I’ve had the enormous pleasure, over the past few days, of reading anthropologist Barbara J. King’s most recent book, Animals’ Best Friends: Putting Compassion to Work for Animals in Captivity and in the Wild .

Source: University of Chicago Press

King’s book takes up the question of how and why to engage in compassionate actions that help animals, whether by eliminating or reducing harms inflicted by humans or by shaping our own behaviors in ways that allow animals to live their own lives on their own terms. King opens with a discussion of why compassionate action on behalf of animals is so desperately needed and then takes readers into the world of animal advocates working to help animals in the wild, animals with whom we share our homes, animals held captive in zoos, animals who wind up on our plates, and animals used in biomedical research.

King’s ideas about compassionate action are driven by stories, and often by her own experiences.

I asked Dr. King if she would answer some questions about her new work. (My questions to her are in bold italics.)

Most of your scholarly work has been about animals. Why did you decide to write a book about people— albeit people who work on behalf of animals?

That’s an intriguing view, because in my mind, it’s completely a book about animals!   The animals I feature, ranging from bears to spiders, dairy cows to housecats, and monkeys to rats, I hope take center stage in my science-based storytelling. It’s true that I interview, and admire, scientists and animal activists whose compassion is changing the world for animals in all five contexts I take up. For me, though, everything flows from seeing clearly animals for who they are. This book is the next logical step for me, after a pair of books that dealt with emotion and cognition in animals, because it asks all of us, me included, to do better and be better for animals on a daily basis.

One of the issues you raise early on, in your introductory chapter, is how sometimes the experience of witnessing animal suffering is so overwhelming and painful that compassionate people must look away. You write, “Can it be that caring deeply for animals may shut down our willingness to grasp that they are hurting?” Could you explain?

A few months ago, I was reviewing footage sent to me by PETA of an undercover investigation they’d undertaken at the biomedical laboratories of the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center. I spent time one particular day looking at horrific images of monkeys used in biomedical experiments. I tried to focus on individual monkeys rather than just the abstract horror, for example on a rhesus macaque called Cornelius who was born there in 2010, who has known no other life, and was caged alone and very clearly depressed . It was tough going; I thought I’d not share what I’d seen with my husband, who cares deeply for animals.

A few hours later, my husband showed me a live-stream from a cat rescue center he donates to, about a beautiful rescued cat who had received a prognosis of a terminal illness. The loving caretaker had tears in her eyes as she held and stroked the cat, promising that the animal would not suffer.

I snapped at my husband. I told him it was too much, that he should ask me before he shows me such a thing, and then I burst into tears. In that moment, I couldn’t bear to think about one more animal in trouble. It doesn’t escape me that I broke down about a cat who was in compassionate hands; in that moment it was emotionally safer for me to cry about that animal than about Cornelius and all the thousands and thousands of other monkeys, rats, mice, and other beings in laboratories.

Of course, I apologized and explained to my husband. Charlie was not only blameless but was also exhibiting the very compassion I love in him, compassion that has motivated him to care for homeless cats for decades. The stress that I experienced that day was mild. For some veterinarians, veterinary staff, animal rescuers, and animal activists the situation is far worse, because they must contend daily with animal neglect, abuse, and suffering. Data show clearly that compromised mental health is a great risk for them. As we have this conversation about compassion, we need to support each other and lobby at the same time for better access to mental health resources.

Barbara King with Cynthia Goat

Source: Courtesy of Barbara J. King

Why do you choose the phrase “compassionate action” as the centerpiece of your book?

Scientists over the last decades have done an outstanding job in describing for the public how deeply many animals think and feel as they go about their lives. And I mean here not just big-brained apes, elephants, and orcas, but also farm animals like pigs, cows and chickens, and invertebrates like octopus, squid, and a variety of insects and arachnids. But I think we, and I include myself here, aren’t as good as taking the next step, and laying out specifically what to do to help animals who need us so urgently.

There’s no question we’re in a time of planetary crisis, with anthropogenic global warming , habitat destruction, and animal and plant extinctions. Feeling empathy for any and all creatures caught up in this— whether those creatures are cognitive stars of the animal world or not, whether they feel their lives in ways we understand or not— is a good thing.  But what use is empathy without action to make a difference?   As I point out in the book, ‘empathy’ is used in such varied ways, and I wanted a phrase that immediately invites a call to action. I think ‘compassionate action’ is that phrase.

My favorite chapter—which will be no surprise given the focus on my own research and writing—was on animals in our home. I expected this chapter to be about dogs and cats and other animals commonly kept as pets . So, I was surprised and delighted that you opened this chapter with a discussion of spiders in the home, sharing your own journey from fearing spiders to being fascinated by them. I love how you emphasize that humans and spiders can peacefully co-exist within a home and that our home may also be a spider’s home. This section of the book is perhaps one of the clearest examples of one of your main themes: that by getting to know the natural history and biology of animals we nurture and expand our own capacity for compassion. There is one point that I’d like to press you on a bit. I was surprised that you embrace the idea that spiders make great pets and can be kept in captivity without undue harm. Wouldn’t the more compassionate path be simply to forego pet-keeping if it means holding another being captive?

