Species Unite

"India has done more than any other country for recovering its tigers. Nobody can deny that. But still, we could do so much more than being satisfied with what we have done. There's so much complacency and crowing about these 3000 tigers we have, and I find it very sad." Ullas Karanth   Dr. K. Ullas Karanth is emeritus scientist at the Centre for Wildlife Studies in Bangalore. Previously he led on...

"The resource allocation of global attention on China is not commiserate with the size and scale of the problem that China represents." Albert Tseng   Albert Tseng is co-founder of Dao Foods , an impact-oriented investment firm that invests in plant-based and alternative protein companies based in mainland China and focused on the Chinese market.   With rapidly rising incomes and increasing meat c...

"One of the things that we've noticed is when these animals repeatedly show up, that's when people really get frustrated, up to a point where they may leave loose electrical wires in their field. And when the herd or the animal comes back the next day, they get electrocuted. So you want to keep people from flipping out and doing something crazy, right?" - Krithi Karanth     Dr. Krithi Karanth is C...

"We sat down and we ordered omakase, which is essentially the chef's specialties, and they just keep bringing food out until you say I'm done. So we ate and ate and ate everything you can imagine for the better part of 3 hours before we even dared to do order whale" – Heather Rally     Dr. Heather Rally spent the last decade at the PETA Foundation as a supervising veterinarian for captive animal l...

"We talk very badly nowadays about fashion, right? Because of the environmental impact and so on. But at the same time, there is also value in fashion. If not, we wouldn't be so obsessed. It's inspirational, it makes you dream… Let's keep the good thing, the positive thing that gives you a good feeling and toss away and eliminate the bad things. It can be done." Claudia Pievani     Claudia Pievani...

"And I'm just having this urban, agrarian, techie renaissance thing with my hipster neighbors and it's just so rich. And I think to myself, 'wow, we've have to share this experience. How do we spread this?' – Josh Whiton   Josh Whiton is an eco tech entrepreneur and a social innovator who is helping to repair the Earth.   When Josh was 23, he founded the transit tech company, TransLoc., for which...

"One day I was leaving the animal shelter and I would always go and have lunch at this restaurant down the street and I'd get this pork barbecue sandwich. I remember it so vividly. I can remember the booth I was sitting in. I can picture the place. And I just remember thinking, I spent all day helping this one animal and now I'm eating another animal." - Stephanie Downs on the moment everything ch...

"The pets tend to be the most behaviorally disturbed, I would say. They have the hardest transition most of the time into kind of sanctuary life, because with the pet trade, infants are usually taken from their mothers within a few days or a few weeks after they're born. And most primate species in the wild will stay with their mothers for at least a couple of years, if not for most of their life....

"We have to look at those structures. If we don't look at those structures, if we don't look at the economic structures and we don't look at the instrumentalization of animals, the use of animals, the devaluation, the lack of dignity that's given to animals, we're just going to perpetuate our sort of grotesque use of these creatures." – Lori Gruen     Philosophers, Alice Crary and Laurie Gruen co-...

"We have this this sort of human exceptionalism or human supremacy that that is used as the kind of baseline foundational justification for exploiting animals, that humans are just more important and we're more special in some way." – Dr. Syd Johnson     Dr. Hope Ferdowsian and Dr. Syd Johnson  recently published an essay in the Hastings Center Bioethics Forum called, Primates and Medical Research...

"The number one thing is to respect us as a country and a lot of people are not - people who feel privileged in their life, they own a very nice yacht, they have money, they're wealthy, they live in Florida, they live the golden life, they live a grand life. I'm not saying there's anything bad about that, I want to be that way too. But at the same time they have a responsibility to be respectful o...

"If a bill has been passed in another state, then you know who the opposition was, you know who the supporters were. And it really helps grease the skids for another state to get something through. It builds and then eventually you get a critical mass. And then hopefully at that point, Congress takes a look at it and passes something nationwide." – Roland Halpern       Last week, Allie Taylor was...

"We didn't do any type of advertising. We didn't do any press around it. We just did what we do well, we quietly lobbied the city council and worked until we had a majority of the council co-sponsoring the bill. And then we said, okay, now it's time to actually move this, we need a hearing, we need to bring this up for a vote. So by the time the foie gras industry realized what we had done, it was...

