Zoobiquity by Barbara Natterson Horowitz and Kathryn Bowers

 

Subtitled What Animals Can Teach us About Being Human, this book examines how we are more like animals than we usually like to think and how acknowledging these similarities could help our health and wellbeing. 

Barbara Natterson Horowitz is a cardiologist and psychiatrist and has worked with veterinary surgeons and researchers to examine the health and behavioural issues that humans share with various animal species. Working with science writer Kathryn Bowers, she outlines how we could benefit from looking at humans with a veterinarian's eye. 

The book ranges over a wide variety of topics, including heart attacks in wild animals, prehistoric evidence of cancer, animals that self-harm and sexually transmitted diseases in koalas.  It gives fascinating insights into both animal health and human health and highlights how physicians and veterinarians could benefit from working more closely together. 

Particularly timely is the section on pandemics, which focuses on Bird Flu, West Nile virus and other infectious diseases that had started to become serious before COVID hit (this book was published in 2012). We certainly need to ensure that veterinarians and doctors work closely together in the future to prevent / mitigate the effects of whichever disease is going to emerge as the next pandemic. 

Zoobiquity by Barbara Natterson Horowitz and Kathryn Bowers published (2012) by Ebury Publishing.