Shane Gehlert
The Rosie Question: Why We Love Animals But Eat Meat
Shane saw a contradiction between saving a goat's life and cooking pork chops. That moment changed everything.
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Kintsugi Studio
Shane Gehlert
Shane saw a contradiction between saving a goat's life and cooking pork chops. That moment changed everything.
Hear this story
Shane Gehlert spent 25 years painting chrome kangaroos in the Australian Outback, teaching himself under mentors like Pro Hart. He shot rabbits as a child, traveled to Africa to see wildebeest, and built a quiet life until a contradiction stopped him cold. When his baby goat Rosie broke her leg, Shane paid $600 for a vet to fix it. That same evening, he cooked pork chops and felt nothing. The goat got his money and his care. The pig got his dinner. Why did he feel shame for one animal but not the other?
That question became a book. Shane enrolled in a psychology degree at university after years of listening to ABC podcasts while painting, and he set out to investigate why we claim to love animals while eating them without hesitation. He traced the history of how Western thought separated humans from animals through religious doctrine, then swung the other way during the Victorian era, and only began to study animal minds seriously in the 1960s. He discovered that wild animals now make up just 4 percent of Earth's biomass. Humans and the livestock we farm dominate the planet. He learned that pigs have attachment styles like humans do, and breaking that bond with their mothers early causes lasting harm. He toured a supermarket and saw a 40-meter meat aisle next to a one-meter shelf of plant-based alternatives, and realized how deeply we have normalized our own denial.
Shane's message is quieter than outrage. Stop. Watch the brush turkey walking through the crowd that no one notices. Think about where your food came from and how it lived. Eat a little less meat. That small shift, he argues, could change everything.
“I'm sitting there looking at these pork chops in the pan and I'm thinking to myself, hang on, we've just spent $600 fixing a goat's broken leg and yet I'm cooking this poor pig. How come?”
“We've effectively compartmentalized ourselves from the fact that saying to us, we fool ourselves that they are food, they don't matter, they're not important, and we are special.”
“Children look because children pay attention because they're curious about the world. No one else did.”
The hero, today
The moment Shane saw pork chops in the pan while Rosie recovered from her broken leg forced him to confront why he felt shame for one animal but not the other, which became the core question of the book. Animals have attachment styles just like humans, and breaking that bond with their mothers early causes lasting psychological damage that shows up as destructive behavior throughout their lives. Wild animals now make up only 4 percent of Earth's biomass, while humans and farm animals dominate the planet, a state Shane calls the Meatropocene. If everyone ate even half as much meat as we currently do, it would significantly reduce the scale of factory farming and its harm to both animals and the environment. Paying attention to animals in everyday moments, asking where they came from and how they lived, is the first step toward reconsidering how we treat them as food.
Yes. Shane Gehlert is a real person who shared their own story in their own words. Kintsugi Heroes is a not-for-profit that shares first-person stories of overcoming adversity, told with the person's consent.
Kintsugi Heroes, a registered Australian not-for-profit. Every story is shared with the hero's own consent and reviewed under Kintsugi Heroes' trauma-informed content standard before it goes public.
The moment Shane saw pork chops in the pan while Rosie recovered from her broken leg forced him to confront why he felt shame for one animal but not the other, which became the core question of the book.
Animals have attachment styles just like humans, and breaking that bond with their mothers early causes lasting psychological damage that shows up as destructive behavior throughout their lives.
Wild animals now make up only 4 percent of Earth's biomass, while humans and farm animals dominate the planet, a state Shane calls the Meatropocene.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 00:02
Welcome to another episode of Animals and Us, where we explore and honor the awesomeness of animals and our relationships with them. Today we're with Shane Gellard, artist, author, and longtime animal lover. His book Oh My Goat! Just How Intelligent Are the Animals We Eat blends art, lived experience, and psychology to examine the intelligence and social lives of farm animals. We'll hear how his relationship with animals shaped the project and dive into the minds of animals we eat. Hello Shane, and welcome to Animals and Us.
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 00:49
Hello Natalie, great to be here. Thank you.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 00:52
Shane, let's start with your childhood. You've had such an unconventional life. Can you tell us how it began and where you grew up?
