The Design Process, Autism and Animals

Temple Grandin is a professor of animal science at Colorado State University. She designs humane livestock handling facilities, and has done extensive research on cattle temperament, environmental enrichment for pigs, reducing dark cutters and bruises, bull fertility, training procedures, and effective stunning methods for cattle and pigs at meat plants. She has also developed an objective scoring system for
assessing handling of cattle and pigs at meat plants, which is being used by many large corporations to improve animal welfare. Her history as a person with autism has given her insights into animal thinking that ordinary people do not share. As a person with autism, she describes the unique way her visual mind works and how she first made the connection between her autism and animal temperament in her book Thinking in Pictures. InAnimals in Translation, she explores the connection between autism
and animal behavior.