Love in Their Hearts and Compassion for Animals with Marc Bekoff, PhD
Marc Bekoff, PhD, joins Zazie and Kristi to talk about his new book Love in Their Hearts, his work with Jane Goodall, and what it's like studying canids like dogs, wolves, and coyotes.
By Zazie Todd, PhD
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Love In Their Hearts with Marc Bekoff, PhD
Marc Bekoff, PhD, joins Zazie and Kristi to talk about his new book Love in Their Hearts: A Celebration of Animal Emotions and A Guide to Compassionate Action, his work (and upcoming book) with Jane Goodall, and what it's like studying canids.
We talked about:
- Why Marc and his co-author Jeff Campbell wrote Love In Their Hearts
- The time Marc's dog Jethro rescued a baby bunny, and stories of the grizzly bear known as 399
- The importance of naming animals
- Marc's research on dogs, wolves, coyotes, and foxes, and how his work replaced theories of dominance leading to the dissolution of litters in the wild
- How animals tell stories
- Marc's work with Jane Goodall, how he first heard of her, and how she influenced his work
- The educator's kit that goes with Love In Their Hearts and how it can inspire hope and activism in young readers
The book Marc recommended is Knowing Wonder: An Elephant Story by Merrill Sapp illustrated by Gareth Hooks. You can read Marc's interview with Merrill Sapp here.
Love In Their Hearts: A Celebration of Animal Emotions and a Guide to Compassionate Action is by Marc Bekoff and Jeff Campbell. The educator's kit is here.
Every Elephant Has a Name by Jane Goodall and Marc Bekoff illustrated by Gavin Scott will be published on Feb 8, 2027.
Marc Bekoff will be at Bark! Fest to talk about Love In Their Hearts on Sep 23, joining Alison Pearce Stevens (Detective Dogs). Don't miss it! Sign up here.
Find out more about Bark! Fest and sign up for the other events at companionanimalpsychology.com
The books are available from all good bookstores and my Amazon store.
Marc Bekoff is professor emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He has won many awards for his research and writing, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Exemplar Award from the Animal Behavior Society. He writes regularly for Psychology Today and has published more than thirty books, including The Emotional Lives of Animals and numerous scientific and popular essays. Visit marcbekoff.com to learn more.
If you'd like more Marc, you can find earlier conversations with Marc Bekoff here:
- In The Pawsitive Post Holiday Special 2025
- Talking about The Emotional Lives of Animals, second edition, at the first Bark! Fest in 2024
- Talking about canine perception and emotion, alongside Zazie Todd and Cat Warren, at the first Bark! Fest
- Chatting with Zazie Todd and Tina Spring about canine behaviour on the Your Family Dog podcast
- Interviewed in 2018 about his book Canine Confidential
The conversation with Marc Bekoff, PhD, about Love In Their Hearts
Zazie: Whenever I hear that there's a new book from Dr. Marc Bekoff, I'm always excited.
Love in Their Hearts: A Celebration of Animal Emotions and A Guide to Compassionate Action by Marc Bekoff and Jeff Campbell is a wonderful new book for teens. And today we're joined by Marc to talk about the book and some of the stories in it.
Welcome to The Pawsitive Post in Conversation. I'm Zazie Todd and I'm joined, as always, by my friend and co host, Kristi Benson.
And Kristi, one of the things I love about Marc's work is the way that he blends stories with the science. And the stories are very, very powerful and such a great way to teach us about science.
And I'm sure you'd agree with that.
Kristi: Absolutely. I love storytelling as a way to sort of like teach and learn, so. Absolutely.
Zazie: So we've got Dr. Marc Bekoff with us today. Dr. Beckhoff is a professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
He's published more than 30 books and he's won many awards for his research on animal behavior, animal emotions, cognitive eth,
passionate conservation, and animal protection.
He's worked closely with Jane Goodall as co chair of the Ethics committee of the Jane Goodall Institute. And he's a former Guggenheim fellow and he also works closely with inmates at the Boulder County Jail.
And I always like sharing this bit. In June 2022, Marc was recognized as a hero by the Academy for Dog Trainers.
