Animals With Human Voices

In Animals with Human Voices you will find worms that dream of god, jellyfish weary of immortality, a powerless Superman, the pleading of a sewer cleaner, a lightning conductor tired of lightning and the truth about Elvis. In Damen O'Brien's first book of poetry, his cinematic eye and love of nature deliver poems which are ciphers for the normal concerns of every human: love, life and death and what we leave behind.

Animals ranging from mosquitoes to elephants use their own words to guide humanity to a deeper spiritual awakening. • Contains interviews with 25 professional animal communicators and over 100 different animals and animal spirits. • Provides a thrilling glimpse of the possibilities of direct animal-human dialogue. According to Echo, an Arabian mare, "Humans are beings of love who have forgotten what love is and who they are." Along with a host of other animal communicators, Dawn Baumann Brunke gives animals like Echo a voice--a direct line of communication to the human mind. Through Animal Voices, the animal kingdom delivers a message about deepening our spirituality and reconnecting with the web of life. Our earliest ancestors had an ongoing shamanic dialogue with the animal kingdom, but this ability has been lost to most in the modern world. Brunke provides the techniques to reopen these connections, reminding us that when we are open to communication with animals, we are open to deeper layers of ourselves. The main contributors to this book are actual animals, who reveal themselves to be sentient beings with their own thoughts, emotions, and spiritual reasons for being on the planet. How Brunke overcame her initial skepticism and learned to hear their voices is a fascinating story. Throughout Animal Voices the author integrates her own reflections with those of the animals she interviews. The result is something that will delight animal lovers and force skeptics to reconsider their ideas about the nature of animal consciousness and the possibility of telepathic human-animal communication.

How to connect with animal guides to expand individual and planetary awareness • Reveals techniques for exploring dreams, shamanic journeys, healing, and shapeshifting with animals • Presents words of wisdom from cats, dogs, horses, llamas, rabbits, ravens, bears, and even insects As companions, helpers, and spiritual guides, animals have always held a special relationship with humans. As we access our natural ability to communicate with animals, we cannot help but open ourselves more profoundly to life, other human beings, and our own deep nature--the essence of who we really are. Animal Voices, Animal Guides presents a wide variety of ways in which we can tune in to the “universal language” of all life and reconnect with the animal kingdom in more conscious, meaningful ways. Through myths, shamanic journeys, and dreams we meet our power animals, spirit animals, and wise animal guides. The exercises, meditations, stories, and experiments included are designed to help us tune in to the subtle whispers of nature and expand our awareness. We learn what sled dogs have to teach us about teamwork, how llamas see themselves as healers of the world, and how it would feel to inhabit the skin of a shark. Filled with advice from animal communication professionals and actual conversations with animals, Animal Voices, Animal Guides is an invitation to explore our inner ways of knowing. When we learn how to use all our senses to listen to animals, we will find out how to listen to our authentic self as well.

In Kindred Spirits, Anne Benvenuti visits with individuals and groups working in animal conservation, rescue, and sanctuary programs around the world. We meet not only cats and dogs but also ravens, elephants, cheetahs, whales, farm and circus animals, monkeys, even bees. A psychologist and storyteller, Benvenuti focuses on moments of transformative contact between humans and other animals, portraying vividly the resulting ripples that change the lives of both animals and humans. Noting that we are all biologically members of one animal family, she expertly weaves emergent understandings of animal and human neurobiology, showing that the ways in which other animals feel and think are actually similar to humans. Love, grief, fear, rage, sadness, curiosity, play: these are shared by us all, a key insight of affective neuroscience that informs Benvenuti’s perceptions of human-animal relationships. She effortlessly drops clues to understanding human motivation and behavior into her narratives, and points to ways in which we all—other animals and humans alike—must come up with creative responses to problems such as climate change. As we travel with her to both backyard and far-flung locations, we experience again and again the surprising fact that other animals reach back to us, with curiosity, interest, even care. Benvenuti writes for the animal-loving public but also for anyone who loves a good story, or is interested in ecology, animal welfare, psychology, or philosophy.

