Nature documentaries often depict animal life as a grim struggle for survival. This book opens our eyes to a different way of looking at the animal kingdom. Including more than one hundred thirty images, it celebrates the full range of animal experience with dramatic portraits of animal pleasure.
"It is rare to find a scientist writing with such delight about, of all things, joy in the animal world! I have rarely experienced such pleasure in reading a book. I recommend it to all animal lovers, and even challenge a few skeptics, whose minds may be changed by this extraordinary work."-Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, author of When Elephants Weep
"The Exultant Ark brilliantly and definitively demonstrates what pet owners have always known but what certain scientists still question, that animals think, feel, and have emotions, often pleasurable ones. It's a must-read for anyone with even the slightest interest in the truths of the natural world. I couldn't put it down!"-Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, author of The Hidden Life of Deer and The Hidden Life of Dogs
"There is no question that the whales experience pleasure when they sing, that the wolf enjoys howling at the moon, that lion cubs enjoy wrestling with each other. I love books like this, that challenge the rigidity of human prejudices, that open our minds to other realities and revolutionary perspectives, that question both our collective ignorance and our arrogance as humans."-Captain Paul Watson, Founder and President, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
"The Exultant Ark bubbles over with joy. Its important words and moving photographs offer powerful proof of what we knew was true all along: the pleasure of animals is vividly real and matters deeply-both to the animals who experience it, and to we humans who are privileged to share their happiness. Rejoice!"-Sy Montgomery, author of The Good Good Pig and Birdology
"This visually stunning book opens our eyes to a different, more scientifically up-to-date way of looking at the animal kingdom. . . . Old attitudes fall away as we gain a heightened sense of animal individuality and of the pleasures that make life worth living for all sentient beings."
