About Liz Kalaugher

Liz Kalaugher is a science journalist and campaigner, based in Bristol, who has written for the New Scientist, BBC Wildlife, the Guardian, BBC News and more, as well as winning science journalism fellowships from the World Federation of Science Journalists and the European Geosciences Union. She is also the co-author of Furry Logic: The Physics of Animal Life.

About The Elephant in the Room

Humans, animals and disease. They’re all inter-related, so why do we keep ignoring the elephant in the room?It’s well known that Covid-19 may have come from a bat, but diseases are often transmitted in the other direction too. Humans have passed diseases to animals countless times through history, and it’s the cross-currents of this relationship between humans, animals and disease that are explored by Liz Kalaugher in The Elephant in the Room.

Taking the reader on a globe-trotting journey through time, Kalaugher presents a series of fascinating case histories of human-related wildlife diseases. Among the stories featured here are the early humans who may have carried pathogens responsible for the extinction of Neanderthals, the native birds of Hawaii that have been devasted by human-introduced disease, and the Tasmanian tiger that has been lost to the sands of time. Examining these tales and drawing on first-hand accounts from experts around the world, The Elephant in the Room is both a tragic history and an inspirational call to arms.

It doesn’t have to be this way. By learning from the past, it’s possible to create a better, healthier environment for ourselves, our wildlife and our planet.

About Alan Toyne

Alan Toyne is an Anthropology graduate with a specialism in primate politics and has a fascination with the similarities that exist between human beings and our ape and monkey cousins. He traveled extensively in search of wild primates and became a zookeeper at Bristol Zoo in 2008.

Working with the troop of Western Lowland gorillas at Bristol Zoo for fourteen years, he built close working relationships with the animals and went on to hand rear and successfully reintroduce two baby Western Lowland Gorillas.

Alan’s first book, Gorillas in our Midst, is about this hand-rearing process and having a baby gorilla at home, life working in a modern zoo, and the undeniable similarities in parenting and social behaviour that we share as species of primates.

Liz Kalaugher: The Elephant in the Room