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 01:01
Um, well, I grew up in Adelaide, and, uh, I've been unconventional. I had a conventional life like most kids of my era, uh, ratbags, you know, go out and play, come back at, um, make sure you come back by dinner time, and, uh, do all the usual mischief that, um, kids do. But, uh, I guess I was a bit unusual in that, uh, my father worked for a pastoralist firm So that, um, uh, back in that era, um, overseas holidays were sort of, you know, they were something only the new very rich participated in. So, uh, each school holidays we'd be packed up and head 5 or 6 hours north to a, to a shoot station and, uh, stay in the shearer's quarters and go out and explore and ride motorbikes and shoot rabbits and camp and do all sorts of things that, um, kids should be doing. Yeah.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 01:54
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If everyone ate even half as much meat as we currently do, it would significantly reduce the scale of factory farming and its harm to both animals and the environment.
This conversation includes shooting rabbits and loving animals, africa and what disappears outside the parks, ten years in broken hill, painting chrome, listening to podcasts while painting leads to psychology, rosie breaks her leg and the question that becomes a book.
So you had a lot of freedom, a free-range childhood?
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 01:59
Yeah, yeah, a lot of freedom. Yeah, absolutely. And, um, you know, despite the fact that I was shooting rabbits and, you know, we go out and when I was a little bit older, we go out and shoot feral goats and pigs and things like that. But I always had a, in the back of my mind, I'd always had a lifelong, um, love of animals. And I never quite enjoyed the shooting. I mean, they were feral pests and, and, you know, I guess that's the excuse that partly we tell ourselves, which I'll sort of talk about later in the book. And, uh, but I'd always, uh, you know, as a child held this lifelong fascination with animals and how they work, how they, uh, how they behave. Posters on the wall of lions and giraffes and that sort of thing. And, uh, Once I'd got to save up enough money and got into my 20s, one of my first trips overseas was to Africa to see the migrating wildebeest on the Masai Mara and the Serengeti Plains. And yeah, it was a bit of a lifelong dream come true. Yeah.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 03:05
And did that influence you at all, your trip to Africa?
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 03:09
Oh, absolutely. You know, I think it's really important that as, you know, get out and see the world as, as, as soon as possible, you know, the younger, the better. I really admire people who take their kids to far-flung places and let them see, you know, fantastic experiences and other cultures. Um, it really does give you a good grounding in life. And, uh, what really stuck with me from that trip was the fact that so much diversity wildlife in Africa, but it's all just contained into the national parks. You know, outside of the national parks, we did a lot of traveling in the back of an old, uh, army truck. And you would see there's nothing outside of the parks. There's no animals. You're lucky to see a zebra here and there. Um, I've got a friend who was just come back from a trip over there and he sort of said the same thing that outside of the parks, you don't see animals. And yeah, yeah, that, and, and this is all part of this, um, the fact that animals, uh, the wild animals on the planet are disappearing and being replaced with domestic ones, which, uh, I go into in the book.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 04:11
Yes, yes. And Shane, you returned to Australia and you spent a lot of your adult childhood and adult life in the Australian Outback. Can you tell us where you, where you lived most of the time and, and how that shaped the Outback, shaped your life?
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 04:28
Uh, yeah, absolutely. I In my 20s, I moved to a place called Broken Hill, which is in the middle of nowhere. It's 1,200 kilometers from west of Sydney, about 600 kilometers northeast of Adelaide. And, uh, I went there to start a career in painting. Um, I taught myself, met up with some wonderful artists up there such as Pro Hart, Peter Brown, um, Howard Steer, people who were mentors to me when I was younger, and uh, set up a gallery there and dealt with the public for about 6 years or so. I think I was here in Broken Hill for a decade and, uh, finally decided, yeah, time to move on to literally to greener pastures. Hmm.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 05:15
And where did you move to from, from Broken Hill?
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 05:18
So from Broken Hill we moved to the Sunshine Coast, which, um, yeah, Greener pastures. I like Greener. Um, and it was, yeah, it's just one of those things where, you know, your life, portion of your life has run its course. Um, and on to the next stage, onwards and upwards.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 05:38
Yeah. And Shane, you were an artist for about 25 years. Can you describe your very distinctive style of art?
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 05:48
Yeah, absolutely. Um, early on, early on when I first started, I was more traditional sort of painter, and I got bored with that, started pushing the boundaries, and came across this concept of painting kangaroos as chrome rather than being, you know, now with fur and whatnot. And it took off. People, people liked it, and I explored that genre, a bit more sort of surrealism is what, what basically I was doing there. Um, and that sort of transmogrified into chrome nudes, and I became very popular for those. And, uh, yeah, that was, uh, what I was doing for around 25 years.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 06:32
Yeah. One of the paintings that struck me is of— is your chrome kangaroos. Absolutely stunning. Can you tell us where that Chrome Kangaroo came from, where the idea came from, and why chrome and not natural colors?
