The stars of the new Netflix documentary, My Octopus Teacher, are Craig Foster, a film maker, and a small boneless creature, Octopus vulgaris or the Common Octopus. For most humans, the only view of an octopus will be in an aquarium. However, Craig Foster visited...
Pets provide constant companionship, emotional support and security for individuals who are homeless. It is estimated that approximately 10% of the homeless have one or more pets. Thirty or more years ago, it was commonly argued by animal advocates that, if a person cannot take...
Editor's foreward: October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. As part of its mission, WBI advocates for the safety and care of the human and animal victims of domestic violence It is now widely recognized that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a ripple effect with unintended consequences...
Mostly, the news featuring orangutans is very depressing. In just sixteen years (1999-2015), wild Bornean orangutan populations have declined by over 100,000 according to a recent estimate. CITES reports that the Bornean orangutan population (changed to “critically endangered” in 2016) has declined by 86% since...
When Hurricane Katrina devastated the states of Louisiana and Mississippi, forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of citizens from New Orleans and other coastal communities, many people with pets chose to stay behind because they could not find anywhere that would allow them to...
The UN World Tourism Agency published a report in 2015 on the importance of wildlife tourism to national economies in Africa. About half of global wildlife tourism involves a visit to an African country, resulting in 6 million tourists a year visiting Sub-Saharan Africa (about...
When was the last time you saw a street dog? If you live in Western Europe or North America, the answer is probably some years ago. If you live in India, Africa, Latin America, Asia, Eastern Europe or pretty much anywhere else, the answer is...
Following the recommendations of our esteemed colleague, Dr. Alan Kazdin, who has written in a previous WellBeing newsletter about the importance of being in natural settings for human mental and physical health, we bring you a tale about a relationship that has developed between one...
An early relationship between humans and cats is supported by hard evidence from a burial on Cyprus that dates to 9500 BP. Cats were never native to that Mediterranean island, so the occurrence of a young cat within a human burial, while not evidence of...
As we continue to struggle with the current Covid-19 pandemic, it appears that there has been an uptick across the world in the demand for companion animals. In the early phases of the pandemic, there was some concern that our companion animals might be a...