Immerse yourself in the world of animal rights protests, campaigns, demonstrations, outreach, rescue, and so much more. In today’s world, voices of the marginalized are in the spotlight and people across the globe are recognizing animal rights as a social justice movement. During a time of historic actions and victorious campaigns, Voices for Animal Liberation depicts the full spectrum of animal rights activism that is currently at work to create change. This book offers the words of both new and highly influential voices in the movement today, with the intention of inspiring and educating those who are sparked by the vision of a more ethical world. Including a foreword by Ingrid Newkirk, founder and president of PETA and arguably one of the most prolific figures in the animal rights movement, other contributors include: Jasmine Afshar, army veteran Chase Avior, actor and filmmaker Gene Baur, founder of Farm Sanctuary Dotsie Bausch, Olympic medalist and founder of Switch4Good Alex Bez, founder and director of Amazing Vegan Outreach Matthew Braun, former investigator of farms and slaughterhouses Saengduean Lek Chailert, founder of Save Elephant Foundation Amy Jean Davis, founder of Los Angeles Animal Save Karen Davis, founder of United Poultry Concerns Sean Hill, award-winning multidisciplinary artist and humanitarian Wayne Hsiung, cofounder of Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) Gwenna Hunter, event coordinator for Vegan Outreach and founder of Vegans of LA Anita Krajnc, founder of the Save Movement Cory Mac a’Ghobhainn, organizer with Progress for Science Jo-Anne McArthur, photographer and founder of We Animals Media Zafir Molina, truth seeker and movement artist Shaun Monson, documentary filmmaker Alexandra Paul, actress and cohost of Switch4Good Brittany Peet, Director of Captive Animal Law Enforcement for PETA Jill Robinson, founder and CEO of Animals Asia Zoe Rosenberg, founder of Happy Hen Animal Sanctuary Dani Rukin, citizen journalist for JaneUnchained News Jasmin Singer, cofounder of Our Hen House and Senior Features Editor for VegNews Kathy Stevens, founder of Catskill Animal Sanctuary Natasha & Luca, “That Vegan Couple,” social media influencers Will Tuttle, visionary author and speaker Gillian Meghan Walters, creator of MummyMOO project Connect with activists from different backgrounds as they reveal their perspectives on animal rights, their experiences taking action for animals, the challenges they've faced, and the meaning of activism in their lives.

Since 1968, Bernie Krause has traveled the world recording the sounds of remote landscapes, endangered habitats, and rare animal species. Through his organization, Wild Sanctuary, he has collected the soundscapes of more than 2,000 different habitat types, marine and terrestrial. With powerful illustrations and compelling stories, Krause provides a manifesto for the appreciation and protection of natural soundscapes. In his previous book, The Great Animal Orchestra, Krause drew readers’ attention to what Jane Goodall described as “the harmonies of nature . . . [that are being] one by one by one, snuffed out by human actions.” He now explains that the secrets hidden in the natural world’s shrinking sonic environment must be preserved, not only for our scientific understanding, but for our cultural heritage and humanity’s physical and spiritual welfare. Krause’s narrative—supplemented by exclusive access to field recordings from the wild—draws on a compelling range of personal anecdotes, histories, and examples to document his early exploration of this field and to lay the groundwork for future generations.

The recent emergence of the discipline of literary animal studies regards literature in itself as constitutive element of a history of knowledge. The discipline has led not only to the expansion of the corpus of texts traditionally connected with animals, but also established new concepts and methods for revising conventional cultural dichotomies (subject and object, human and animal). The 10 essays collected in this volume are devoted to a wide range of case studies on the relationship between animality and poetics in German-language literature since the 19th century. They display a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches to a number of texts packed with references to animals, considered not primarily as objects of literature, but as agents endowed with an active role in the production of literature, and which have left repressed or forgotten traces in texts.

A unique overview of the human language faculty at all levels of organization. Language is not only one of the most complex cognitive functions that we command, it is also the aspect of the mind that makes us uniquely human. Research suggests that the human brain exhibits a language readiness not found in the brains of other species. This volume brings together contributions from a range of fields to examine humans' language capacity from multiple perspectives, analyzing it at genetic, neurobiological, psychological, and linguistic levels. In recent decades, advances in computational modeling, neuroimaging, and genetic sequencing have made possible new approaches to the study of language, and the contributors draw on these developments. The book examines cognitive architectures, investigating the functional organization of the major language skills; learning and development trajectories, summarizing the current understanding of the steps and neurocognitive mechanisms in language processing; evolutionary and other preconditions for communication by means of natural language; computational tools for modeling language; cognitive neuroscientific methods that allow observations of the human brain in action, including fMRI, EEG/MEG, and others; the neural infrastructure of language capacity; the genome's role in building and maintaining the language-ready brain; and insights from studying such language-relevant behaviors in nonhuman animals as birdsong and primate vocalization. Section editors Christian F. Beckmann, Carel ten Cate, Simon E. Fisher, Peter Hagoort, Evan Kidd, Stephen C. Levinson, James M. McQueen, Antje S. Meyer, David Poeppel, Caroline F. Rowland, Constance Scharff, Ivan Toni, Willem Zuidema