And his recent books include the second edition of the Emotional Lives of Animals and Jane Goodall at 90 celebrating an astonishing lifetime of science, advocacy,
humanitarianism, hope and peace. And he also publishes regularly for Psychology Today. So thank you for joining us today, Marc.
Marc: My pleasure, always. I love doing interviews with you all, so thank you for having me.
Zazie: Oh, thank you.
And Love In Their Hearts seems a little bit like a young reader's version of The Emotional Lives of Animals in some ways, but it's also a little bit different than that.
So how did the book come about?
Marc: Well, the book came about while I was revising the first edition of The Emotional Lives of Animals that appeared in 2007.
In the back of my mind was to write a similar book.
So Love in Their Hearts is not a watered down The Emotional Lives of Animals. It's a completely different book. More stories, more activities for youngsters,
and a little bit more about my background, which was totally nonlinear. Getting to where I am now.
And then as the book was being edited,
I was working with a guy named Jeff Campbell, who's been my copy editor for 20 years almost on a variety of books from New World Library, with whom I've published a lot of books.
And I said to Jeff, I'm thinking about a kid's book or young adult book. Do you want to do one? And he jumped on it.
So he's a great writer for that audience. He's published books for Lonely Planet.
So that's how it came about.
But the science is there. It's just written for a different audience.
But what we were very pleased with was the adults who read it. Parents, teachers, and other adults loved it.
So I think it's a book for all ages.
Kristi: When I first heard that it was a book for teens, I got just kind of like stepping back, I found that really interesting because I think anyone who works with animals,
you can't help but sort of spend some time thinking about the different life stages that animals go through. And one of which is like not a child, you know, not a youth, but not an adult either.
And this book is aimed at this really interesting kind of constituency of. Of teens. And so I was interested in your sort of process. How did you decide to write for teens?
How is it different writing for teens? You know, what, what, what's that like for you?
Marc: It's a great question. It's very different.
Like I said, it's not watered down. A little more explanation of what an ethologist is like. I am.
We have sidebars in there. You know, what is ethology talking about? Anthropomorphism.
And we have some really great little side essays in there from people who got exposed to animals early in life, including their teen years, and went on to careers in studying animal behavior or conservation.
But it's just maybe just a little more explanatory, expository, I suppose the word is,
and a little more detail to the stories.
But it's a really different book at first.
You know, one of the things I said to Jeff, because he's been my editor for years and he actually was the copy editor on the second first and second editions of the Emotional Lives of Animals was that.
I don't want to. I don't want people to think that this is just, you know, sort of dumb down the amount the Emotional Lives of Animals.
So we also explain really detailed concepts in there, like. Like anthropomorphism and, you know,
anthropocentrism with. With good examples.
And there's also a work,
an educator's kit that we just completed that goes along with it, and we're really excited. I can say more about that later on.
Zazie: Yeah, yeah, I'm going to ask you more about that later on as well. But can we start with some of the stories? Because there's a really lovely story in there about Jethro.
So can you tell us about Jethro and the bunny rabbit?
Marc: Yeah. Well, Jethro was a dog I rescued from the Boulder, the Humane Society of the Boulder Valley in Colorado.
And we connected across.
Across the room where there were hundreds of dogs. I think our eyes just meshed.
So I brought him home.
And while he was at the Humane Society,
people said he was one of the most mellow dogs they've ever met. He got along with the sheep and the goats and the chickens and the other dogs and cats who they would let run in the backyard.
So one day I was in my living room doing something, and Jethro appeared at the door. He was salivating, and I could see in his mouth there was this ball of fur.
And I went, well, Jethro is a predator and he's got a bird. I thought.
So he looked up at me and then kind of belched out this ball of fur. And it turned out to be a baby bunny. And he just stood there over watching me and watching the bunny.
He was going like this, and like, come on, Marc, do something.
So I picked the bunny up, and Jethro, he didn't get upset with me, but he got. He was concerned. What are you both came in the house.
I found a little corrugated cardboard box. I put the bunny in the box, and Jethro pinned himself to the box, would not leave the box.
