TRACE ∴ Journal for Human-Animal Studies
Trace — Journal for Human-Animal Studies is a peer-reviewed, fully open access online journal that provides a forum for research and discussion of human-animal relations from social and cultural perspectives. The journal publishes original research articles, lectiones praecursoriae, and conference reports, as well as reviews on books, art exhibitions, films, and other media. Trace accepts submissions in English, Finnish and Swedish.
Finnish Society for Human-Animal Studies (YKES ry)
When sending a manuscript the author(s) accept the digital publishing contract (please open the link and read it!). The publishing contract covers the publication of the manuscript on the digital versions of the Trace journal according to the Open Access principles and the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/]. (NB! Changed on January 28, 2020!) The conditions allow the author to retain copyright to his/her work and anyone to copy and distribute it for free in any medium and form, changed or unchanged provided that appropriate credit to author(s) is given, a link provided to the license, and any changes are indicated. Information on copyright issues in Finland is given by Kopiosto. Trace is a scientific journal that doesn't pursue economic gain. Instead, the purpose of the publishing contract is to acknowledge the moral rights of the author(s) to their work and make possible the distribution of results of scientific research in the Trace journal in print as well as in digital form. The license concerning the metadata of published articles is Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0). More information about open science in Finland: https://openscience.fi/ https://libraryguides.helsinki.fi/oa/eng
Copyright (c) 2025 Pauliina Rautio https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Copyright (c) 2025 Tiina Salmia https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
An evaluation study of zoo visitors’ perception, learning, and knowledge of nature conservation at Korkeasaari Zoo, Finland
Zoos aim to enhance zoo visitors’ knowledge of biodiversity, conservation and sustainability and responsible consumer consumption, encouraging visitors to form positive connections to wildlife. To analyse how this is achieved in Korkeasaari Zoo after changes to their conservation education, we conducted a follow-up study in 2023 by interviewing zoo visitors (in Korkeasaari Zoo). The previously published research from 2018 reported that visitors were unaware of the zoo’s conservation activities and that the zoo’s conservation education messages did not impact individuals’ everyday conservation practices. Since then, Korkeasaari Zoo has diversified and improved the zoo conservation education materials, offering better practical examples of zoo conservation work and how visitors can become involved in zoo conservation activities. Our results show that in 2023, the interviewees were better informed and more aware of the zoo conservation because Korkeasaari Zoo communication materials at zoo exhibits and the signboards had been renewed. Many interviewees deemed the zoo’s conservation role significant. In our 2023 study, perceptions of animal welfare were also included at the Zoo’s request. When we asked how visitors perceived animal welfare at the zoo, they viewed it as good and appreciated the zoo’s requests not to disturb the animals while watching them. We believe that the zoo’s sustainable conservation education with interactive learning opportunities and communication intervention may positively impact visitors’ everyday conservation practices and promote a radical political change at the societal level.
Copyright (c) 2025 Sanna Ojalammi, Marjo Priha, Joel Wamai https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Wolves, humans and a new moral order of life
This paper revisits the narrative of Amala and Kamala, two children said to have been raised by wolves, as a platform for exploring the boundary between human beings and other animal species. Chronicled in Diary of the Wolf Children by Joseph Singh, the story of the two girls challenged the view of human uniqueness as it reached social scientists in the 1930s. The paper presents the major interpretations and receptions of the diary and will also evaluate the potential truthfulness of the story. Based on this historiographical assessment of the case, the paper extends to an ontological examination of human-wolf relationships, drawing on advancements in both ethology and anthropology. Since the late 1980s, cultural anthropology has begun to examine cultures as extending beyond the strictly human – a movement often termed “the ontological turn,” allowing for a more holistic examination of realities. Meanwhile, developments in ethology since 1995 have begun to consider animals as conscious beings, capable of experiencing complex emotions. Drawing upon these developments this paper explores the possibility of a new moral order of life, with the two species humans and wolves, and their interactions, as the empirical case.
Copyright (c) 2025 Lars Risan https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
There is a pressing need for improved decision-making in a rapidly changing, unpredictable world. In response, we integrate ecocentric and technocentric perspectives to develop a more-than-human framework for understanding creative decisions that direct action in environmental governance, management, and design. Technocentric and ecocentric approaches often pursue distinct and incompatible goals but also share a commitment to amplifying power, reach, accountability, fairness, and beneficial consequences of decision-making processes. Current frameworks for urban and environmental management often prioritize human decisions and technologies at the expense of nonhuman voices. This results in widespread harm to nonhuman lifeforms and, by extension, to human societies. This study introduces an integrated approach to decision-making, one that draws on the creative potential of both human and nonhuman agents. We argue that embracing a more-than-human perspective can foster just relationships, enhance care, promote resilience, and support wellbeing in multispecies communities. To evaluate this framework, we examine decision-making processes in nonhuman organisms, compare these with technical systems, and explore hybrid decision-making in diverse contexts. As a case study, we examine the challenges facing alpine dingoes in Australia. The goal is to assess the impact of smart technologies on these apex predators in three future human-altered landscapes. The outcomes illustrate how more-than-human decision-making can contribute to environmental design and management. This, in turn, offers actionable insights for building equitable and sustainable futures. Our work also contributes to research on more-than-human approaches to algorithmic management in relation to cities, landscapes, and the communities that inhabit them.
Copyright (c) 2025 Stanislav Roudavski, Douglas Brock https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Definitions of assistance dogs rest on the performance of tasks that mitigate a human’s disabilities. However, the specific elements that constitute assistance dog tasks – those that effectively and consistently mitigate disabilities – remain undefined. As the assistance dog concept expands into new domains, the lack of a clear definition for an assistance dog task poses significant challenges for multispecies stakeholders. Based on the author’s professional experience educating and assessing assistance dog teams, as well as exchanges from a workshop with assistance dog professionals and individuals living with qualified assistance dogs, this article proposes nine criteria to address the question: what needs to be established to define an assistance dog task that considers the well-being, welfare, and working success of dog and human? The aim is for this definition to act as i) a guideline to further refine the assistance dog concept, ii) a resource for assistance dog professionals and their clients when developing a novel task, and iii) a framework for stakeholders to assess an individual’s need for an assistance dog task. In so doing, it situates assistance dog tasks as interdependent, caring acts on behalf of both dog and human that have been designed with the interests, well-being, and welfare of both at the forefront. Ultimately, this paper was written with an intention to support meaningful change within the assistance dog sector that can benefit assistance dogs, humans, the public, and further stakeholders.
Copyright (c) 2025 Tiamat Warda https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Biodiversity, Neurodiversity, Ethodiversity
This article explores the relationship between neurodiversity and the life sciences – specifically biodiversity and neurology – in order to call for a more-than-human and more-than-neurological turn in neurodiversity studies. I first examine how Judy Singer’s conception of neurodiversity is based on an ambiguous engagement with biology and directed towards anthropocentric human rights politics. In this conception, neurodiversity constitutes a form of biodiversity without nonhuman animals. This anthropocentric bias in the neurodiversity lexicon reinforces the divide between humans and animals. The article then shows how neurocentrism – the emphasis on nervous systems – in neurodiversity studies often leads to neuroreductionism, which reduces lived experience to the physicochemical. In assimilating neurodivergent people to lesser humans, this rhetoric bestialises neurodivergence. While neurology itself is not fundamentally flawed or regressive, the way it is often taken up in the neurodiversity movement leads to problematic effects, which leads me to conclude that neurological accounts should be decentred. Aiming to renew neurodiversity’s engagement with the life sciences, I call for a more-than-human and more-than-neurological turn. To do so, I turn to ethology and develop the concepts of ethodiversity and ethodivergence. Ethodiversity refers to the intra- and inter-specific variabilities and differences in animal behavioural patterns or existential styles. Ethodivergence describes ways of being and behaving that depart from the ones dominant in one’s species, in one’s ecological and social milieu, and/or imposed by anthropocentric ethonormativity. Both concepts are finally elaborated drawing on conservation biology and philosophical ethology.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ombre Tarragnat https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The moral status of animals in Islamic philosophy
