About Us

Welcome to Discover Animals, your resource for entertaining, useful and reliable information about animals. Discover Animals is written for and by people who share a very special love of animals - people who live and work with animals. They are academic as well as hands-on-experts in animal-related fields as diverse as veterinary medicine, animal training, husbandry, animals in education, agriculture, entertainment, sports and science.  

From the very beginning, wild animals and later domestic animals have occupied a unique and mystical place in human consciousness.  

According to a study published in 2011¹, just seeing an animal’s photo is enough to jolt our brains into action in ways that do not occur when we see images of people, places or things. Animals touch us in extraordinary ways. Scientists tell us that because of our ancient and evolutionary relationship with animals - both as predator and prey - our brains are hardwired to pay special attention to them. 

Our relationship with animals continues to evolve. From commemorating animals on the walls of caves to nomadic hunting and herding partnerships, domestication, pet-keeping, and wildlife conservation, our special bond continues to thrive.

We treasure their companionship, their assistance as working partners, their invaluable role in medical advances, for providing us with food and fiber, and for an endless array of other blessings, we enjoy every day. What St. Francis of Assisi declared more than 800 years ago is still true, “Daily we make use of them and cannot live without them."

And we do our best to care for them when they are sick or injured. Not counting private efforts to rescue or rehabilitate animals, according to the AVMA, pet owners alone spent $14.37 billion on veterinary care in 2014!

Despite this ever-deepening bond and our continued reliance on animals, during the last 2 centuries – and for the first time in human history – most people live apart from the animals they depend on for food, leather, wool, for medical advancements, and for a host of other benefits and interactions. The incredible growth of pet ownership over the last century is a direct response to this separation. In a very tangible way, our pets reconnect us to the natural world.  

Instead of hands-on husbandry experience that our rural ancestors took for granted, most people today learn what they know about all animals from their pets, from the classroom, from TV, from popular culture, the Internet, zoos, circuses, and the various animal shows where aspects of husbandry are still understood and practiced.

It is our hope that this website will add to greater public awareness of animal issues and husbandry, help fill the void created by our isolation from so many of the animals we depend on and help correct the misinformation that too often leads to misguided and damaging personal as well as policy decisions in our culture.

Our mission is to be a key resource for relaying interesting and factual information about animals. It’s a colossal mission and not one that can be accomplished overnight, but we are committed to providing a truly valuable resource for animal enthusiasts and professionals everywhere. Please stick around and watch us grow. If you like what you see, join in by contributing new information, photos, videos, scientific studies, and articles. 

This website is a project of the National Animal Interest Alliance (NAIA) whose board members and their unique expertise working with animals are listed here. Please stay tuned and help us as we develop this resource. We have developed numerous ways for you to contribute your special knowledge.  Write to us at support@naiaonline.org for more information or visit the Participate section of the website.

1. A category-specific response to animals in the right human amygdala
Florian Mormann1–3, Julien Dubois1, Simon Kornblith1, Milica Milosavljevic1, Moran Cerf1,2, Matias Ison2,4, Naotsugu Tsuchiya1, Alexander Kraskov1,5, Rodrigo Quian Quiroga1,4, Ralph Adolphs1, Itzhak Fried2,6 & Christof Koch1,7