Since thousands of years pets accompany us as livestock, faithful fellows or just as guests. Still we don‘t know a lot about these natural feral fellers. Joseph H. Reichholf tells us about the unknown history of pets and brings the unexpected to light: It‘s not always clear in the relationship between human and animal who domesticates the other or who attends to whom. He observes the destiny of cats, mice, cows and others. While dogs and cats are often used as pampered surrogates for a poor social life, livestock get downgraded to machines in factory farming. Which brings us to the essential question of how do we treat living beings, that we created and can‘t survive without our help.
Josef H. Reichholf, born in Aigen am Inn in 1945, is one of the best-known biologists in the German-speaking world. He taught for many years at both Munich universities and was head of department at the Zoological State Collection in Munich. The bestselling author has been awarded numerous prizes, including the Sigmund Freud Prize for scientific prose.
