engaging, thought-provoking book, which I recommend to anyone who has animals in their lives, which once again, is everybody. Here's Grandin talking about the book and her work:

What Do You Do With an Anorexic Eel and Other Quandaries: The Rhino with Glue-On Shoes

The Rhino with Glue-On Shoes: And Other Surprising Stories of Zoo Vets and Their Patients, edited by Lucy H. Spelman, DVM and Ted Y. Mashima, DVM

If you ever dreamed of being a veterinarian when you were little, chances are pretty good that you didn't think about restraining fractious tabbies or using a rectal thermometer on a gerbil or palpating an arthritic cocker spaniel. No, you probably imagined yourself living with the gorillas or swimming with the dolphins or shooting an anesthetic dart into the lion with the thorn in its paw.

One summer scooping kennel poop in a clinic is usually enough to steer all but the very hardcore away from the job. And even for those that decide to go through with it, the relative stability of a small animal clinic usually looks more appealing than the prospect of moving to Botswana, or of working insane hours with dangerous creatures in a zoo. But still, there are some who opt for these careers and the lifestyle that comes with it. And those are the vets writing about their experiences in The Rhino with Glue-On Shoes.

There's the vet who climbs into a habitat with a wide awake, unrestrained 17-foot crocodile for the express purpose of scraping off a few diseased scales. And there's the one who transports two full-grown whale sharks to Georgia from Taiwan, and another who tracks the nearly extinct Bactrian camel in the Gobi Desert.

Of course, not all of the stories are about exotic and rare animals. Many of the vets write about trying to do things that stretch the limits of medicine, as well as the imagination. Like, say, the difficulties associated with giving an octopus an MRI, or anesthetizing a poison dart frog.

I will warn you, a lot of the essays are pretty badly written, but I hesitate to fault the authors too much. After all, with most of their writing experience coming in report or academic journal form, it's unlikely that many have been asked to engage in much formal storytelling. However, the stories themselves are so fascinating that it's not that difficult to overlook the clumsy passages.

The Rhino with Glue-On Shoes is one of those potato chip books that you can dip into, and pick at to your heart's content. I found it to be excellent subway reading, and was happy to recommend it to my friend who's currently in vet school. She was quite excited about it, but then again, she spent last summer castrating bulls in Zimbabwe, and can probably relate.

Science With a Rock and Roll Heart: The Wisdom of Whores by Elizabeth Pisani

The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels, and the Business of AIDS by Elizabeth Pisani

In her exceptionally candid, accessible, and fascinating book, Pisani talks about her work in the field as an epidemiologist, studying patterns of HIV infection in Indonesia, China, East Timor, and the Phillipines, and developing policies to combat it. The book is filled with conversations, both enlightening and troubling, with waria, heroin users, sex workers, and the employees of public health organizations, and ventures into methodone clinics, red light districts, and needle exchange programs.

But despite the diverse range of people and places Pisani comes into contact with, the book's most important idea is a simple one: outside of East and South Africa, most new HIV infections are contracted through the buying and selling of sex, unprotected, unlubricated anal sex, and the sharing of needles; however, most of the billions of dollars that governments and other organizations provide for prevention and treatment do little or nothing to target the groups most at risk.

Because, as Pisani puts it, there are no votes and no political goodwill to be gained by doing nice things for junkies, prostitutes, and gay men.

In the mid-1990s, money for HIV and AIDS research became plentiful, when it was feared that the disease would rampage through the general population (despite the fact that in most of the world, this wasn't the case). However, much of that money came, and continues to come, with strings attached. While Pisani lauds the Bush administration for actually putting the money on the table and persuading other governments to do the same, she is scornful of abstinence-only prevention programs and governments' refusals to fund needle exchange programs. In developing Christian and Muslim countries, it's much more difficult to achieve high levels of consistent condom use among at-risk populations because governments stand in the way.

She is equally frustrated by programs adopted to slow the transmission of HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa that target the disease as a "development problem," focusing on gender inequality and poverty. In truth, she says, HIV in Africa is spread because most people aren't circumcised, older men have sexual relationships with young women, spreading the disease across generations, and people tend to have "nets" of sexual partners, rather than "strings." Many Christian African governments don't want to talk about these sexual behaviors, and other organizations believe these ideas to be racist; however, many programs currently in effect on the continent will do nothing to prevent people from dying of AIDS for the sake of religious and political ideology.

It's tempting to go on about more of Pisani's arguments and observations, but I'll save the rest of those for readers. Instead, I should probably mention Pisani's writing style, which may put off the prudish or those who believe these are issues that should be spoken of with grim faces and finger-wagging. She's frank, foul-mouthed, and sometimes, funny. Also, it's important to remember that Pisani is concerned with public health, which is more concerned with national and global patterns than in individual cases. At times, this may seem impersonal and callous, but Pisani is not. Her in-depth work with at-risk populations and her obvious compassion for the individuals she works with should make that much clear.

Pisani doesn't flinch, doesn't judge, and is passionate about the collection of good, reliable data and the use of HIV/AIDS funding where it will do the most good - she's a scientist with a rock and roll heart.

Tater Chip Books

The Book of General Ignorance by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson
Never Shower in a Thunderstorm: Surprising Facts and Misleading Myths about Our Health and the World We Live In by Anahad O'Connor

Sometimes one wants a book to pick at rather than to read. This can be Herodotus's Histories, or more likely, it can be a book like the two here, which are books written by very smart people who are obsessed with trivia and know that the rest of us are, too. However, they are, essentially, also books that could have been written by anyone with a library card.

Our authors here are very different types of writers, but both have major media affiliations, which goes a long way towards separating them from the herd, as trivia books go.

