Beasts: What Animals Can Teach Us About The Origins of Good and Evil

Bestselling author Jeffrey Masson shows us what the animals at the top of the food chain—orca whales, big cats, etc.—can teach us about the origins of good and evil in ourselves.

There are two supreme predators on the planet with the most complex brains in nature: humans and orcas. In the twentieth century alone, one of these animals killed 200 million members of its own species, the other killed none. Jeffrey Masson's fascinating new book begins here: There is something different about us.

In his previous bestsellers, Masson has showed what animals can teach us about our own emotions—about love (dogs), contentment (cats), grief (elephants), among others. But animals have much to teach us about the negative emotions such as anger and aggression as well, and in unexpected ways. In Beasts he demonstrates that the violence we perceive in the "wild" is mostly a matter of projection. We link the basest human behavior to animals, to "beasts" ("he...