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 06:50
Yeah, I recall one day an older lady came into my gallery and she said, why did you ruin that kangaroo by painting it blue and brown? Because of reflections. Obviously the reflections are of the sky are blue and the landscape are brown. And I realized, yeah, she didn't quite get it, but the, the whole thing is that being chrome, the kangaroo is reflecting everything in its environment and absorbing everything in its environment. And being metal and chrome, it's, uh, I used to tell people, yeah, so could survive an impact with a Mack truck to make them a little— yeah, this is more like an advanced improved model. But yeah, it's all, it was all tongue-in-cheek. And I did a lot of, um, put a little, lots of little statements into my paintings. I guess it's, um, I've always been a bit outspoken in that regard. And so I'd sort of put little bits of things to get people thinking. And, uh, surprisingly, every now and again, someone would come along and go, oh, I like what you did there. I can see what you've done there. Yeah, that was quite good.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 07:51
Yes, absolutely stunning, stunning artwork. Shane, is there, do you have a favorite piece, a favorite painting, one that you're most proud of?
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 08:03
No, I haven't done it yet. Right, that's a, that's a play on a friend of mine, an artist. He used to, used to reply when people say, what's your best painting? You say, I haven't done it yet. Actually, I think that was Pro Hart might have said that, um, at one stage. Yeah, and I reckon that's quite a good analogy. But, uh, no, I don't really have a favorite. Um, I've kept a few over the years that hanging on the wall. Um, but yeah, no, I kind of— being an artist, you've got to be— if you want to progress, you've got to be self-critical. So I sort of paint it, go, oh, that's great, and a week later I look at it and go, that's crap. So onwards and upwards.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 08:44
Yeah. Shane, you now live on the Sunshine Coast, and you've— since you, you studied and have a degree in psychology, what sparked your interest in psychology?
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 08:56
So strangely enough, uh, when you're painting, you have a lot of time. You, you know, you're focusing, you're in the flow doing what you're doing. So I get bored of listening to music in the background, and early on when I— when the internet was, you know, the old dial-up internet, I'd listen to ABC podcasts before podcast was even a term, and One of the earlier programs I used to listen to was All in the Mind with Lynne Malcolm, and I used to love her shows and that sort of, uh, over the years I've listened to different podcasts and, and as the podcast genre grew and took quite a shine to a lot of, uh, a lot of talks on psychology and eventually led to Jordan Peterson and, uh, large, um, people who are, um, iconic in that area. Uh, area. And one day my wife Christine said, oh, the uni has, um, got an open day, why don't you go along? I said, uh, yeah, right. So I went along and sat down and threw a thing, and despite getting a $40 parking fine, I, I decided, you know, I'm going to enroll and give this a crack. So that was 3 and a half years ago, and, uh, yeah, haven't looked back.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 10:14
Yeah. So you have a degree in psychology now?
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 10:19
Well, just one shy. I've just got one subject to finish off and that will be completed. And hope to go on and do some research next year. All going well.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 10:31
Yes. Yeah. Good luck with that. Shane, you now live on or share your property with a bunch of alpacas and goats and chooks. And there was one particular goat, a baby goat called Rosie, who who changed your life. Can you tell us what, tell us what happened with Rosie?
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 10:50
Sure. Um, we, when we first moved to our property, we've got about, um, 13 acres here, uh, mostly bushland, but a little bit, a couple of acres of cleared land. And I got tired of mowing the lawn. So we got a bunch of alpacas and they bred up. And one stage when we had about 10, down to 2. Geriatric alpacas now. But, uh, when we lost one of the alpacas, we decided, oh, maybe we'll give goats a crack. And yeah, that was an experience, um, I should have put a bit more thought into. That, uh, goats are highly intelligent animals, very good at— alpacas don't test fences, as, as you would know, Natalie. Cattle definitely test fences. Alpacas are pretty good, you know, they don't test fences, but goats, they will look for any vulnerability and they will exploit it. So we started off with a couple of goats, a nanny and two kids, sorry. And then from there, one of our long-suffering vet, Rob, he took pity on us when we lost one of our alpacas and he said, would you like one of my billies? It's a lovely purebred goat. I said, yeah, why not? Yeah, now we have 10 goats. He was— he proved to be quite virile, let's put it that way. But, uh, yep, they've all had the snip now, so no more goats. So one of his offspring was a little goat called Rosie, and when she was about possibly 4 or 5 weeks old, um, my wife Christine came running in. She said, I think Rosie might have broken her leg. So I went out and had a look, and there's poor old Rosie's leg, it's just flapping around like this in the breeze. So we took her down to Rob and, uh, the vet, x-rayed her, and ended up putting a cast on her. And then we got the bill, and that night we put— took Rosie home, and she had— with her cast on, and put her in a little cage outside of our, our kitchen door, and That evening I cooked the dinner and I'm sitting there looking at these pork chops in the, in the pan and I'm thinking to myself, hang on, I, we've just spent $600 fixing a goat's broken leg and yet I'm cooking this poor pig. How come? Why am I reacting this way? What's going on here? Why do I not feel pity or shame for this animal that died that I'm cooking in a pan? And yet this animal out here, which is possibly less intelligent, um, we just spent all this money up. I thought, what is going on there? What is that all about? And the next day I started to draw on what I've learned in psychology and started to do a deep dive into what's going on there. And I thought, you know what, there's a book in this. So, and the rest is history.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 13:44
Yes. Let's talk about your book now, Shane. Let's start with the title and where the title came from.