And so I got some little water.
It's a bunny. So I cut some flaked carrots.
I mean,
I called my local veg, who's a friend, and said, what do I do here?
And the rest of the story is the bunny recuperated.
Jethro would not sleep upstairs in my bedroom, where he used to sleep was you. You know, he slept every night.
He wouldn't leave the box. And I thought I felt Safe.
I didn't think Jethro was saying, well, Mark's going to go upstairs and I'm going to have myself hasen fever rapid fish.
And so I kept the bunny in the box for a bunch of weeks. And Jeth, I mean, Jethro would not leave the box. He didn't even want to go out and pee or **** in the morning.
He just wanted to save money. But then I decided, I talked to some people, that the best thing was to let Bunny go. Bunny had been a wild animal and there were lots of bunnies around.
I thought the bunny would do okay. So I carried Bunny up my driveway and put the bunny in.
In a little pile of rocks and turned around. And usually when I went home, Jethro followed me. And Jethro just sat there.
And I think he was just saying a Jethro canine goodbye.
And then every morning for quite a while, the minute I let my door let Jethro out and open my door and let Jethro out,
he would run to the spot and just look for Bunny. And so that was a great story.
Given what I knew about Jethro from his life at the Humane Society, I wasn't surprised.
And then sometime later, he did the same thing with a baby bird.
I have to tell people that Jethro weighed 90 pounds and he was just one big muscle.
He was the best we could figure out. He was a Doberman shepherd hound hybrid.
Yeah. And, you know, afterwards I had people write to me similar stories,
but it was just, I could just tell by looking at him that he felt some kind of paternal care for the bunny. I think he knew the bunny needed help and he was very proud of himself.
I think that I could have just gulped Bunny down or gulped Bird down, and I did it so that.
So that's cross species empathy, showing compassion and empathy.
Zazie: I love it.
Marc: Yeah, it was.
And he was like that with everybody. He didn't like people to get between me and him,
and that was fine.
I lived in the mountains. There were very few houses around.
But other than that,
you know, he was what I call the classic watchdog. He would watch people come in and out of my house.
So thanks. Yeah, it was a wonderful. It was a. He was a wonderful companion for many years.
Kristi: Another story that you have is about a grizzly bear that was called 399. It was a mama bear and a common site in Colorado. Can you tell us about her?
Marc: Yeah, well, actually, it's in the Grand Teton. She and her family lived in the Grand Teton National Park. Tom Mangelsen,
who's a world famous photographer,
photographed and studied her for years.
And in fact, the back cover of the of Love in their hearts is 399 and four cubs looking into the book.
Zazie: And that's beautiful.
Marc: Yeah. And. Well, I might as well show you in that front cover. These are all Tom Mangelsen images and he's got about 15 in the book. He's a very close friend of mine.
So Tom started photographing 399, I think in 2006, quite a while ago.
So he followed her and her children when she had them for years.
399 became a global icon. People traveled from all over the world to see 399.
So, you know, she had a good life with her cubs in the park.
But then, you know, in all honesty, the park was getting a little upset. It was getting crowded. People were slowing down and driving when they saw 399 as they should,
you know. So the story that Tom wrote for Love in their Hearts is kind of an autobiography that he wrote of 399 and her children.
And unfortunately, there was a sad ending because a few years ago 399got hit by a car.
And there was nothing malicious about it, but it was a very sad ending. And like I said, Tom's a really close friend of mine and he.
I did too, but maybe not to the intensity that he did. He really grieved her loss. She was. She was a part of his life from the day he met her to the day she got run over by a car.
So it's a beautiful story of a tight human bear bond, not only between Tom, but the thousands of people who went to see her. And the other side of the story was that I think to some people running the park,
she became a nuisance because there were traffic jams. You know, I don't know if you've ever been to Yellowstone, but I've been there to see the wolves. And at certain times of the year, you can't drive through the park because it's just a traffic jam of people wanting to see the wolves and.
But it's a true love story and she was a great mother.
And quadruplet bears are not all that common. But we were thrilled that Tom gave us that photo for the back of the book and could have her kind of looking into the book and trying to find out more about animal behavior and maybe about herself.
