Debby Ng

“Thirteen thousand years ago it fell to Antarctica. It rested in the Allan Hills as the Ice Age glaciers retreated, farmers discovered agriculture, cities rose, and rockets shot into space.”
― Carl Zimmer, Life's Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive

“The disgusting smell of death of death is the result of certain airborne molecules with evocative names like cadaverine and putrescine. These molecules are not produced by death, however, but by life growing on death. After an animal dies, its cells self destruct and become food for the body's resident bacteria. They chew through the walls of the gut and spread through the body. They release cadaverine and putrescine merely as byproducts of their metabolism. These molecules are not actually dangerous to us. They won't kill us like a whiff of sarin or cyanide. Yet our ancestors evolved a keen sensitivity to these molecules, along with an instinctive response to recoil at the merest whiff.”
― Carl Zimmer, Life's Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive

“For some researchers and animal protection organisations, the connection between animal cruelty and human violence has become a moral crusade pursued with missionary zeal. Some researchers, however, have come to question simplistic Link thinking. They worry that Link advocates and the media are perpetuating an irrational moral panic among the public. Link skeptics don't argue that we should ignore animal abuse. Rather, they believe that we should treat animal abuse as a serious problem in its own right, not because it turns children into adult psychopaths.”
― Hal Herzog, Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals