Sentinels: when diseases spread between animals and humans by Michael Dulaney has been featured in major media pieces recently.
6 August, 2026
Sentinels in the media
Michael Dulaney was interviewed by Richard Fidler on ABC Conversations, in the episode ‘Zoonoses — the diseases that jump from animals to people’
The Guardian ran an edited extract from the book: ‘A mystery virus started killing horses. Then humans. Was this the moment our coronavirus era began?’
The Age ran a ‘Lunch With’ feature about the author: ‘Why this science writer will hole up on a farm in WA if bird flu strain mutates’
The book was featured in The Guardian'sround-up of the ‘Best Australian books out in August’
Readings ran a reviewof Sentinels:
‘Compelling, concerning and ultimately hopeful, Sentinels may be hard to look at sometimes, but we as a species no longer have the luxury of ignoring what it has to tell us.’ —Tamuz Ellazam, Readings
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Sentinels
Humans have long observed animals for advanced warnings of danger. What can they tell us about the growing threat of contagion in the age of climate change?
Diseases today reveal our close ties to animals. Viruses leap from bats to camels to humans. Cats catch the flu, and tourists pass tuberculosis to elephants. In recent years, however, something has changed. Exploitation of the environment is causing more diseases to jump species than ever before — a threat to life that rivals climate change. The science is clear: the cause of this great acceleration is us.
In Sentinels, Michael Dulaney takes readers from southern China to the Andes, from the Arctic to Australia, to tell the gripping stories of the people and animals at the forefront of this enormous change. Dulaney joins ecologists tracking flying foxes through Australia’s eastern forests, and frog hunters netting endangered species on Indonesian mountains. Along the way, we meet lemmings that resist global warming, coastal seals with bird flu, and genetically engineered disease-proof pigs.
Combining vivid field reporting with natural history, these stories move beyond the fear of contagion to explore the beauty and resilience of life, and the human capacity to regenerate as much as to destroy. Urgent, moving, and deeply informed, Sentinels is an essential reckoning with our intimate connection to nature, and a call to build a fairer world for all.
Michael Dulaney
Michael Dulaney’s writing explores humanity’s links with the rest of non-human nature in the climate crisis. He was a reporter at the ABC for more than a decade, and his environment writing has been published by The Monthly, Literary Hub, The Big Issue, and the BBC, among others. He won the Overland Fair Australia Prize, and was a 2024 Climate Futures Fellow at the State Library Victoria.
