Calendar Item: Book Signing, Live Exhibits, ‘Mermaids,’ and More at PETA’s Empathy Center

For Immediate Release:
April 11, 2017

Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382

On May 1, PETA’s Empathy Center in Silver Lake will welcome ethicist and author Jonathan Balcombe for a special reading of his new book, What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins, followed by a Q&A session and a book signing.

When:    Monday, May 1, 7–10 p.m.

Where:    The PETA Empathy Center, 2624 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles

The event will also feature four exhibits designed to promote empathy for fish—including a “hooked” human being who will be suspended from the ceiling and “mermaids” who will describe how fish interact with one another.

Balcombe’s new book explores scientific evidence that fish feel pain and pleasure, are intelligent, have memories, communicate with one another, use tools, recognize individual human beings, and more. “[I]f an animal is sentient … to me, that means that animal has moral traction, or it should have moral traction—that the animal is deserving of consideration of others,” he says. “And that … is the bedrock of ethics.”