You might be right, Jessica; I’ve learned a lot from your writing about the ethics of pet-keeping over the years. For me, with certain types of pet-keeping, a lot of the discussion is contextual, in a way qualitatively different from the situation with animals who endure captivity in many zoos or in biomedical laboratories. In those environments, I have no doubt that captivity itself is a harm. And by ‘certain types of pet-keeping’ I nod here to the fact that wild animals like monkeys, apes, big cats, and other exotic animals should never be kept as pets, full stop.

I’ve had cats as indoor companions, pretty much my whole life. And I know that cats and dogs can enjoy highly satisfactory, even joyful lives, with humans. Can the same be true with small invertebrates like spiders, who aren’t domesticated as cats and dogs are?   Here’s where context comes in, because when I look at the spacious habitats pet spiders are often kept in, and the love with which they become members of a family, I think the answer may not be black and white.

Let’s talk about food choices and vocabulary. Are labels such as “vegan” and “vegetarian” and “plant-based” useful? I’m interested that you use these terms, yet don’t have a parallel term for “carnivorous” or “flesh-based.” Why is that?

In the book, I write about why I identify as ‘reducetarian’ which is a label that I like. I’m nestled right up against the vegan end of the reducetarian continuum, to be sure. But anyone seriously committed to eating less meat, seafood, and dairy fits under that term. The science is completely clear that in responding to our Earth crisis–the global warming and animal and plant extinctions I mentioned earlier–it’s urgent that we collectively eat less meat, seafood, and dairy. For some, this will be a commitment to a vegan life or to a plant-based diet , which I admire tremendously. For others, that may not be possible.

As an anthropologist who has lived in both West Africa and East Africa, I understand that calls for global veganism don’t yet match with millions of people’s need to feed their families by raising pigs or chickens or by fishing. Thinking systemically about food justice requires big ideas about how to scale up plant-based eating that fits with small-farm practices around the world. I’d add that, as a species, we didn’t evolve to be carnivorous or flesh-based, or vegan, either; we evolved as omnivores through the millennia, taking advantage of what made sense to seek, process, and consume in that environment. The goal now, in our time and in our environment, is to make it possible through local and global initiatives for more and more people to eat healthily with plants. And I think with cell-based or cultured meat, too, that is, meat produced cellularly and without animal slaughter.

Towards the end of the chapter called “Animals on Our Plates,” you talk about plants and begin to enter into very interesting terrain, suggesting that the sharp binary between plant and animal is actually not so sharp and that plants have “feelings” and social relationships. Is compassionate action on behalf of plants a next step for you? Could you talk a bit about what compassionate action towards plants might look like?

I do take that step. If you’ll allow me to quote myself, here is a passage from the concluding pages of the ‘Animals on our Plates’ chapter. I’ve just written about some of the fascinating science showing that plants like sunflowers and mustard plants recognize and treat their relatives differently than they do non-kin. ‘As plants come alive for us in new ways, questions about how we should treat them have gained traction….We can consider not only basic biology but also concern for all life: excluding plants from our care means we have missed t he very point of endeavoring to live with compassion.’

I am very interested in the notion of micro-ecosystems in our yards, in small local parks, and similar spaces. This involves caring for, especially, native plants that will revitalize patches of land, making them inviting homes for pollinator insects and birds and all kinds of small wildlife. Beyond this, fighting to protect our forests and woodlands is critical, and not only for the ecological roles the trees play, but also because trees are living beings with worth on their own terms.

Thank you so much for this interview. For more discussion on these and related topics, I’d invite your readers to find me on Twitter https://twitter.com/bjkingape .

Once upon a time I’d have thought that a heartbeat that remains steady and unvarying is a sign of strength. But to my surprise, cardiac consistency is the hobgoblin of weaker minds and bodies. “The stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind,” the martial artist Bruce Lee said. So it is with the heart, which you want to bend to the ever-changing circumstances of the nervous system rather than pump on robotically, oblivious of the state of body and mind.

You want a heartbeat to be variable.

Heart rate variability (HRV) is a measure of irregularity in the intervals between beats. If you’re curious about how resilient you and your kid are, at least physiologically (which in the end can’t be separated from “cognitively”), you could do worse than to strap on a cheap, noninvasive heart monitor and download an app to measure your HRV. The subtle speed-up-slow-down between successive beats reveals more about resilience than does heart rate, which only counts the number of beats per minute. If the child has a heart rate of 120 beats per minutes she’s stressed or excited—that’s a no-brainer. With HRV, you also get a sense of how well she can respond to whatever’s going on and how well she’ll recover.

A high HRV measurement is generally a sign of resilience: the ability to adapt to and bounce back from stresses. In that context, it’s not much of a stretch to see how HRV is also linked with sociability, decision making , creativity , and problem solving.