Zazie: Yeah, yeah, I love that. Her and the cubs all looking into the book to see what they can learn, wanting to Know what you wrote about them, I think, Mark.
But I think that's lovely that Tom's story is in there because that might inspire some people to grow up and become a wildlife photographer. But the book also might inspire people to grow up and become scientists.
And I like that you share some of your story in there because I think people have a stereotype of scientists as being very swotty [nerdy] and studious right from, you know,
very early years at school. But that's actually not what you were like. So tell us a bit about kind of your early years, your school years and what you were like then.
Marc: Well, to quote my mother, I was a disaster.
Quote my teachers, I think they would agree.
I mean, I just didn't like being inside. I mean, that was kind of it. I got imprinted on nature. I was born in Brooklyn, New York, and all I wanted to do was ride my little tricycle, which I call my field,
my field vehicle around and say hello to all the animals.
And,
and, but, but you know, the,
the important aspects of that were that my parents supported me.
Some of the neighbors thought I was kind of a whack job,
but my parents supported me and I would just watch the animals. All I wanted to do was say hello to the dogs and the cats and the squirrels and the mice and the ants.
And I could feel their emotions.
And if that didn't turn people off decades ago,
I don't know what would, but I could feel their emotions and I would tell my folks that.
And in 2002, I published a book called Minding Animals.
And the phrase minding animals came from a lot of the chats I had with my folks in the sense that I was minding the animals by taking care of them and minding them, attributing minds to them.
And that's why I just, you know, as I matured, although some people would think I have never matured, but as I grew up,
it astounded me that people would just question whether these animals had feelings, whether they were smart,
sentient and emotional beings.
So that was kind of the root of it. But then it was pretty non linear for a long time.
And I spent some time in a Ph.D. medical program, which I didn't want to be in.
And then I met Michael Fox, who was a well known ethologist. And as far as I'm concerned, he's done the best ethological work on a wide variety of canids decades ago.
And when I left the Ph.D. medical program,
I basically called Michael and said, I want to be your grad Student, you know this, you didn't. This was before there were faxes and iPhones and, and stuff like that.
And he said, fine, poor faxes.
Kristi: What?
Marc: Well, they may have been faxing, but I remember when I had send some of my credentials as part of the application because they had to be there within 24 to 48 hours.
I think it was Federal Express and it cost $175 to do so as a graduate student,
that was a lot of money.
But then I joined up with Michael and at the time,
I don't believe in coincidences. Jane Goodall had been already studying chimpanzees in Gombe for about 10.
And her husband at the time, the National Geographic photographer, Hugo van Lawick, when he came to the States, he would stay with me.
So it was kind of like I vicariously learned what Jane was doing and I learned a lot about her from Hugo.
And one of the things, or a couple of the things he did was she named her animals and she talked about individual personalities. And when she went back to Cambridge, she was basically told, we don't do that kind of thing.
And I'm sure Jane, being the polite woman, didn't say, well, I do. But she continued doing it. It was really important in my career because Michael was really open to it too, you know, and I was too, because even in when I was part of a really reprehensible research project in which I was sort of just an observer,
I would name the cats and I got yelled at for that.
So I hadn't really thought about it. But it was the blending of Jane sort of at a distance via Hugo and Michael that really got me going, saying, well, of course animals have emotions, of course they're intelligent,
they're sentient beings and we have to name them.
So that was really the beginning. And Michael was really also very much into,
you know, animal welfare.
He went from the university, Washington University in St. Louis to work for the Humane Society for a number,
number of years.
But once,
once I had that experience as a grad student at Washington University,
that was it. I was hell bent. I just,
this is what I want to do. I was really lucky. A job opened at the University of Colorado, which I also found,
just by happenstance, I never went down to the mail room at the University of Missouri in St. Louis. I was just a part time professor there because it was just close to Washington University and the mail hadn't come.
And I started flipping through these piles of papers.
Said professor was interested in somebody studying carnivores,
literally deadline Tomorrow had the name Richard Jones, who ran it. It was the same thing as becoming a grad student.
