"Bond effectively surveys the many ways that animals have occupied human thought throughout our evolution."

– Booklist

“A brief introductory exploration of the lives of humans and (other) animals. For general readers into nature, wildlife, and how humanity can better live with both. Bond offers a worthwhile exploration of the subject. The chapters on cave paintings, animal minds, and wolves are especially compelling.”

– Library Journal

"A searing indictment of the human animal’s inhumane treatment of non-human animals."

– Kirkus Reviews

"In this beautiful biography of humans’ evolution with animals Michael Bond explores how we can resolve our recent messy divorce from nature and ‘reanimate’ ourselves, returning to a place where we can learn, judge and find ourselves through the way we relate to the animal world. Full of wonders and insights, awash with compassion and self-reflection, Animate is an astonishing adventure into our own psychology expressed through our relationship with animals.”

– Isabella Tree, author of Wilding

"It's hard to know where we end and our dog begins. The same is true, if we could only see it, for humans and non-humans generally. By letting us eavesdrop on the conversation between us and the wild, Bond, in this thrilling, effortlessly readable book, helps us to see—and so to know our own shape and nature. Essential, transformative stuff.”

– Charles Foster, author of The Edges of the World

"In this beautifully written, wide-ranging, and impeccably researched book, Michael Bond carefully traces how we, humans, arrived at where we are today, disconnected from wild animals and their homes and wrongly thinking of ourselves as superior to other animals and separate from and above them. Bond aptly and correctly concludes, without other animals, 'we can hardly be human.’ Animate will make you rethink who they (other animals) truly are and who we truly are, and we can only hope it will result in people changing their speciesist abusive ways of interacting with our animal kin with whom we actually share a large number of traits.”

– Marc Bekoff, author of The Emotional Lives of Animals

"In his robust raspberry to human exceptionalism, Michael Bond shows that the lengths to which people have gone to justify our exalted estate only point up our close relationship with the animals with whom we share this planet.”

– Henry Gee, author of The Decline adn Fall of the Human Empire

Praise for Michael Bond

"A fascinating, incisive account of how the human brain evolved to keep us orientated. Beautifully written and researched."

– Isabella Tree, author of Wilding

"One of the most fascinating books I have read for a long while, not least because of how it opens up so many other subjects."
 

– The Scotsman

"In this fascinating book about our gift for what Michael Bond calls wayfinding, he makes a compelling case that our ancient abilities to get from A to B aren’t just a matter of geography."
 

– The New Statesman