Copyright (c) 2025 Behnam Khodapanah https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
In this study, we look at the interspecies encounter between a gardener and a Spanish Slug. At the same time, we critically reflect on the limits of the study of religion. The study is based on data collected in the context of an international research project between 2021 and 2022, consisting of qualitative interviews with a total of 120 gardeners from eight different countries. From Finland, ten people who tend a community garden or plot in Helsinki participated in the study. In the analysis, we read the data in contrast to conventions in religious studies that look for indications of religion in qualitative data and to analyses of interspecies relations that emphasise the cultivation of positive relationships. In other words, while we explore the ethics of exclusion in a garden context at the case study level, we perform it in a context of sociology of religion at the theoretical level. Our results highlight the importance of exclusion in the constellation of the garden community. The exclusion of the Spanish Slug from the garden and from interspecific reciprocal relationships can be seen as a responsible act that produces a desirable future for the rest of the garden. Our analysis shows that ethical reflection on exclusion is not only focused on the justification of killing, but extends to questions of bodily repetitiveness, futility and necessity. The destruction of the Spanish Slug is not an isolated act, but an ongoing, frustrating and necessary task that renews the relationship between the people who care for the garden and the harmonious coexistence between humans and the species that are welcome in the garden. This speaks to the strong social, relationally constitutive meaning of absence and the repeated, renewing work required by this constitution. Despite the diverse religious identifications of our Finnish gardeners, none of them mentioned religion or spirituality when discussing the Spanish Slugs. However, the people we interviewed did reflect in a complex way on their relationships with undesirable others, their own position in the world, their behaviour and values - in other words, their lifestances. Our results suggest that the lifestances associated with the Spanish Slugs in Finnish gardens are repetitive in terms of behaviour, relational in terms of practices and boundary-crossing in terms of beliefs. In our analysis, the exclusion of religion and nonreligion constitutes an opportunity to view the common ground shared by people with different beliefs and identities on an equal footing.
Copyright (c) 2025 Anna Sofia Salonen, Ryan T. Cragun https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Copyright (c) 2025 Anita Maurstad https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Copyright (c) 2025 David Herman https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Copyright (c) 2025 Vanda Bajs https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Ihmisten ja muunlajisten eläinten yhdenvertaisen yhteiselon tavoittelu on tärkeä reitti kohti kestävämpää maailmaa. Tuotantoeläimiksi kategorisoitujen eläinten toimijuuden laajeneminen tämän hetken välineellisestä asemasta kurottelee kohti yhdenvertaisuutta. Eläintuotannosta vapautuneiden eläinten turvakoteja onkin tarkasteltu paitsi eläinoikeusliikkeen viitekehyksessä, myös eläinten subjektiuden toteutumisen ja uudelleenkuvittelemisen näkökulmasta. Tässä artikkelissa etnografisen lähestymistavan informoima katseeni kiinnittyy Gustafsson&Haapoja -taiteilijakollektiivin Siat-näyttelyyn Seinäjoen taidehallilla vuonna 2021. Tarkastelen näyttelyn kolmea video- ja ääniteosta sikojen toimijuuden näkökulmasta. Erityisesti keskityn suomalaisessa eläinten turvakoti Saparomäessä tehtyyn Nimetön (Elossa) (2021) -videoteokseen, jonka on kuvannut valjailla pään päälle kiinnitetyllä kameralla turvakodin asukas, Paavo-sika. Teoksen tarjoamat näkökulmat avaavat mahdollisuuden tarkastella sian toimijuutta nykytaiteessa, eläinten turvakodeissa ja laajemmin yhteiskunnassa. Keskustelukumppanuutta analyysilleni haen muun muassa Bruno Latourin olioiden parlamentista sekä posthumanistisista ja eläinfilosofista ajattelijoista. Kriittinen eläintutkimus, etenkin Sue Donaldsonin ja Will Kymlickan ajatukset eläinten turvakodeista lajienvälisten yhteisöjen visioimisen ja kokeilemisen paikkoina, tarjoaa keskeistä heijastelupintaa analyysilleni. Kysyn, (1) millaista on Gustafsson&Haapojan taiteen, erityisesti Nimetön (Elossa) -teoksen, tuottama sian toimijuus. Tämän kysymyksen jatkona tarkastelen teosta lajienvälisenä, tavoitteellisena yhteisönä taiteen kontekstissa, ja pohdin, (2) miten pyrkimys yhdenvertaisuuteen vaikuttaa sian toimijuuden laajenemiseen ja toisaalta ihmisen toimijuuteen. Analyysini pohjalta esitän, että sian toimijuuden vakavasti ottaminen avaa uusia näkymiä paitsi taidetoiminnan muutokseen ja rikastumiseen, myös eläimen subjektiviteetin rakentumiseen tulevaisuuden kestävämmässä ja oikeudenmukaisemmassa yhteiskunnassa.
