Forget the Camel: The Madcap World of Animal Festivals and What They Say about Being Human

by Elizabeth MeLampy

An immersive entry into animal festivals nationwide that explores how humans tell stories about animals and the stories they tell about themselves in the process

What makes a human different from an animal? Humans triangulate who they are—and what makes them special—through their relationship with animals. In hundreds of annual animal festivals around the world humans gawk at, demonize, or adore animals. Why? What value do these carnivals and their rituals hold, and why, when the animals are in distress, do humans insist that the show must go on?

In Forget the Camel: The Madcap World of Animal Festivals and What They Say about Being Human esteemed animal welfare lawyer Elizabeth MeLampy attends eight quintessential animal festivals and meets the groundhogs, butterflies, rattlesnakes, lobsters, sled dogs, and other creatures humans use to build community, induce fear, and transmit meaning. She shows how profoundly symbolism affects the way humans interact with animals and explores what that says about them. In the process she raises the profound questions of why the human impulse is to dominate, and if in today’s enlightened age humans might find the compassion to craft a new path, one that frees animals from suffering.

Genres: Nonfiction, Animals

272 pages, Hardcover

Published April 8, 2025

About the author

Elizabeth MeLampy is a lawyer whose work focuses on animal rights and protection. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, she was named an Emerging Scholar Fellow by the Brooks Institute for Animal Rights Law and Policy in 2020 and received an award for her work with Harvard Law’s Animal Law & Policy Program in 2021. She clerked for judges in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and the Federal District Court in Arizona and litigated with the Natural Resources Defense Council. She currently lives in Boston, MA.

Reviews

[Claire Polders · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Have humans no shame?” asks lawyer and animal advocate Elizabeth MeLampy. Together with her wife and in the footsteps of her anthropologist grandmother, MeLampy attends a gory rattlesnake roundup, a ludicrous camel race, a supposedly harmless jumping frog jubilee, and other bizarre events. In lucid and haunted prose, she sharply questions our animal narratives, making us feel what we’re too embarrassed to admit. Read when you want to meet your fellow creatures and your own animal self.