This is an excerpt from an online conversation with Jonathan Balcombe, who was born in England, raised in New Zealand and Canada, and has lived in the United States since 1987. He is a biologist with a PhD in ethology, the study of animal behavior.
He is the author of four popular science books on the inner lives of animals, including Pleasurable Kingdom, Second Nature, and What a Fish Knows, a New York Times best-seller. He has published over 60 scientific papers and book chapters on animal behavior and animal protection.
Jonathan currently lives in southern Ontario, where in his spare time he enjoys biking, baking, birding, Bach, and trying to understand the squirrels in his neighborhood.