"The planet is sustaining way more than just 8 billion human beings because we are consuming second-hand protein. We could have just directly, you know, eat plant-based protein. And again, if there's still any argument that, oh, we're not going to get enough strength, get enough nutrition, I mean, come on. Where do animals get their protein to start with? Right. I mean, come on. I mean, they eat p...

"If you saw a celiac bowl on a menu, you would never order that unless you have celiac disease and you're gluten free. But if you see a Thai peanut rice noodle bowl, that sounds delicious. You're not even thinking about the fact that it's gluten free. It's the same thing with vegan for a lot of people. They think, "oh, that is only for vegans, if I'm not a vegan, that's not for me.'"  - Katie Cant...

"We need to move away from animal derived materials, but we also need to move away from petroleum based traditional materials. So what is out there, what can we do? That demand is strong and supply is where the issue is."  - Sydney Gladman     On June 12 th the New York Times put out an article titled, How Fashion Giants Recast Plastic as Good for the Planet . The article, written by Hiroko Takeuc...

"The fear factor is probably one of the worst. I mean, if you've ever been deeply afraid, or had a near accident or had somebody pursuing you, if you've ever been really afraid, that's their life 24 hours a day, except when they are able to sleep. And, how they are able to sleep on metal slats with nothing that's comforting, no ability to control the temperature ever, whether it's very hot to very...

"Animal agriculture can be gone tomorrow. it's not foundational. That's why I find it very puzzling, the amount of pushback because it seems to be the actual… low hanging fruit. You write a book about socialism and no problem at all, people are like. "yeah, sure get rid of capitalism. No problem." Get rid of animal agriculture, they get very mad." -Drew Pendergrass   Drew is a PhD student in envir...

"We are fed things like Little Red Riding Hood and the Three Little Pigs and, you know, we grow up on this stuff, that the wolf is the big, bad character. And what the real wolf is like is so totally different." - Suzanne Asha Stone     A couple of months ago, we did a series on wolves. The episodes  focused on the massacre of entire wolf populations in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. At the time, I...

"The idea is that we take and take and take from the planet. And we've been taking and there's all this talk about how can we get to neutral? And our company wanted to do something a little bit differently. We wanted to give back more than we were taking." – Tina Bhojwani     Tina Bhojwani is the co-founder and CEO of AERA , a luxury vegan footwear brand. In a past life, she held key leadership ro...

Brown Bear, Germany, 2008   I'm aware of what you are and I'm also aware of what you're thinking. You're a human being   I'm aware of what you are and I'm also aware of what you're thinking. You're a human being and you are thinking I am something else   I'm aware of what you are and I'm also aware of what you're thinking. You're a human being and you are thinking I am something else put here for...

"You see, most of the people in the cultured meat world are usually either biologists that are excited about the biology or physicians that work with stem cells and regenerative medicine. They're asking, "can we make a steak? Can we make a muscle?" They are not asking what is the cheapest way of making this? They're assuming somebody else is going to come and solve it. The difference between them...

"I mean this is the crazy thing about it, in 35 years of doing animal protection investigations I didn't know this existed. It wasn't even a thing, because it sounds it sounds too crazy to actually believe - that you'd get blood from pregnant horses and then it helps productivity in pigs." – Gemunu de Silva   Gemunu de Silva is the co-founder of Tracks Investigations .  He is a filmmaker and an ac...

Species Unite will be back next week, June 2nd, with a brand new season. Until then, we are re-sharing some of our favorite episodes. Today's is a conversation with Jo-Anne McArthur.   Jo-Anne McArthur is an award winning photojournalist and the founder of We Animals Media . For 20 years she has been photographing and bearing witness to our complex relationship with animals. She's worked in over 6...

Species Unite will be back on June 2nd with a brand new season. Until then, we are re-sharing some of our favorite episodes. This week's is a conversation with Lori Marino. "In a natural setting, these animals would be swimming maybe a hundred miles a day, diving deep. They have their social lives, their social networks, roles to play in very tightly-knit family groups. They raise their children....