I called him on the phone, a real phone, by the way, a dial phone, by the way,
and I said,
this is what I've been doing. And he was really open to it. So I fed extra material out there.
So a lot of things blended in my life around then and I got the job at cu.
I immediately went off to Antarctica because I already had committed myself. So I taught for two months, went to Antarctica. But this was the opportunity to,
you know, if you will, become the field worker that I wanted to be.
So while I was at University of Colorado for the first two years, I wrote a lot of grant proposals and got a grant to study wild coyotes living in the Lamar Valley in the Grand Teton National Park.
So that was what set me straight.
I think my folks and a lot of people I knew went, wow, I think he now is going to just be more linear,
what can I say?
But also, dogs became very, you know, it's just easy to study dogs at,
at dog parks. I lived in the mountains,
about 20, in a little town called Nederland, about a half hour west of Boulder. And there were free ranging dogs up there.
So I think that that was a time when I just said lab studies can be important. I think they can be very important. I think they have limited utility, but I really am a field biologist.
That's all. That's all she wrote, if you will.
Kristi: I think a lot of our audience will definitely know you from your work with dogs, which has been revolutionary.
And we did want to ask you about Michael Fox's work with puppies.
So did you work with him with like on puppy questions or was that work that he did separately?
Marc: No, my thesis dealt with the development of behavior in young beagles as dogs. These rescued animals.
Beagles, Coyotes, wolves.
Coyote beagle hybrids and wolf dog hybrids.
Wolf. They were basically wolf malamute hybrids.
So I. It basically was some very detailed research looking at the development of behavior from early in life,
you know,
for some, for months, for some,
you know, we.
We found people who would take them in, you know, and, you know, as companion animals.
So no, that was really.
I jumped into that and I really expanded a lot of Michael's ideas because he'd come up with some really detailed descriptions. He wrote a book that I think is the best book on Canid ethology called the Behavior of Wolves, Dogs and Related Canids.
There's nothing like it available today. Descriptively, he had some really good ideas about Social ecology and comparing the development of the less social,
say,
foxes and coyotes to the more social wolves, which have held true, by the way,
you know, that they had different pathways of development very early in life, actually.
But that also just really fed into my commitment to kind of the principles of ethology that Nico Tinbergen put out, where you looked at the evolution of behavior, you looked at adaptive aspects of behavior,
you looked at causation.
Either it would be internal causations, such as hormones and neural pathways, if you will,
and development or ontogeny.
And that's what really got me going. And I was fortunate enough to be one of very few Americans who went to the international Ethological congresses that were always held in Europe,
where there might be 20 people. And Konrad Lorenz came to one of them, and Nico Tinbergen was there.
And it wasn't only because of the concentration on field work. It's just that deep down, I really am very interested in the evolution and development of behavior.
So over the years,
I was one of the few people to marry questions about how did different developmental pathways evolve, bringing together evolution and ontogeny?
And,
you know, that's really. I mean, that's basically what I've really been doing for decades. And people say, do you get bored? How can you get bored? I said, every day I come up with new questions.
And dogs were the perfect example, of course, of an animal who came from common wolf ancestors. So the comparative aspects, that they were just there. You can compare wolves to dogs, coyotes to dogs, because they're canids and they're, you know, still related foxes, they're carnivores.
And the hybrid work, which I continued for a while and, you know, I really learned, and I've been very open about it, that the coyote dog hybrids were really interesting.
There's.
There's still some out there, I'm sure. I got involved in doing behavioral studies of what at the time they were called New England canids, who turned out to be hybrids of dogs, wolves, and coyotes.
But what was exciting, I could use behavioral profiles to see where these animals fell out.
And they were just. And I mean, I'm talking about ****, detailed film analyses that drove my students crazy.
But it was one of the first examples that showed you could use behavior for taxonomy,
that each of the groups, the pure beagles or other dogs, the pure coyotes,
the pure wolves, and then their hybrids really showed different patterns of behavior that followed the taxonomic line.
So behavioral taxonomy was something that a lot of classical ethologists were into. But as far as I Could find out no one ever applied it to a mammal.
