Gregory Berns ’86 on Relationships Between People and Animals (That Aren’t Dogs)

Gregory Berns ’86 is the distinguished professor of neuroeconomics at Emory University, but he is perhaps best known for starting a project to train dogs to lie still in MRI scanners so that he could figure out how their brains work. This led to the New York Times bestseller How Dogs Love Us and the follow-up What It’s Like to Be a Dog. In his latest book, Cowpuppy, we find Berns on a farm in rural Georgia raising miniature cows. The book takes a deep dive into the minds of these gentle and often misunderstood creatures. It is also a story of finding unexpected friendships in rural America. PAW asked Berns to recommend three more books for readers, and he suggested these.

In the Shadow of Man 
By Jane Goodall

This is Goodall’s original story of how she and her husband set up camp near the Gombe Stream Reserve in Tanzania to observe the chimpanzees. Before her, few scientists had seriously considered that other animals had personalities like people, but these chimpanzees formed complex social relationships with each other — and her. The descriptions are still as vivid and captivating as they were 50 years ago. I modeled Cowpuppy after this.

The Hunter 
By Julia Leigh

In this slim novel, a man is hired to hunt down and bring back the last surviving thylacine, aka the Tasmanian tiger. The thylacine carries great symbolic meaning to Australians because it was hunted to extinction in 1936. To this day, many people believe they are still hiding in the bush. Leigh’s novel captures the entrancing atmosphere of wild Tasmania (I’ve been there, looking for thylacines, too). But it is ultimately about our relationship to the ghosts of the animals we’ve exterminated.

Lonesome Dove 
By Larry McMurtry

If I could have one book on a desert island, it would be Lonesome Dove. It is ostensibly about two old Texas rangers — Captain Woodrow Call and Augustus “Gus” McRae — who drive a herd of cattle from Texas to Montana. It doesn’t go well. But to say this is a book about a cattle drive is like saying Moby Dick is about whaling. Lonesome Dove is about relationships. All of the animals — pigs, cattle, and horses — connect the men to each other in ways they can’t do themselves. The borderline-autistic Captain Call’s most meaningful relationship is with a horse that nobody else can ride — a mare called the Hell Bitch.