What do animals think and feel? (TEDx Talk)

What animals are thinking and feeling, and why it should matter | Prof. Carl Safina

(TEDx Talks, 7/13/16) Carl Safina takes us inside the lives and minds of animals around the world, witnessing their profound capacity for perception, thought, and emotion, showing why the word "it" is often inappropriate as we discover "who" they really are.

Buddhist monk with tiger in Thailand

Yet, we are wiping out the very animals we should celebrate; we are the flood coming for Noah's Ark. Safina leaves us with a difficult question: Do we have what it takes to let life on earth survive?

Dr. Safina’s work has been recognized with MacArthur, Pew, and Guggenheim Fellowships, and his writing has won the Lannan Literary Award and the John Burroughs, James Beard, and George Rabb medals.

He has a Ph.D. in ecology from Rutgers University. Dr. Safina is the inaugural endowed professor for nature and humanity at Stony Brook University, where he co-chairs the steering committee of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science and is founding president of the not-for-profit Safina Center.

I wonder if humans can think or feel.

He hosted the 10-part PBS series Saving the Ocean with Carl Safina. His writing appears in The New York Times, National Geographic, Audubon, and other periodicals, and on the web at National Geographic News and Views, Huffington Post, and CNN.

Dr. Safina’s writing shows how humanity is changing the natural world and what those changes mean for wildlife and for humans.

This talk was given at a TEDxMidAtlantic event using the TED conference format but independently organized by the local community. Learn more at ted.com/tedx.

• Animals in Buddhism
• Ahimsa ("nonharming")
• Buddhist veganism and vegetarianism
• Animal rights in India's Dharmic religions