Source: memej/Shutterstock

The better the Buddha breath, the more Buddha-like the breather. We’re not all equals when it comes to deep abdominal exhales or any vagal-tone-boosting activity. A research group at the Max Planck Institute in Germany hypothesized that the people who do it easily and instinctively are friendlier and more generous than the norm. After all, virtuous traits require self-regulation , and anyone who automatically controls his or her breathing and heart rate variability under pressure has what it takes.

To test their idea, the researchers challenged a group of volunteers to a biofeedback task in which they had to reach a desired mind-body state to raise a ball on a screen. If a person exceeded an HRV threshold, the red spinning ball would rise. No one told the volunteers to use their Buddha breath, observation of the body, or any other technique to raise their HRV. Some did it naturally, as if they’d been controlling their hearts all their lives, and this group fascinated the researchers. Were these the people, they wondered, who’d put a coin in a beggar’s hat or stop the elevator door from closing to let in one more rider?

To find out, all the volunteers were given hypothetical scenarios in which they had money and could spend it, or not. Would they give it away charitably? Or would they maximize individual gain over group gain? How much did they favor an even distribution of wealth versus payouts only to people close to them? Were they purely generous, or did they only part with money when they expected something in return or when paying back those who helped them?

A pattern emerged, and with it a confirmation of the researchers’ hypothesis. The people who were good at raising their HRV on demand were indeed the same ones who gave away a fair amount of their money, and not merely out of social norms like reciprocity or punishment . Their generosity was motivated by altruism. You could say it came from the heart.

Other studies have found that you can predict compassion by looking at people’s heart rate variability. People who have an HRV upsurge when they see, for instance, suffering kittens or homeless people are more altruistic and willing to donate their money to a charity for the cause. People who maintain a higher-than-average HRV when hearing about sick children are more willing to share resources with them. In these cases, a high HRV is a sure sign of emotional responsiveness.

Think for a moment about why this might be. We know that high HRV is a triumph of the parasympathetic, the branch of the nervous system that increases a sense of calm. The vagus nerve is stimulated, which has the knock-on effect of a slower heart rate and respiration. This in turn redirects energy to other processes like social awareness and flexibility. (A faster heart rate, in contrast, activates the amygdala, which further primes the fear and anger response.) The vagus nerve also influences the release of oxytocin , the so-called calm-and-connect hormone .

Kids generally have much better vagal tone than adults, but there’s still a very wide spectrum.

Psychologists at the University of California, Davis wondered if preschoolers who have strong vagal tone would turn out to be more caring and empathetic years later than those with weaker tone. They launched a long-run experiment that began with a pool of three- and four-year-olds, each of whom was tested for vagal tone (using an HRV marker called respiratory sinus arrhythmia).

In the first stage of the experiment the kids witnessed an accident: an adult dropping everything in her arms as she fell and hurt herself. Which kids said, “Oh no!”? Which ones asked if she was OK? Which ones turned away, unmoved and expressionless, and went back to their toys? Behind-the-scenes experimenters rated each preschooler’s level of empathic concern. Can you guess which kids scored highest?

The children with strong vagal tone and high HRV, just as the researchers hypothesized. These kids noticed distress in others and empathized without being overwhelmed or threatened. They also perceived themselves as having more supportive friends. They had fewer adjustment problems, while those with poor vagal tone tended to be inhibited in new social situations and dislike novelty. Other studies show that the very act of giving and bonding strengthens vagal tone, which perpetuates a virtuous cycle.

What’s surprising to note is that the children in the study with the strongest empathic response had strong vagal tone, but not the strongest. There was a threshold over which kids with the highest HRV were less sympathetic than average. Why? At a certain point, people may be able to control their emotions so well that they’re capable of inhibiting feelings of personal distress or empathy for others.

Now, fast-forward five years, and the preschoolers in the UC Davis study are in third and fourth grades. The researchers could finally address their burning questions. Did the toddlers with the fairly strong vagal tone became more caring and sociable eight-year-olds compared to those with low vagal tone?  Is heart rate variability in early childhood predictive of later behavior?

The answer is… yes. Generally speaking, the preschoolers with strong vagal tone were more likely to become grade-schoolers whose moms and teachers gave them high marks for comforting others in pain or volunteering to help. On the whole they were more sensitive to others in class and likelier compliment their peers than were kids with low vagal tone. They were likelier to stick up for a kid who was being bullied. Other studies show that children with strong vagal tone are less defensive when confronted by a frenemy or a dilemma or an intrusive albeit well-intended parent or, later, a romantic partner—all because their sympathetic fight-or-flight reflexes aren’t trigger-ready. They can control their own distress or anxiety more easily, which allows them to turn their attention outward.

On study found that people with high HRV even look more generous and approachable, as if you could pick them out in a crowd. (The vagus regulates muscles in the face and head, which is why you can tell from voice or expression if a person is stressed.) Or maybe they’ll pick you. An Australian study found that people with a high resting HRV are likelier to affiliate and favor others in a group more strongly than those with a low HRV even if that group is just a clutch of strangers who share a preference for the same art.

HRV is a sign of not just physiological adaptability but social adaptability.

Excerpted from Wits Guts Grit: All-Natural Biohacks for Raising Smart, Resilient Kids