Non-fiction

Guilty Pigs Katy Barnett and Jeremy Gans: Latrobe University Press, $35

Who’s to blame if your cow injures your neighbour? What if you want to leave your entire estate to your goldfish? Law professors Barnett and Gans have fun trawling through ancient lore and Australian law to discover how humans have dealt with the tricky legal questions raised by animals: wild, farmed and pets. From monkeys to macaws, courts have struggled to define the limits of “humanity” and whether that applies to animals. Spoiler, they haven’t yet, but Barnett and Gans hope their history might contribute to a more anthropomorphic view of non-verbal creatures. Animal lovers will relish this, and animal victims will probably find what they are looking for, too. ROBYN DOUGLASS hhhkj