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 13:52
Well, you know, you need a hook. You need a hook for a book. And I thought, what's a catchy title? I thought, OMG, you know, oh my goat. And, um, because, uh, yeah, so with goats, you quite often have those moments, those OMG moments, like, oh my God, what have you done now? You know, they always find inopportune times to, you know, do something stupid and end up having to call out the vet or whatever. But I thought, why is it that we, you know, drawing on those, those conclusions of why do we, um, love animals but eat meat? So I called the book Oh My Goat: Just How Intelligent Are the Animals We Eat?
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 14:34
Hmm, very, very interesting title, very interesting subject. Can you give us an overview of, of what the book's about?
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 14:44
The book is, it starts off recounting the story of Rosie and, and, and, and that I just discussed, um, described there. Then I kind of went and did a deep dive. I thought I'll just talk about the intelligence of animals, but as I, more research I did, I realized that this goes back a long, long way before, you know, way before Western civilization, you know, back to the time of Socrates and Plato, where they were the first philosophers to, to think about animals and, and, uh, are animals intelligent? Do they think and reason like people? Um, and so I looked at the way they view that and people through history like Jeremy Bentham, um, who was purportedly, uh, one of the first proponents of animal welfare. Um, there's a whole lot to that story, but Um, it wasn't really up until the time of Darwin that people started to realize that animals, we are descended from animals. Prior to that, we had all this religious dogma that, that perpetuated society, that we were more important than animals. We were above animals. Um, the Systeme Naturel described us in hierarchies with the humans, God at the top, then humans, and then the animals of, uh, progressing down to the lowest things like mollusks and that. And around the time of Darwin, that thinking started to change as people realized the theory of evolution and sexual selection. And a strange thing happened during the, the Victorian era. People started to actually— it swung the other way, and people started to obsessed with animals. And you had all sorts of quirky things happen, like performances, and Hans the Clever Talking Horse, who apparently he traveled all around Europe because he could— his master could count and the horse could do equations. And of course, yeah, this— the media just latched onto this. And of course, there was more behind the story as a psychologist did a little bit of a study into him and found out that the horse was actually taking cues from his owner. And because the horse would tap, tap his foot, and then of course the owner would then just give a subtle facial gesture or a movement, and the horse would pick up on that and then stop. So yeah, all sorts of strange things happened in that period, and it wasn't really until probably the 1960s when psychology progressed from the behaviorism, which was B.F. Skinner, really. I mean, psychology sort of only began around the turn of the century and of course was made famous with Freud and Carl Jung. And B.F. Skinner, um, in the 1950s, he posited that everything was around, centered around behaviorism. You know, everything could be explained by behaviorism. But it wasn't until the 1960s and cognitive psychology began to take over and change that paradigm that people started to look at animals and go, you know what, this animals seem to have the same brain structures, they have the same behaviors, and perhaps they have the same thought processes of people or cognitive abilities. And then that really sort of took off. And, but even to this day, um, they call it comparative psychology, you know, between humans and animals. It's, it's not a lot of people in that field. And I think it's really, really under-researched field. Yeah.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 18:34
Comparative psychology.
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 18:38
I think it, um, partly I I think there's within us, there's a part of us wants to believe we're special. You know, we want to believe that, that, um, even taking the religious, um, dogma out of the equation, it's, you know, we still like to believe that we're special and that we're different. But the more you get to know animals, you know, you realize, yeah, we're not that different at all.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 19:02
Hmm. Yep. We all want to, we all want to live and, and be safe. Yeah.
