Elizabeth Marshall Thomas Quotes

What do dogs want? They want each other. Human beings are merely a cynomorphic substitute ...

We recognize caste in dogs because we rank ourselves by the familiar dog system, a ladderlike social arrangement wherein one individual outranks all others, the next outranks all but the first, and so on down the hierarchy. But the cat system is more like a wheel, with a high-ranking cat at the hub and the others arranged around the rim, all reluctantly acknowledging the superiority of the despot but not necessarily measuring themselves against one another.

In the past even scientists have been led to believe that only human beings have thoughts or emotions. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth ... After all, thoughts and emotions have evolutionary value.

I saw that animals were important. I saw that plants were even more important. I was also to learn that compared to many of the other species, we weren't important at all except for the damage we do. We do not rule the natural world, despite our conspicuous position in it. On the contrary, it is our lifeline, and we do well to try to understand its rules.

As the cherub is to the angel, so the cat is to the tiger ...

No cat purrs unless someone is around to listen.

We had lived in savannah for a million years. During that time the world got warm again and wetter, and some of the rain forest returned. But for us it was too late. By then we knew how to live only on the savannah.
We could still climb trees, but we did not go back.

People can be a fine substitute for other dogs. But I think that if they had to choose, dogs by and large would choose the company of other dogs.