LOCAL author Michael Bond will be undertaking a mind-expanding deep dive into how animals have shaped us at a forthcoming book talk and signing.

Animate is the author’s latest book about animals, and it traces how humans became disconnected from wild animals, wrongly thinking of ourselves as superior.

The author states that his book examines what we share with animals, and how we struggle with the idea that we are one of them.

The book talk and signing is being held at St Mary’s Church, Ross-on-Wye on Thursday, July 9, at 7pm and is a collaboration between Rossiter Books and The Friends of St Mary's Church.

Michael Bond, who recently moved to Ross, will be carefully outlining how we arrived at where we are today, disconnected from wild animals.

Animate is a deeply researched book, beautifully written and fully engaging – taking readers on a 40,000-year history of human life and culture beginning with Palaeolithic cave paintings.

It explores the psychological relationship between humans and animals, encompassing mythology, folklore, psychology, religion, anthropology and philosophy.

The author aptly concludes that, without other animals, ‘we can hardly be human’. Animate will make you hope that it will result in people changing their species-ist ways of interacting with our animal kin, with whom we actually share a large number of traits.

Michael Bond is a former editor and reporter at New Scientist who has also won a British Psychological Society Book Award for The Power of Others, while his acclaimed Wayfinding: The Art and Science of How We Find and Lose Our Way has been translated into five languages.

Tickets for the event, priced at £8 are on sale at Rossiter Books in the High Street in Ross, on 01989 564 464 and via Ticketsource and rossiterbooks.co.uk.