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 19:09
Yeah. And, um, as you study the behavior of animals and you look at how they react and why they react, you realize there's so many parallels with the way we behave and act. And animals have personalities just as we do. But part of the reason I wanted to write the book about, um, cows, chicken, pigs, and, um, goats. Was we kind of have this view that they're just a product, you know, they're just, they're, they're meat. And we've got this homogenized version of chicken, you know, it's wrapped up in, in, um, um, the plastic film that comes from Coles, you know, that's chicken. Um, and it's kind of, we've separated that from the image of the chicken that's got feathers and clucks and walks around the yard and scratches and as social interactions and actually, believe it or not, show emotions as well. So yeah, we've effectively compartmentalized ourselves from the fact that saying to us, we fool ourselves that they are food, they don't matter, they're not important, and we are special. And yeah, we're pretty good at doing that, I think.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 20:20
Mm-hmm. You certainly are. When you were researching the book and particularly about the history of our views of animals, was there a particular story or study that made you go, wow, this, this is amazing. This is truly surprising.
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 20:41
There was one that it's, it's kind of intelligence, but they studied the brains of elephants and elephants have huge brains, like in proportion to their body size, it's about normal. There's this kind of quirky equation that says, um, throughout the animal kingdom, the brain size is basically equivalent to the mass of the body. So elephants are no different. But what they found with elephants was they have extra sets of genomes that are related to memory and cognitive decline. Uh, and they have— I don't quite be here, but I think it's 4 or 6 times as many aspects of this particular part of the genome that prevent, um, memory and neuronal loss in the brain compared to humans. And I think, you know, there's still so many untapped things in the animal world that, I mean, this, this could be hugely relevant to Alzheimer's disease. Um, so there's just, yeah, that's one of the quirky things One of my favorite quirky ones I came across was in the Victorian era when animals were quite famous and all these animals that were, there was Rolf the talking dog that famously could, could pronounce all these different words. Of course, they found out he was a fraud that, uh, well, his owner was a fraud, but there's this particular chap who used to take animals and taxiderm them and put them into all these different settings, these Victorian style settings of foxes with having cups of tea with rabbits and, and, um, little baby rabbits getting married with a, with a badger as a, uh, the priest and all this weird quirky stuff. And he had this little shop, I think it was in London, and people would come in and pay, you know, a couple of pennies to come and look at his exhibits. I thought that was kind of weird and wacky.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 22:40
Very quirky. Yeah.
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 22:41
Yeah, I did a bit of taxidermy when I was younger. It's a strange profession there, not something I'd like to repeat. Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 22:51
Shane, in your book, you suggest that our era might be referred to as meat, meatropocene. I hope I pronounced that properly. Can you tell us what that means and where that term came from?
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 23:05
Yeah, sure. The epoch we live in at the moment is often called the Anthropocene because we have, well, it is the Holocene, but quite a few scholars call it the Anthropocene because humans have significantly changed the climate, the Earth, some of the aspects of our planet in the last 10,000 years. And I argue that perhaps we should call it the Metropocene because Sadly, only 4% of the biomass on this planet, and that's not just animals, that includes all the fish, whales, and the sea, only 4% are wild animals. Uh, I believe it's about 30%, around 30% or more are humans. I mean, there's 8 billion of us and the rest are mostly cows and chickens. Um, and then Possibly, I think chickens might be outnumbering cows at the moment, but yeah, as far as mass goes, cows are definitely, yeah, we're like planet cow. Um, and I think that's disturbing because it brings about all manner of problems because cows are pretty tough on the environment. You know, they've got hard hoofs. They, you know, in hot weather they can drink up to 100 liters of water a day. They munch their way through a lot of grass and they produce methane. And, you know, despite the fact we've evolved with and bred cattle for the last 8,000 to 10,000 years, we've never done it on this scale. You know, this, the sheer scale of meat production in the world, it's just staggering. I couldn't believe it when I found the fact that we produce and consume 370 million tons of meat a year. I found from memory, yo, that talking 17,000 Boeing 747s or something in equivalent weight, it's just crazy.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 25:03
And it's because of the development of factory farms, isn't it?
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 25:07
Absolutely.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 25:08
That we can scale the production of so many animals.
