Pleasurable Kingdom Reaches Indian Audiences

PCRM’s Jonathan Balcombe, Ph.D., an animal behavior specialist, has spoken about his new book, which debunks the assumption that animals do not have complex emotions, in cities across the United States and the United Kingdom. This January, Dr. Balcombe is taking his powerful and provocative arguments about animal feelings to India, with a nine-city tour and presentation at the Asia for Animals conference.  

Pleasurable Kingdom: Animals and the Nature of Feeling Good takes an in-depth look at evidence that animals enjoy themselves. Dr. Balcombe provides rigorous scientific support along with amusing anecdotes that animals are sentient beings with complex emotions.

Dr. Balcombe concludes that this new information has important ethical consequences for both science and society. “There is a profound disconnect between what we now know other animals are capable of and how we treat them,” he says. “We can’t continue to treat them as nothing more than property. Each animal is an individual and not a disposable object. If pleasure is what makes life for humans worth living, then animals’ ability to feel pleasure also makes their lives worth living.”

Dr. Balcombe begins his tour in Chennai and continues to Bangalore, Ludhiana, New Delhi, Lucknow, Mumbai, and other cities. As the world’s second-most-populous nation, where vegetarian diets are under heavy attack by invading Western diets, India is an important venue for new perspectives on animals and how they should be treated. By speaking to audiences in medical and veterinary schools, Dr. Balcombe seeks to bring his and PCRM’s message to some of India’s most influential citizens. For more information on Dr. Balcombe’s tour, please visit www.PCRMIndia.org.

PCRM Online, January 2007

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