Sentinels (When Diseases Spread Between Animals and Humans)

Humans have long observed animals for advanced warnings of danger. What can they tell us about the growing threat of viruses and other infectious organisms in the age of climate change?

Coronaviruses jump from bats to chimpanzees to humans. You can give your cat the flu, and pass tuberculosis to an elephant. The scientific term for this—zoonosis—is a word of the future, one that reveals how human and animal lives are inextricably linked. For scientists now warn that human destruction of the environment is responsible for the accelerating spillover of animal diseases, posing a global health threat.

In a journey that will take readers from southern China to West Africa, from Antarctica to Australia, journalist Michael Dulaney tracks the surprising ways that people and animals are navigating our shared future—along the way meeting camels in Saudi Arabian beauty pageants, coastal seals with bird flu, and genetically engineered disease-proof pigs. In prose that is entertaining, moving, and deeply informed, Sentinels is not just about fears of contagion, but about the wonder of nature, and understanding our species’ capacity to regenerate and revitalize as much as to destroy.