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 25:13
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, we're quite good here in Australia with free-range cattle who are, you know, off in the Northern Territory and, and Outback Queensland, you know, we're one of the biggest producers in the world of beef, but we're also, and actually strangely enough, we're the world's largest producer of tallow, which is rendered down beef fat. But those cows have pretty good lives, you know, they're free-ranging and, and, uh, you know, we get rounded up and inevitably taken to market, but there's a hell of a lot of animals that just have really miserable lives in these factory farms. Chickens get the worst deal. They've been selectively bred to grow so fast. I love the term someone came up with, Franken-chickens, because the chickens have just been genetically selected to grow so quickly that they fall over and they eat so much that the farmers have to regulate the food in the big factory pens, otherwise chickens would just eat themselves to death. And these poor chooks, they just stagger around, they've got leg problems because they have problems standing because they grow so quickly. And then they kill them at, I think around 26 weeks of age and they spend their entire life in a shed. These are broiler hens I'm talking about. And yeah, I just think that's pretty miserable existence when you see Chickens, you know, they live for, you know, egg-laying chooks. Our egg-laying chooks probably live about 4 years. Um, chooks in the wild, they live for 10, 14 years. Um, they have, um, very, very varied lives. Chooks are, by the way, descended from this beautiful looking animal called the jungle fowl, and we saw some in Sri Lanka a couple of years back, went through some national parks and saw a few jungle fowls strutting around, very colorful, much smaller than an average chook. And think, you know, what the life they have compared to these poor old broilers, you know, that's just crazy.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 27:20
Yes, yes. And of course pigs in factory farms have a terrible life too. Can you tell us about your knowledge of factory farms in China? You're describing them in in that live in tall buildings.
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 27:36
Yeah, this is something I didn't know anything about. Um, I, I don't have any experience with pigs. I've never raised pigs or, and, um, everyone I've spoken to tell me how intelligent they are. And surprisingly, when I was doing research, I could find hardly any credible research on pig intelligence because most of it is centered around growing them up for market. Um, and much of the research I did find around these animals was around, um, not so much their intelligence, but around producing better meat. Um, guess that's where a lot of funding comes from. But back to the pigs. Um, I came across this article about factory farming in China and they were using multi-story buildings. And then I found a story where they they, I think they had 6 or 8 levels. And then that led to another story where they had just finished producing, uh, finished building in the southern part of China, 2 26-story buildings that were entirely for the purpose of housing pigs. And the, the sows giving birth would be at the bottom level. And then as the pigs grew, they'd progress, they'd go put them in elevators, take them up to the different levels. And they grow them out in the different levels. And by the time they got to the top, when they were ready for market, they— I don't know whether they'd send them down the elevator or down a chute or something and truck them all off to the abattoirs. They had on-site enormous hoppers on-site for feeding the pigs. And of course, they'd have a waste treatment facility because there'd be millions of tons of excrement produced as well. But these poor old pigs, 26 stories high, 2 buildings, and their entire lives were Never see that a lot.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 29:19
Yeah.
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 29:20
Yeah.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 29:21
Tragic. So tragic.
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 29:24
And pigs are, um, you know, they, they're highly intelligent and a lot of their behaviors are centered around socializing. Um, you know, pigs in the wild root around in the ground and dig up and, and they're very social animals, but the way they're farmed in mass environments like that, it's just, that's not how a pig lives.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 29:43
You know, it's, it's just, it's they can't express their truth, they can't express the essence, their pig essence, and do what they want to do. I've had a couple of pet pigs, so, and I got to know them very well, and they're so much to me, they remind me very much of dogs with their individual personalities. I think they even had a sense of humor, and they just, yeah, it's, it's very, very sad places.
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 30:08
I didn't touch in on that in the book, humor, because it's a tough one because it's not really studied, so I couldn't quote it. But animals, animals do. Have you ever seen the videos online of, of, um, gorillas in the zoo? And the young gorilla goes up and there's a big old silverback sitting there, and it'll sneak up behind him and like pinch him on the bum and then run off. You know, animals definitely have a sense of humor.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 30:32
Playful. Yeah, yeah.
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 30:33
You see, I've seen videos of crows that sit on the peak of a roof and slide down and then run back up and do it all again.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 30:40
Yeah.
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 30:41
They just, animals love to play.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 30:43
Yes. Yes, they do. What, what is there any one insight that stood out for you when you did research farm animals? One, one, something that really struck you as being very important. Yes.
