Recio Belinda - Your Inner Zoo

Praise forWhen Animals Rescue

If you thought that only humans were capable of virtuous behavior, think again! When Animals Rescue will open your eyes to the breadth and depth of nonhuman kindness. Belinda Recio weaves in fascinating facts with astonishing stories about all kinds of animalslarge and small, domesticated and wildacting in compassionate ways. We need this booknot just to learn more about how other animals demonstrate kindness, but also to inspire more of this behavior in our own species!

Marc Bekoff, PhD, author of The Animals Agenda, Canine Confidential, and Unleashing Your Dog

Uplifting and life-affirming, When Animals Rescue will save your day! These true stories about animal heroes are a tonic for tough times. I loved it.

Sy Montgomery, author of How to Be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals and The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness

Social animals evolved to assist each other. This lovely book documents a great variety of rescues and helping, sometimes across species boundaries. There is really nothing to be ashamed of if someone calls you an animal!

Frans de Waal, author of Mamas Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves

Praise for Inside Animal Hearts and Minds

Belinda Recio has written a fascinating account of animal emotions and animal intelligence. She makes the stories she tells available to a wide audience, and her examples are fair, friendly, and charming. I cannot imagine any animal lover not finding this a wonderful book!

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, bestselling author of nine books on the emotional life of animals, including Beasts: What Animals Can Teach Us About the Origins of Good and Evil

Belinda Recio has assembled the best true stories of animals achievements in art, emotion, and reasoning all in one place. Everyone who reads it will come away feeling much closer to the other species we share this planet with, and be amazed by the sophisticated things they are capable of.... A provocative and beautiful book.

David Rothenberg, author of Survival of the Beautiful and Why Birds Sing

Copyright 2021 Belinda Recio

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Belinda Recio and Marta Knudsen

Illustrations: Belinda Recio

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-5794-3

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-6703-4

Printed in China

In memory of Miklos Antal Radics,
who understood the gifts of animals, and gave them the gift of kindness.

To my husband, Ed,
to River, who found his way to us just when we needed him most,
and to all the animals, for all you give to us.

In part I am trying to tell them something: a message about how they [animals] register in the human imagination, in our lore and fantasy, in our symbol systems, even what our zoology says about them. Like a report to them about how they are perceived.

James Hillman, Dream Animals

The animalsand perhaps the plantswithin us are like the beings of a larger and older reality. They exist within us in much the same sense that our parents and our ancestors are in us, not as ghosts but as shared form, a continuum of which we are only the present expression.

Paul Shepherd, The Others: How Animals Made Us Human

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am indebted to the scholars and scientists in the fields of animal studies, ethology, ethnozoology, ecopsychology, and other disciplines who are helping us to better understand the human-animal relationship and the roles that animals have played in shaping the human mind and culture.

Thank you to Skyhorse Publishing for supporting my work, and to my editor, Jason Katzman.

A heartfelt thank you to my friends and family, who support me in so many ways, and especially to my mother, Maria Radics, for her unwavering encouragement. Special thanks to Eileen London, for joining me, years ago, on the journey that eventually led me to this book.

I am immensely grateful to the following people for their help and generosity of heart: To my sister, Marta Knudsen, for her digital art expertise and assistance with the illustrations and cover art; to Mark Thayer, for his digital image editing and proofing; and especially to Joan Parisi Wilcox, for her insightful editorial contributions and steadfast support, not just with this book, but throughout so many projects over the years.

Finally, I extend a gratitude beyond words to my husband, Ed Blomquist, for all the ways he supported me throughout this project. I truly couldnt have done it without you.

AUTHORS NOTE

PRONOUNS AND TERMINOLOGY

Unfortunately, the English language does not provide a nonobjective gender-neutral pronoun to use when referring to animals. I do not use it because I do not want to objectify animals. Instead, I rely on gendered pronounsboth female and malewhen referring to animals in the singular. In each chapter I assigned a pronoun to the featured animal and used that pronoun throughout, unless referencing a specific animal character in a folktale or myth, or an actual known animal in a scientific study. I wanted to stay true to the original source material, so please excuse any passing confusion in these instances.

Regarding terminology: although humans are animals, for stylistic reasons I use the term animal instead of other animals or nonhuman animals.

ABOUT THE MATERIAL INCLUDED IN THIS BOOK

I have made every effort to ensure that the scientific information in this book was correct at press time, but its possible that some statements might become inaccurate due to new discoveries, so please excuse any errors.

As for the cultural material that I included in this book, my primary goal was to present portraits of the animals that showed the connection between them and the ideas they have inspired in the human imagination. This objective, along with personal preferences and page count limits, shaped my choices. My hope is that I have captured the essence of these animalshow they appear in nature, as well as in our hearts and minds. That said, some readers may wish that I had included a particular folktale, symbolic aspect, or biological trait that I left out. Or they might draw different conclusions from the material than I did. If so, it means that the animals have nonetheless inspired ideaseven if different from my ownand worked their magic.