Part of The Animals Issue of The Highlight, our home for ambitious stories that explain our world.
Sources:
- 2017-2018 Pet Ownership and Demographics Sourcebook by the American Veterinary Medical Association
- US Public Views on Climate and Energy (October 2019) by Pew Research Center
- Pets in America: A History by Katherine C. Grier
- Livestock a major threat to environment by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
- Environmental impacts of food consumption by dogs and cats in PLOS One by Gregory S. Okin
- Scoop the poop from the University of Washington’s School of Marine and Environmental Affairs
- Water Footprint Calculator
Eleanor Cummins is a science writer and frequent contributor to the Highlight. Most recently, she’s written about the new skepticism and the Twitter presidency for Vox.
Maki Naro is an award-winning cartoonist, illustrator, and science communicator and the author of seven self-published comic books. He previously illustrated a comic about why there are so few women Nobel Prize winners for Vox.