The Springing Time - February 26, 2026
While more-than-human beings adapt to ecological changes like earlier springs by adjusting their rhythms and behaviors, Melanie Challenger asks, can we learn from them how to bring our bodies into a more direct conversation with the seasons?
JOHN TEMPLETON FOUNDATION - June 2023
The Science of Agency and the Meaning of Life
“A tall yet delicate plant stands on a chalky hillside. It has three pink sepals arranged like a tricorn hat around the most extraordinary flower, a vegetal rendering of a bee, from its pollen-yellow feelers down to the insect’s delicate brown-black fur. It is a work of art without an artist. A blind masterpiece. This is the sort of thing… ”
Who Speaks for the Whales? - November 1, 2023
The snow is falling slowly as I stand in the ruins of a huge, rusting blubber cookery. I look up as the flakes drift down. Do they contain molecules from the bodies of some of the blue whales who were boiled up in this landscape over half a century ago?
Animals in the Room - August 10, 2023
Why We Can and Should Listen to Other Species
Listening closely for what her nonhuman neighbors are communicating, Melanie Challenger considers what it would take to expand the democratic imagination to include and represent animal voices in the decisions that affect them.
The Ideas Letter 33 - February 6, 2025
In 2016, Klaus Schwab announced that we had entered the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This is the era of the industrialization of biology, the leveraging of technologies to modify biological materials to meet human goals. While the first two Industrial Revolutions exploited energy and materials and the Third exploited digital information, the current revolution is a direct manipulation of life-forms and life’s substances.
IAI - THE INSTITUTE OF ART AND IDEAS - 05/19/2023
What do scientists owe us?
“To what extent should the distinct environments of scientific knowledge creation and dissemination be free from their implications, and should they have some duty of care to the publics or societies that will be impacted by their research? Melanie Challenger wrangles with the dilemmas of knowledge production, misinterpretation, meaning and objectivity.”
THE GUARDIAN - 04/13/2022
A man turns his back on society and lives in a forest for seven years in this moving tribute to the animals that inspired him
“Deer Man follows the story of someone who turns his back on society and spends seven years living in a forest among roe deer. […] a fleeting encounter with a young buck draws him into the woods around Louviers, France, and off he goes. It’s fairytale stuff, both in its transformational force and its unspoken darkness. The lack of information about his life – the ruthless absence of autobiography – can seem odd to a modern reader. Yet the strength of this book is its singular focus on the deer.”
EMERGENCE MAGAZINE - 01/20/2022
As Melanie Challenger examines the belief in human exceptionalism that has devastated life on this planet, she wonders if our desire to outrun death is hindering our capacity to love
“I met Death in my early twenties. I had already lost loved ones before this time. A friend at school was taken by leukemia in a breathtaking six weeks one strange, hot summer. My grandfather, Eric, and my uncle, Tim, both died before their time.”
AEON - 04/06/2021
A 2021 long essay on human exceptionalism and the importance of accepting that we’re animals
“When I visited my grandmother at the undertakers, an hour or so before her funeral, I was struck by how different death is from sleep. A sleeping individual shimmers with fractional movements. The dead seem to rest in paused animation, so still they look smaller than in life. It’s almost impossible not to feel as if something very like the soul is no longer present.”
List of Articles by Melanie
- THE SPRINGING TIME — Emergence Magazine
- SCIENTISTS SAY THEY ARE CLOSE TO RESURRECTING A LOST SPECIES. IS THE AGE OF DE-EXTINCTION UPON US?
- THE AGE OF DE-EXTINCTION: SHOULD WE BRING BACK THE WOOLLY MAMMOTH?
- BY OUR OWN DESIGN — John Templeton Foundation, June 2023
- THE MYTH OF VALUE FREE SCIENCE — Institute of Art and Ideas, 2023
- UNLEARNING HUMAN EXCEPTIONALISM — Great Transition Initiative, 2023
- DEER MAN BY GEOFFROY DELORME REVIEW – LIFE IN THE WILDERNESS — The Guardian, 2022
- ON DEATH AND LOVE — Emergence Magazine, 2022
- THE MIRROR OF NATURE — Inque Magazine, 2021
- THE ANIMAL THAT I AM — Institute of Art and Ideas, 2021
- SOUNDING OUT OTHER SPECIES — The Ecological Citizen, 2021
- THE JOY OF BEING ANIMAL — Aeon, 2021
- ANIMALS ARE OUR OVERLOOKED ALLIES IN THE FIGHT AGAINST COVID — The Guardian, 2021
- BUILDING BACK BETTER WON’T BE POSSIBLE UNLESS WE ADDRESS OUR DEEP DIVISIONS — The Globe and Mail, 2021
- ARE HUMANS ANIMALS? — BBC Science Focus, 2021
- WHY INSULTING PEOPLE’S INTELLIGENCE IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH OPEN DEBATE — New Scientist, 2021
- REASSESSING THE THREE RS? — The Hastings Center, 2020
- A DIM DARK SMUDGE: ON THE EXTINCTION OF MALARIA-CARRYING MOSQUITOES — Little Toller Books, 2018
- Who Speaks for the Whales?
- Animals in the Room Why We Can and Should Listen to Other Species
- Scientists say they are close to resurrecting a lost species. Is the age of de-extinction upon us?