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 31:00
Um, something that really I find interesting is Um, the fact that it's really important how an animal, um, when it's— how it attaches to its mother. This is the thing, whole thing in psychology called attachment theory, and it's super important because as a young animal or a human baby is born, it has its, uh, learning memory, um, I'm trying to think of the words to say. So there's a process where the brain is wiring itself up as a, as a, uh, a baby is born, for example, is born with more neurons to ever have in its lifetime. And as it learns, these connections become stronger and, uh, it attached the part of that is bonding and attaching to its mother. And if it has a stable environment, then the child can learn to regulate its emotions and grow up to be a normal functioning human being. And what I found fascinating was that animals also have attachment styles. And if their attachment is broken in some way, much in the way humans, if they have a terrible parent and they, their attachment style is dysfunctional, it affects them for the rest of their life. And I found through the work of, uh, Jörg Panske, that he was a neurobiologist who did some fabulous work on, on mostly on rats, that if that attachment bond was broken, that really screwed things up and going back to pigs, that's part of the, um, when they wean pigs from the mother, they do it way too early and then the pigs have all these dysfunctional behaviors. They do a lot of things called nosing where they'll, they'll, um, whack each other under the belly, like as they would with the sow, you know, trying to get milk from the sow. And they do a lot of tail biting. Uh, they, uh, maul each other. And these are all dysfunctional behaviors that come because they were taken away from the mother way too early. And people who are good at animal husbandry, you know, they know these things, you know, they know the right time to take, to wean the calf or to wean the the, the pup from the, the, the female dog. And yeah, I found that fascinating that, you know, we're, that's another thing that we're really not that different. And those sort of things are important. But I guess, you know, people who think industry, at the end of the day, they're breeding meat. So they don't particularly care about those things, but it does actually affect the animal if they wean them way too early and they get these nosing behaviors and bite each other's tails off and maul each other. Yeah, it's not good. It's not, um, good. You end up with things that are damaged and, and, uh, yeah.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 33:48
So I found that highly distressed.
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 33:51
Yeah. Yeah. Another interesting thing is anyone who's had a, um, if I had a neurotic dog will know that, uh, antidepressants work exactly on a lot of animals just as they do humans very well. Yeah.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 34:07
Yes. Shane, as a psychology graduate and an artist, how did, how did those two lenses shape the way you wrote your book?
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 34:20
Well, it gave me the advantage that I didn't have to pay someone to do the COVID art, so I could do it myself. Um, I've done a lot of photography over the years and I scribbled inside the book with quite a few different drawings. I had quite enjoyed illustrating some, some different, each chapter I'd illustrated a different drawing. Um, I think that creativity is just a multifaceted thing. You know, if you have curiosity, then you'll look into things. If you have creativity, you can take concepts and, and examine those and turn them around and, and find different meanings.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 34:59
And yeah.
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 35:00
So just, it's an advantage there, I guess.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 35:03
Yeah.
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 35:04
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 35:05
And as you mentioned earlier, when we just, when we had an earlier conversation, everything has been well researched and evidence-based. Is that correct?
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 35:16
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. It's one of the things that drummed into you in psychology is research, research, you know, quote, um, make sure that, uh, everything's spot on. And, uh, I took that practice into, into writing the book. I found that, you know, I might have this knowledge in my head of something I've seen, or, but I didn't feel comfortable writing that unless I could back that up with other evidence. And that's, I've done that throughout the book. So there's lots of annoying little numbers next to the end of sentences, then they correspond with the reference at the back of the book. Yeah, I think it's, it's important. Otherwise you just, it's an opinion. And I think that in nonfiction, fiction is great. You can say whatever you like, the world's your oyster. But if you're talking about factual things, I think, you know, it's important to highlight this is where I got my information from. Yeah.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 36:12
Yes. Yeah. And has the book influenced the way you've changed your, any of your behaviors? Perhaps your eating behaviors?
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 36:23
Yes, absolutely. It has. And I mentioned in the book cognitive dissonance with that, which we talked about earlier, is that discomfort we feel when our actions don't align with our thoughts and beliefs. You know, I love animals, but you know, I really like my steak, you know. Yeah. Each time we go shopping, it's just like, for instance, we were in, um, big supermarket just yesterday and there was a, a small fridge, probably about a meter across that had plant-based meat alternatives. And a lot of them were pretty miserable looking and a lot of plant-based alternatives have really high salt content and lots of other ingredients thrown in. But the, meat aisle, I think it just went on forever. It was, it was probably 40, 50 meters long. And then there was other aisles with frozen meat. And it's just like, we just don't, unless you're cognizant of how much meat we really eat, you just don't notice it because it's just, it's been normalized into our society. You know, the Aussie barbecue, you know, bring along all the meat and a couple of Greek people bring the salad and the salad usually sits here half eaten and of course everyone hoes into the steaks and things. And, uh, but yeah, it's definitely affected the way I've cut down, um, how much meat we eat. Um, I'd like to cut it out completely. Um, so you reduce consumption? Reduce consumption. Because I think, um, I mentioned in the book a concept called flexitarianism, which is not, you know, you've got vegans and you don't eat all plant-based. Um, then you've got vegetarians who, who eat plants and will eat, I believe, milk and eggs. But flexitarian is sort of cutting out, trying to cut out as much meat as possible. And I think if, if, if everyone did that, you know, if we just reduced that 370 million tons down to something less than that, uh, you know, some half of that, it'd be much kinder on the environment. Um, there'd be less propensity to have these massive factory farms that are just not good for the animals. Um, I just think it would be better all around, you know.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 38:41
Yeah, the world would be better if we, if everyone ate a bit less meat.
