It has been said that no one in the United States has benefited more animals than Temple Grandin. It is ironic that most of these animals are those destined for slaughter in meat-packing plants, although it must be granted that these animals, perhaps above all, deserve consideration and humane treatment. We salute her for taking up this battle in the trenches.

Grandin’s designs and methods have alleviated the worst stresses and pains as cattle, sheep, and pigs are moved from transports, into pens, through chutes, and into slaughter areas. Her methods create a calm, orderly environment where animals do not balk or panic, resulting in fewer injuries to the cattle and fewer injured workers, less noise, less coercion, less brutality. More than half of the cattle slaughtered in the United States are processed in operations adopting her designs and methods; her clients include those supplying fast-food giants on an industrial scale.

Thinking in Pictures

Temple Grandin has achieved this despite the fact that she is autistic, as it was her autism that created her unique talent. Born in 1947, she did not use speech to communicate until she was nearly five years old. Through the determination of her mother, she went to a normal school though at the time such children were often placed in mental institutions. Autism was thought to be a psychological problem, not a biological or neurologic disorder, causing the child to focus inward and to ignore or reject outside stimuli. It was thought that there was no bridging the gap between the autistic child and the world. After a barrage of therapy and with great difficulty, Grandin managed to graduate from high school. She had spent time on a ranch and had become fascinated with animal behavior after long sessions of watching the cowmen work with the herds. She earned a B.A. at Franklin Pierce College in New Hampshire, an M.S. in Animal Science at Arizona State University, and a Ph.D in Animal Science from the University of Illinois. Today she teaches courses on livestock behavior and facility design at Colorado State University and consults with the livestock industry on facility design, livestock handling, and animal welfare. In addition, she writes widely about autism and her life experiences and efforts to live a functional, purposeful life.

Grandin believes that she experiences the world similarly with animals, thinking in pictures rather than with words. Since she identifies fear as the primary emotion of an autistic person, she readily senses triggers to panic or rage in animals. She can intuit a cow’s-eye view of a cattle pen and see what’s alarming about it. She can imagine a fear-free facility for lining up pigs for vaccinations or examination. She sees, hears, and feels details of an environment that we have learned to tune out, details that can be full of menace to animals.

The Minds of Men and Animals

What truly distinguishes Grandin is her ability to describe how her mind works and how she sees a parallel in animal behavior. Following her breakthrough autobiograhical account of growing up austistic, Emergence: Labelled Autistic (1996), Grandin reached a wide audience with Thinking In Pictures: and Other Reports from My Life with Autism (1995) and Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior. Both are full of fascinating accounts of practical applications of the perceptions of animal behaviorists.

Her latest book, Animals Make Us Human (2009), analyzes situations based on a system devised by Washington State neuroscientist Jaak Panskepp. In Affective Neuroscience (1998) he categorizes the core emotions affecting all animals—seeking, or the “impluse to search, investigate, and make sense of the environment”; fear; rage as a response to frustration or restraint; panic from the terror felt at separation from safety; lust and reproductive urges; care, the manifestation of maternal feelings and caretaking; and play. Grandin applies these concepts to alleviating such varied problems as the stereotyped behaviors of zoo animals and the desensitizing of horses made intractable and dangerous by fear. Pigs, mountain lions, antelopes, cats, dogs, chickens, cattle—all can be understood through acknowledging their core emotions. Today it is widely accepted that animals experience emotions, and this itself represents a significant shift in scholarly precedent.

It is also heartening that Grandin is able to cite many instances where researchers are learning to observe animals with complete objectivity and question long-held theories of animals’ motivation. An example is simple observation of precisely how animals move in response to being approached by a person. The application of behaviorists’ insights seem in every case like simple common sense breaking through. Even more impressive and moving is the bottomless well of compassion that underlies Grandin’s concern for the needs of animals and her faith that understanding can rid their world of unnecessary suffering, both mental and physical.



Image: Scared cow–copyright Farm Sanctuary.

To Learn More

Books We Like

Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals

by Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson (2009)

Investigations into animal behavior are transformed by understanding animals’ core emotional needs and motivations into practical tips for creating an optimum environment. What are chickens’ minimum needs? What makes a pig happy? Can a polar bear be mentally healthy in a zoo? Can an abused horse ever recover? What techniques make it possible to handle high-fear prey animals such as antelopes in a zoo? This book challenges some long-held notions about animals, including dogs’ interrrelationships in a “pack” that includes both dogs and humans. Endlessly intriguing, it is highly recommended to anyone who interacts with animals.