Free Thinking – Does My Pet Love Me?
BBC Radio Three

As one who used to beguile car journeys with surreal discussions of such topics as “Do mice have a Booker Prize?” or “Are ducks plotting world domination?”, I approached this strand (23 April) of Free Thinking’s festival with more than usual interest. For the two animal psychologists and the director of the British Animal Studies Network sat before an audience at the Sage Gateshead, under the benign eye of compère Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough, were there to answer the question, “Does My Pet Love Me?”

So had I, in assuming that animals’ cognitive function comes somewhere relatively close to our own – without perhaps extending to the level of literary prizes – not been wasting my time after all? Well, up to a point. The difficulty, as Ms Barraclough established in her opening exchanges, was that reductiveness got you nowhere.