Bear in Mind

Exploring the common minds and emotions of people and other animals and their lives together

G.A. Bradshaw PhD, PhD

Lessons from the Tortoise People

In everyday speech we refer to reptiles when calling a person “cold-blooded.” But Tortoises and other reptiles are cold-blooded only in physiology and metaphor.

Killing Them Softly

Find out what Whole Foods Market, George Orwell, Robert Jay Lifton, and rabbits have in common. There's much more than you might doublethink.

Sandra Higgins and Joshua

Handling It

Living at the species interface - what it does, what it takes, and the challenge of forgiveness.

The Price of Being Human

Why are people drawn to animals? Some would claim it's the unconditional love animals express for us. But perhaps it's something else, that animals show us a different way of being human.

Malachi

Early inoculation of love provides us with a wellspring throughout life, but even that cannot always prevent decent into Self-Injurious Behavior (SIB) when the soul is torn from its communal consciousness.

The Ways of Love

Poetry and neuroscience both agree that love is "written in the wind." Love transcends species. Animals see with the heart beyond form. Can we learn to do the same?

Family Secrets

Mark Hawthorne's new book on animal suffering is an ethical appeal for the end of human privilege at the expense of our kin under skin, fin, feather, and fur.

Charlie Russell with friends in Kamchatka.

Right Manners

John Muir offered sage advice regarding his encounter with a grizzly bear in the wilderness. His lesson has deep implications for how we should speak with one another and the natural world.

Lynn Rogers, June, and Sue Mansfield

The Fall of June

A tragic death in the Minnesota woods reveals much about science's unfinished business with other species. Written by preeminent scientists, The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness tells us that bears are much like us. When will they be afforded the same protection?

Man Dog

Candid and canid conversations with an unusual neighbor reveal a common consciousness.

Run Rabbit Run

An Oregon riding club's annual "animal scramble" teaches kids to have fun while abusing rabbits and chickens who feel, think, and experience consciousness like us.

The Lesson of the Lilac

A spring meditation on fragile beauty.

Once in a Blue Moon

"From my own limited experience, I have found that the greatest inner tranquility comes from the development of love and compassion. The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of well-being." – The Dalai Lama

Bang Bang, We All Fall Down

As if the world were not violent enough, firefighters and government officials are encouraging children to harm and kill other animals for profit.

The Elephants Will Not Be Televised

What do elephants, Gil Scott-Heron, Malcolm Gladwell and Thomas Kuhn have in common? All are seers of a new social and scientific revolution for the animals.

What’s Good for the Goose is Good for the Human

Self-efficacy–the ability to put into action your beliefs and knowledge–leads to good health. By applying this theory to our relationships with other animals, we not only save billions of lives but cultivate well-being in ourselves.

A Right and Good Thing

Science tells us how to make things right with our animal kin.

Still, Life

Negotiating with a crabapple tree on the bridge of life and death.

Truth or Consequences

Science has brought us face to face with that latter day Faustian expression, “be careful of what you wish for.”

With Friends Like These

The news is bad for elephants. Their extinction is no longer a farfetched idea, but imminent and bone-chillingly real. By the time children born this year attain their majority, the magnificent elephant will be gone.

True Colors

What lies behind the impulse to imprison the pacific pachyderm?

A westward view at sunset.

Witness to Heaven’s Hands

One day, a few months past, I sat in the clinic waiting room. A woman emerged from the back. Her face was pressed into the folds of her jacket that muffled her weeping.

A Convenient Untruth

15 Minutes of Shame

This past month the media reported that Ms. Amber Hansen's art project, The Story of Chickens: A Revolution, was in violation of Lawrence, Kansas ordinances that protect animals from being harmed or killed within city limits. Ms. Hansen is a resident lecturer at the University of Kansas.

Man in the Mirror

We may have grown accustomed to, if not sanguine about, the landslide of today's devastating truths. Drowning polar bears, birds falling from the sky, and blistering out-of-season temperatures are hard to shrug off, but humanity plugs along obsessing on celebrities' crises and Wall Street's temperamental cycles.

For Eden, Together

An old crabapple stands rooted/She is tense intention, enduring/At the cusp of fall turn-to-winter, Yellow green leaves fall first/One by one then/In waves of resignation...

Chimp in cage.

Imagine

Will the dream come true?

Why the Caged Bird Does Not Sing

It is usual and customary these days to forewarn with disclaimers such as "discretion is advised." What typically follows are scenes of violence and its victims. Yet you will see no such cautions posted in "pet" stores or zoos, for one plain and simple reason: caged animals are socially acceptable and culturally normative.

Buck and squirrel

In Fall I Grow Silent

Abiit ad maiores.

Why Cats Should Teach