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 38:47
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 38:50
And Shane, what is one final message you would, you would like our audience to leave with, or perhaps a final, a key message from your book?
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 39:02
So here's an image I had in my head at the moment. We're in Brisbane a few weeks back and right in the center of South Bank, super, super busy, people everywhere. And I was just standing there, I was watching this brush turkey, and brush turkeys are really really cool animals. They've almost went extinct in Australia, um, on the east coast of Australia, because after the— during the Great Depression, people used to eat them. And they were prolific through— throughout western Queensland. And but now they're mostly inhabiting the coastal areas because they're survivors. They've learned how to adapt quickly. And anyway, I was back to the story. I was watching this turkey just walking around the feet of all these people, these massive crowds of people. And I watched him, and he's pecking around and jumping in the garden and playing with some other turkey, and no one noticed it. No one looked. A child looked. Children look because children pay attention because they're curious about the world. No one else did, you know. Just take the time, stop and look at, you know, if you're having a cup of cup of coffee and you get a minor bird land on your table, or don't chase it off, just watch it and observe it and just see what it does, you know, and start to think about those animals, just how precarious their life is. You know, that, that bird probably came from 4 hatchlings and it's only one who survived, and maybe out of 3 clutches only one survived. You know, these animals are hanging on precariously and surviving in our environment. Just look at their lives. Just think about it. You know, what, what did that, where did that animal come from? Then, then think about the food you eat. Just think, you know, I just bought that Bachelor's Handbag, you know, you know, the, the roast chook in the, in the bag as we, we, we like to take home and have, have for lunch. And just think, well, hang on, just when this thing had feathers on it and a beak and plucking around and digging in it. Now, what sort of life did it lead? Just be cognizant of that and just try and eat a little bit less meat.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 41:11
Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful, Shane. And Shane, what's next for you? What are your future plans?
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 41:18
Apart from doing the research, which I hope to do, I'd like to write another book, but I've got a few ideas in mind. I'm not quite sure where to go with that though.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 41:28
Yeah.
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 41:29
All right.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 41:30
We'll be following you. Shane, how can people follow you and find your your art and also find your, find your latest book?
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 41:39
Sure, uh, just look up my name, shanegillett.com. There's a link there to the book, which looks like this. There's Rosie on the COVID An interesting story behind Rosie, because when I took her photo, I just couldn't— can't work with animals or children— I couldn't get her to stand still. So I ended up having to bribe her with a piece of broccoli and actually the photo actually had a big piece of broccoli stuck in her mouth. I had to Photoshop that out, you know, paid for a big cover. There's lots of drawings in here, drawings of goats and things like that. And yeah, I hope that people will find it interesting, as interesting as I found to write. And I also hope that people find it polarizing because, you know, that's the start of a good discussion. No, yeah, think about it, you know, what's going on here. Maybe we're taking all the stuff for granted. And, uh, my art you can find on outbackart.com.au, and I'll leave some links on the little side for you. And, uh, yeah, get in contact with me, tell me what you think, what you thought.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 42:49
Wonderful. Thank you very much, Shane. Thank you for writing that book. It certainly is provocative, thought-provoking about the lives behind the animals we eat. Thank you very much, Shane, for joining us.
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 43:05
Thank you for having me, Natalie. Thank you. Follow the Sun. Animals and Us is a production of Kintsugi Heroes. Thank you to Xavier Rudd for his permission to use Follow the Sun as our theme music for this series. If you enjoyed this conversation, share the podcast with a friend and let us know by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you'd like to support Kintsugi Heroes and the stories we share, head to kintsugiheroes.com.au and follow the instructions to make a tax-deductible donation.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 43:44
Thank you for listening.
Shane Gehlert (Guest) · 43:46
And we'll see you next time. Brand new moon, brand new sun.
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