Yeah.
So.
Zazie: Well, that's really interesting, though. Thank you for sharing your background and how things that happened in your past shaped you. It's very lucky that FedEx was able to get those applications in on time.
Marc: Yeah,
I mean, I.
Yeah. I mean,
when I lived in St. Louis, people.
Which is not. I mean, I had a good time there. I wouldn't want to have lived there. And I would say, I don't want to live in St. Louis. And people would say, well, I don't want to die in St.
Louis. Meaning that I'd be there for 50 years. No, I was really fortunate to get this job. And then in 1977, I applied for a Guggenheim fellowship and I got it.
And E.O. Wilson, the famous.
The late E.O. Wilson, was a fan of my work. And it turned out that it was because I was bringing together,
if you will, phylogeny and ontogeny.
I came up with a theory about dispersal that someone named. Which is fine. It was called the social cohesion theory of dispersal.
And it was based on the fact that our observations in the field were that coyotes weren't dispersing or leaving their birth or natal group because they were driven out. Some were, but they were mostly leaving it because they couldn't bond with other animals.
You know, some of the animals, they would cheat and play.
They'd say, come play with me. And they tried to beat them up.
So they were either avoided totally or their play solicitations were ignored.
And that was the basis for the Guggenheim. My God. It was once again bringing together phylogeny and ontogeny that the ontogenetic pathway for, say, the development of coyotes was different from that of wolves.
Wolves are more social. Coyotes are less social, although they can live in groups.
And then I had some data on red foxes, who are typically. They can form families, but they're even typically less social than coyotes might be.
And that. That was a big boon. I lost $100 on that because I bet everybody that I would never get the Guggenheim.
Well,
it was almost embarrassing to bet against yourself, but I did.
But, you know, and. And it's. It. We had data to support it.
And it's very difficult to get field data that you would need to support this hypothesis in terms of individual differences in personality among young coyotes.
So over the years, people tried to test it. There's been some data on yellow bellied marmots that support it. Some people don't. It's not a matter of winning or losing.
Or supporting or not. But what loved about it. And I just really. This is like,
this is scarily. 50 years later,
I've been in contact with people who want to test it, you know, and that to me is wonderful.
You know, does it work or not? But what it replaced were the models of dominance and subordination leading to the dissolution of, say, litters.
That there was an other mechanism that could explain it.
And,
you know, there we go.
God, that was a mouthful.
Zazie: Anyway, that was really interesting. But I want to bring you back, bring us all back to the book. Love in Their Hearts. We did.
Kristi: Yeah, we did. Want to ask.
Oh, sorry, Zazie. It was I. I've already jumped in. You go.
Well, you know,
I have a quick tangent. I know you want to get us back to the book. This will just take like 30 seconds,
I think. Let's plan maybe the three of us to talk again about storytelling,
but animals who tell stories to each other. And like you were talking, Mark, about.
My mind hopped onto this storytelling tangent because you were talking about,
you know, like, I think sort of discussions between animals. One does a play signal,
but it's not like it's not really meant in
Zazie: the heart, I guess.
Kristi: And it made me think like a bumblebees tell stories to each other,
but we also tell stories to each other as humans. It's like a really important way that we communicate and teach and learn. So I would love to hear more about, like, how do other animals tell stories and why?
And I just think that would be super fascinating. So anyway, back to you, Zazy.
Marc: But let me say one thing. They are telling stories to one another using sounds, smells,
visual signals, and what we call composite things. I love that because if. If I'm a dog and I want to play with another dog, I'm going to tell them a story that I want to play with you, not fight with you or beat you up or meet with you.
All right.
I love that. Kristi.
Kristi: Let's do it.
Zazie: What's the plan? Let's do it.
Marc: That just gave me an idea for a new book. Excellent.
Zazie: Brilliant. And I think every time we talk to you, we always want to talk to you more. So after this recording, we can put a date in the diary, or we could set something up to talk about that in future.
Which then, before I go to my next question, I also want to tell our listeners so that we will be talking to Marc again in September. And you will have the chance to come and listen because Marc has very kindly agreed to be part of Bark! Fest, the book festival.