O'Connor is a recent Yale graduate who landed a gig writing for the New York Times (damn those young overachievers!), including a popular health and science column titled "Really?" The feature largely proves or debunks a variety of old wives' tales, popular wisdom, and that article you read on Yahoo! News two years ago where scientists said something that you've been using ever since to justify your chocolate, latte, or exercise habits.

Whereas, the authors of The General Book of Ignorance are a producer and a writer from the popular BBC comedy-quiz show QI (Quite Interesting). The program(me) is hosted by Stephen Fry, English television personality and comedian (and author of one of my favorite books, Revenge), and also seeks to debunk commonly accepted answers to popular trivia questions. Alexander Graham Bell didn't invent the telephone, but does anyone really know the name of the man who did (well, unless they read The Book of General Ignorance)? Since correct answers are rare, points are awarded on the basis of the interesting-ness of incorrect ones and deducted for simply regurgitating common misconceptions. QI says, "It's okay to be wrong, but don't be obviously, boringly wrong."

While both books have their charms, O'Connor's didn't say a whole lot that isn't already known by the discerning reader. We know that chicken soup is good for what ales you, that a poppyseed bagel can make you fail a drug test, and that the key to losing weight is generally to eat less and move more. However, I did learn some interesting things from him about seafood and scabs. The book includes a handy chart, listing the seafood with the most Omega-3 and the lowest concentrations of toxins, which I've now committed to memory. Also, everything your mom ever told you about treating a boo-boo is probably wrong; they ought to be covered, kept moist, and (yes) picked at occasionally.

On the other hand, I learned a ton of things I had no idea about from The Book of General Ignorance, including the technological contributions of the Scottish, the fashion contributions of the Croatians, and the culinary contributions of the French. And there's also a very funny story about Napoleon and a rabbit hunt gone bad.

Still, despite the cranky Guardian digested read about the latter, you couldn't go wrong with either if you need a good public transit, airport, doctor's waiting room, or bathroom book, and I suppose that's fairly high praise. Nobody says that kind of stuff about Sister Carrie.

Something for Everybody

- Atul Gawande's new book, Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance is as good, if not better, than its predecessor, Complications. Standouts include "The Score," an essay about innovations in the area of childbirth; "The Bell Curve," about what separates an average hospital treatment center from an excellent one; and "What Doctors Owe," a piece about malpractice.

- As we come to that beach reading time of year, may I direct you, gentle readers, to the work of Ken Follett? As a teenager, I came to Follett's books for the ubiquitous dirty bits, but stuck around for the taut pacing, high adventure, and well-researched historical settings. On my travels last week, I re-read Pillars of the Earth, a 1000-page behemoth about cathedral-building, corrupt bishops, pillaging earls, and a prior who's crazy like a fox. That I finished it in a L.A. to Pittsburgh round-trip speaks both to Follett's skill as a writer and just how badly the airline messed up my flight (in the form of a 5-hour layover in Detroit).

- My review for the new (and sadly, last) Larry Brown novel, A Miracle of Catfish is up at PopMatters. A great book from a much-missed writer.

Good Things To Those Who Wait

Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande (release date: April 3, 2007)

About four years ago, I read Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science, and immediately set out with my library card, dead set on reading everything else Atul Gawande had ever written.

But there was nothing else.* Until now.

From the publisher comments:

"Gawande’s gripping stories of diligence, ingenuity, and what it means to do right by people take us to battlefield surgical tents in Iraq, to labor and delivery rooms in Boston, to a polio outbreak in India, and to malpractice courtrooms around the country. He discusses the ethical dilemmas of doctors’ participation in lethal injections, examines the influence of money on modern medicine, and recounts the astoundingly contentious history of hand washing".

Sounds good to me.
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* I know, he writes quite a bit for the New Yorker, but it's not the same as reading a book.

Your Body is a Wonderland

Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science by Atul Gawande

Before reading this book, everything I knew about the medical profession came from either television or my friends' horror stories about medical school. Therefore, in my mind, surgeons were either the most arrogant, self-righteous doctors in the hospital, or they were like Chris Turk(leton) from Scrubs.

Atul Gawande is a surgeon who is neither of these. For one thing, he doesn't crack a single joke for the entire book. Not even a pun. I don't think he even describes himself smiling or laughing a single time. He's a bit of a grind, but a fascinating one who writes with as much honesty (and as little arrogance) about his successes as about the patients he nearly kills.

In a way, reading these essays makes you pray you never ever have to entrust your life to a doctor. The first section of the book is entitled "Fallibility," and includes essays about the mistakes that surgeons make. Turns out, they make a lot because of the unfortunate Catch-22 that you have to train new doctors to save lives, but in order to train new doctors, you're going to have to let them cut on people when they don't really know what they're doing.

The book also contains essays about medical mysteries that make you marvel at the strangeness of the human body. I mean, science has allowed us to transplant organs and fix bum tickers, but we still don't really understand everyday things like blushing, overeating, and nausea.

To most people, medicine is shrouded in mystery and doctors are scary. This book isn't really a sensational expose of what really goes on behind the knife. It's more of an attempt to bridge the gap between patients and doctors, and once you get past the stories about the intern who botches a central line or the girl who dies having her wisdom teeth removed, there's oddly, a kind of understanding at the end.

And Gawande's writing style is a little dry and methodical, but it's never boring. You just feel like you're in the hands of an extremely competent and thorough professional, and you hang on his every word. Which is, I guess, why he's a surgeon.

If you liked...: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach, prepare to have a new favorite book because while Complications is similar, it absolutely kicks the shit out of Stiff.