A new relationship with animals, nature and each other.

Posts by Michael Mountain

  • Introducing the Whale Sanctuary Project

    This blog is taking a break for the next few months so that I can devote my energies to the Whale Sanctuary Project. Here's why.

  • Is the Sloth Sanctuary a Zoo?

    The Sloth Sanctuary in Costa Rica was the first of its kind for these wonderfully engaging animals, and it was a model for others that followed. But questions have arisen. And…

  • Tafi Atome Monkey Sanctuary

    Tafi Atome looks like a typical forest in Ghana. The monkeys have been revered in this village for two centuries. But being “sacred” is no guarantee of survival.

  • The Great Irony of Animal “Rights”

    The great irony of the animal rights movement is there is still only one species that has any rights at all: humans. But the Nonhuman Rights Project is setting out to change that.

  • Why Mass Extinction Is Part of Human Nature

    Why would a supposedly “intelligent” species behave in a way that’s bringing about a mass extinction – one that will likely take us down along with so many other animals?

    Is the Stock Market a Global Ponzi Scheme?
    Sacred Activism in the Service of Animals
    Of Humans and Persons

    Do Plants Think?

    In his new book, What a Plant Knows, Daniel Chamovitz, director of the Manna Center for Plant Biosciences at Tel Aviv University, says they can see, smell and feel – not in the same way as animals, obviously, but certainly their own way.

    The Dead Kitty Copter

    This takes Monty Python’s dead parrot sketch to a whole other level. And the responses are mixed: from “cute” to “hilarious” to “utterly tasteless” to “completely grotesque and definitely not funny.”

    Donkey Rescuer at Queen’s Garden Party

    Most days, she’s out looking after the donkeys at the sanctuary she founded in Israel. But last week Lucy Fensom was at Buckingham Palace for one of the pre-Jubilee garden parties hosted by Queen Elizabeth.

    Farewell to Oliver the ‘Humanzee’

    Oliver was captured in Africa as a two-year-old in the 1960s and sold to animal trainers in the U.S. For the next few years he was exploited for the fact that he had a flatter face than most chimpanzees and tended to walk upright like a human. Perhaps, his owners suggested, he was a hybrid or a “missing link.”

    Bob Barker Does It Again

    Just three weeks after he completed a half-million-dollar donation to Chimp Haven, a Louisiana sanctuary for former laboratory chimpanzees, Bob Barker has sent $250,000 to Save the Chimps, a sanctuary in Florida.