For Animal Lovers,
which is taking place in September. And he's going to be on a panel about books aimed at teens and middle grade readers. And it's going to be absolutely wonderful. So I will put the sign up details in the show notes and please do sign up and make sure that you're going to come and listen to that.
And he will be talking about love in their hearts then for us, which I'm really, really excited about. Now you mentioned earlier that you've put together, you and Jeff have put together some educational resources for teachers who want to use this book.
So can you just tell us a bit more about those resources? And so Mark is just actually holding up some of those resources. That's quite a fat booklet.
And this is online as well, isn't it, that people can find and read?
Marc: Yeah. So the sources and the kit are now online.
And in the book itself there's a QR code located different places where if you scan it, it takes you right to my homepage, markbeckhoff.com and you've got the sources and right below it, the kit.
And we did that for a number of reasons. Number one, book length. But number two, it means that kids and adults of course, could be reading the book, have that page open on their phone and find the reference.
And, and more and more people are doing it because it cuts down the length of a book, but it's convenient, you know. So, yeah, the sources.
So at the end of each chapter there's a little section about how to take compassionate action.
The. The subtitle for Love in Their Hearts is A Celebration of Animal emotions and a Guide to Compassionate Action.
And what we really want to do is develop activists.
We want people to come out and take action to help animals.
And of course, Jane Goodall, who was a close friend of mine,
really championed that in what's called now the Jane Goodall Roots and Shoots Program.
So we tell people, if you see something you don't like, you see a dog being abused, you go to the zoo and you don't like something,
you read a story.
This is how you can take action.
And part of a course, the taking action would be to do your own citizen science study.
So I've got, I have kids going to dog parks and filming dogs and becoming citizen ethologists.
So like I said, a lot of that was motivated by roots and shoots,
where, you know, Jane just was really into the notion that everybody can make a difference, even if you're 3 years old or 90 years old.
And when you work for non Humans. You're also working for humans and their homes, which is one of the basics tenets of roots and shoots.
And there's a story in there.
This kid from Kentucky emailed me. He wanted to learn more about mice.
So I immediately sent him a lot of articles I wrote and some that were interviews with people who studied mice to really stress that mice are rodents. They're not necessarily only pests.
They display empathy, they're smart.
And this guy's father was a contractor and he built him an outside enclosure so that he could study mice. And he studied color preferences.
He did a study that basically no one ever did.
Now,
you know, it wasn't as controlled as a lab study, but it was beautiful because the mice were running around in an enclosure being mice,
you know, so that. So that's basically what the Educator's Kit is about. It directs people to pertinent readings and basically what you can do to learn more about the animals in whom you're interested.
And Jeff Campbell, my co author's daughter Melinda really did a lot of putting it together. So we got a She's not a teen, but a younger perspective.
And actually I've been getting a lot of feedback because I put it online last week and I told a lot of people about it and they love the fact that there's a practical aspect to this,
you know, that you could get to the end of the chapter.
You could probably read the chapters in any order really and say, oh, wow, I want to learn more about this. What can I do?
Pick up the kit.
Zazie: That's awesome.
Marc: I call it one stop shopping.
Go to the link on my website and you could also have a hard copy of the book in the Educator's Kit right by your side.
Kristi: It seems to suit in my mind anyway. It's been a long time since I was a teen, but I remember being like to jumping onto a track and doing a deep dive, like getting so.
So getting into that, like, you know, a little bit of tunnel vision about one topic, I can see that being attractive to teens. So what do you think was the.
Was the main message of your book, do you think? Would you, if you had to, you know, if they learned nothing else kind of thing?
Marc: Well, I mean, from a practical side of you and no, it's a really good question.
The main message, and once again following Jane was that everyone can make a difference in the world.
Don't ever give up. Never say never.
And since Jane was an ethologist as well as a conservationist and primatologist, a messenger piece,
the Whole show, if you will.
But her early work was deeply ethological.
On top of being an outstanding spokeswoman for peace and compassion and coexistence.
Her book, her, her 1986 book the Chimpanzees of Gambia is among the most detailed statistical analysis of chimpanzees you will ever read.
