Arizona one summer, during her teens, that
Grandin first became connected to horses
and cattle and discovered a shared characteristic between animals and those with autism:
Both think by making visual associations. She
eventually received degrees from Franklin
Pierce College and Arizona State University,
and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at
Urbana in 1989. The public became aware of
her in 1995 when famed neurologist Oliver
Sacks wrote about her in his book An
Anthropologist on Mars.
“Autism is an important part of who I
am,” says Grandin, who has had a poster of
Albert Einstein on her wall since graduate
school. “I get asked all the time: If I could snap
my fingers, would I want to not be autistic?
Well, I like the logical way I think. I don’t want
to lose the logical way I think. But on the
other hand, doing my animal work and being
a college professor and a scientist, that comes
first. Autism comes second.”
At least half of all cattle in the U.S. and
Canada, as well as many in other countries,
are handled in humane slaughter systems
with equipment designed by Grandin. Those
designs have revolutionized animal agricul-
ture around the globe, and Grandin has been
TEMPLE GRANDIN
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 21
ROSALIE WINARD
The Costco Connection
The Autistic Brain and Animals Make Us
Human, by Temple Grandin, along with the
HBO film Temple Grandin, will be available
in most Costco warehouses.
a key figure in formulating the beef industry’s
guidelines for animal handling and welfare as
well as in training a new generation of agricultural professionals in animal behavior
theory, humane design and auditing techniques. She consults for many companies,
including McDonald’s, which first hired her
in 1999 to audit the meatpacking plants that
supplied the fast-food chain.
“Dr. Grandin’s work has anticipated and
dovetailed with societal concerns related to
welfare in animal agriculture, and as a result
there is hardly a high-profile conference or
symposium around [the] world focusing on
this issue that does not include Temple
Grandin,” says Craig Beyrouty, the dean of the
College of Agricultural Science at Colorado
State University (CSU). “We hear stories of
students who are almost dumbstruck that
they can enroll in Dr. Grandin’s classes, that
she might be an adviser for them as they pur-
sue graduate studies. We have a student who
came to CSU in fall 2012 from an agricultural
community in southeastern Colorado, a stu-
dent with Asperger’s syndrome who was not
expected to graduate from high school. On
the first day of the semester, his mother
shared that the student was ‘living his dream.’
He had his first day of class with his mentor
and hero, Temple Grandin.”
“Temple Grandin has helped all of us
understand the power of different ways of
thinking and being,” adds CSU president
Tony Frank. “Her unique perspective, raw
intellect and ability to see challenges and solu-
tions from new angles, to connect dots that
most of us don’t even see.”
Thinking in pictures
in a verbal world
Grandin, who once believed that everybody thought in pictures as she does, says her
thinking is sensory-detailed oriented. Then,
how does she interact with the verbal world?
“You can get verbal thinkers to be aware of
visual thinking,” she responds. “The thing is,
there are degrees. Most people, if I was to say
to them right now, ‘Visualize you are [at your]
office at work.’ Well, you could do that. Or
visualize your car. Most people can do that,
too. But if I asked you to visualize something
like a church steeple, something you see all the
time, most people just see a vague, generalized
one. That’s not something they pay much
attention to. So it was a shock to me to learn
that most people just got this vague, general-
ized church steeple image rather than a spe-
cific one. I’ve had to learn how to communicate
more with the verbal people.”
Author Richard Panek met Grandin three
years ago after he was invited to collaborate
with Grandin on The Autistic Brain: Thinking
Across the Spectrum, which was published in
April. Asked what he admires most about his
co-author, Panek says, “The obvious answer is
the work she does on behalf of people with
autism, as well as their families, but what
comes to mind first is what makes that work
possible—that she’s learned how the world
works. She’s had to figure out how people
