Animals. We love and care for them as pets, we weave them into our myths and fables and then we breed them under conditions of terrible cruelty just so we can eat them cheaply. As new developments in research into animal cognition force us to concede fewer characteristics separating us from our neighbouring species, this issue of Granta asks writers, poets and photographers to consider the complex ways we interact with the animal kingdom.

Han Kang meditates on canaries; Arnon Grunberg investigates the bloody business of slaughterhouses; Rebecca Giggs on leeches and the weather; Anjan Sundaram celebrates the life of a Rwandan 'hero chicken'; John Connell moves back home to his parents' farm.

With new fiction from Ben Lasman, Yoko Tawada and Nell Zink and new poetry from Ko Ko Thett.