I, I, I told her once, said, God, I was expecting a lot of stories. There are stories in there. Not, not quite a yawner in terms of lots of graphs and p values,
but really that would be one message and the other is that it's just so easy to study other animals. Like if you're into dogs,
if there's a dog park around, go to a dog park.
One of the messages that in my other books is not all dog parks are bad. They get the bad rap. There are good dog parks, there are bad dog parks.
If your dog doesn't want to go to a dog park and you do go without your dog, I mean, I can run through the whole show of that, but I think that that's really a major message of empowering youth.
And in this world,
the world and our non human residents need all the help they can get.
They just do.
Yeah. And keep hopeful.
So the last part of the book deals with a lot of Jane's influence on me and other people and her roots and shoots program.
Zazie: So Love in Their Hearts is a book that's full of hope and inspiration for teens. And if you have a young person in your life who you think would enjoy this book, I recommend it for them.
It's available wherever books are sold.
So thank you for telling us about it, Mark. And our last question for our guests is always to ask you to recommend a book that you have read recently and loved.
So what have you been reading?
Marc: Well, I'm a voracious reader. I sometimes think I would love to have three eyes and read independently with each one, but that's the trinocular instead of binocular. But so one book that really moved me is a book by Merrill Sapp, who teaches in Missouri, and it's called Knowing Wonder, An Elephant Story.
It's a short little book. I interviewed Merrill for Psychology Today and it was very popular.
And what I love is that it's just a beautiful story about individual elephants,
their lives,
the trials and tribulations of being an elephant, if you will.
I can't.
Gentle but real.
So it's, you know, people sometimes say, oh, you recommended a book that's 400 pages long. I don't have time Nope. Meryl's is just maybe 120 pages long,
easy read.
But if it doesn't move you,
then I could say there's something wrong with you. But it's. I don't want to get sued by somebody.
It's a wonderful book. Yeah.
Zazie: Good. Yeah. Thank you for that recommendation. And if people want to know more about you, where do they go?
Marc: I think they should just go to my homepage.
Marcbekoff.com and I don't know if I'm allowed to just show the cover of a young kids book I have coming out with Jane.
Zazie: Sure.
Marc: Yeah. Well.
Zazie: Oh, I love it.
Every Elephant Has a Name by Jane Goodall and Mark Bekoff. And that's a beautiful cover with the elephant. I love the trunk. Trunk going up into the air to meet the title.
Marc: Thank you for saying that.
I know you're an. You are a keen ethologist.
I mean that.
I know you're a keen observer. Not a lot of people saw that. The first time I saw that, I went, oh my God.
Oh, this is beautiful.
So Gavin Scott, who was the illustrator, is a world famous illustrator and the book is,
it's a beautiful book. Jane and I were able to finish the text before she passed away. But the night before she passed away, I got preliminary art and I texted it to everybody in her and I called her and I did this and she never got to see it.
But the reason I wanted to show it was not only sort of as a PR thing,
this book is also a book of hope.
The story,
it's on Amazon and other booksellers now and you can read about it,
but it's a book of hope and inspiration and it plays off of a book that Jane and I wrote called the Ten Trusts that was published in 2002.
So thank you.
I can't put in words how much I appreciate your interest in my and our work.
Zazie: Well, thank you so much for coming to tell us about it. We always love chatting with you and as Kristi has said, we're going to have to set up another time as well.
But just a reminder for our listeners to look in the show notes and find the link for Bark Fest so that you can sign up to come and listen to Marc talk about Love in Their Hearts then as well.
And today I'd also like to give a special shout out to our listeners in San Francisco in California.
Thank you so much for joining us. And wherever you're listening or watching from, we're always thrilled to have you with us. Do keep in touch if you've enjoyed this show.
Let us know if you're listening on your podcast app. You can just click and send us a voicemail and we would love to hear from you. Or of course, if you're watching on YouTube, leave us a comment down below.
And we would love to hear from you there too.
So thank you very much. Thank you again, Marc and goodbye everyone. We'll see you next time. Bye bye.
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