Copyright (c) 2025 Sanna Karimäki-Nuutinen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Otto Latva: The Giant Squid in Transatlantic Culture. The Monsterization of Molluscs (Book Review)
Copyright (c) 2024 Sara Zaman https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Copyright (c) 2025 Johanna Hällsten https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
1941/AIDA is the story of a cow who left home a number and returned a legend. An ongoing multimedia art and research project comprises text and poems, drawings, site-specific sculptures, cyanotypes, photographs, videos, presentations, interviews, and interactions. It looks closely in tribute and in empathetic forensic detail at the decisions a singular cow makes under duress in support of her own agency, relationships within herds within the beef industry in the southeastern US, and between mothers and calves in a market driven economy determining not just the length of their lives but where they live, with whom, and how. Important to the story is the ongoing dialogue between farmer and artist mediated, inspired, and progressed by the cow 1941: how she navigates and insists, how positions she takes are utterly reasonable yet provocative for being actions of individuality and claim. How she “makes her point strong” in the words of the farmer (who does not own the cow but is responsible for her) and even upon her return “home” from her liberty-defining escape to the other side of a flooded creek (where the artist lives) and its attendant risks along with freedoms, continues her “transgressions” and her insistence on choice banked in defiance. Who she is changes and amplifies those who encounter her, human and non-human. She ruptures expectations. She defines her community and explores where she belongs by placement and where by choice and claim.
Copyright (c) 2025 Lee Deigaard https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
We Do Not Even Know, Yet, How to Take Non-Human Animals Morally Seriously
At the end of 2023, a proposal to amend the Finnish constitution passed the citizens’ initiative system and proceeded to be discussed by the Finnish Parliament. This radical proposal was based on the idea of respecting the individual value of ever non-human animal as sentient beings. Though this is a very defensible starting point, the proposal demonstrates some of the difficulties in achieving or even imagining a new state of society where these rights are fully respected. Some of the corollaries of the proposal as explicitly spelled out in it were too conservative to match the purported spirit of the proposal itself, whereas some of its unexplored but undeniable implications were radical beyond what its authors had seemingly intended. This article explores what the problems in the proposal demonstrated: that the idea of taking the individual moral value of non-human animals seriously is such a radical and unprecedented change to what we have now or have ever had that it is not possibly for us to know what such a world will be like, and we will need to learn what it will be like as we approach it; it is not possible to simply derive it from such principles as sentientism. Not only is human society built around a lack of recognition of non-human value, but even nature itself is problematically amoral. This is no justification to just give up on a radically more moral world, but it does mean we cannot see its full shape from here.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ville Kokko https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Copyright (c) 2025 Angela Bartram, Jaana Erkkilä-Hill https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Humankind is experiencing an existential poly-crisis. Despite years of warnings, we as a species continue to consume and discard the natural elements of the planet at a voracious and unsustainable rate. Scientists articulate frustration and despair at our seeming inability of to acknowledge this unfolding disaster. The Western extractivist framing of planetary elements as ‘resources”, conceptualised during the period of Enlightenment, is enabled through an Anthropocentric vision of the universe, centring human existence whilst disenfranchising all other-than-human existences. Photographic processes of representation have been employed as a central methodology in cataloguing taxonomies of possession. This paper proposes a recalibration of this acquisitional vision as one of the processes required to catalyse mitigation of the climate emergency. To decentre our human experience, we must extend citizenship to the other-than-human elements of our planet, re-establishing the ecological balance of our relationship. A visible citizenship requires new forms of expression, enabling audiences to reimagine their ecological entanglements and responsibilities of care. How can a photographic practice avoid rendering its subjects fully visible, and thus exposing them to a possessive and colonising gaze? Can visual artists represent landscapes through a protective partial opacity of care? Through various processes of lens-based and lens-less photographic imaging, many practitioners aim to offer insight and alliance to the more-than-human citizens of the world. This paper gathers the methodologies of artists from both Global South and North who are utilising these strategies, acknowledging the complicated relationships woven between photo-filmic technologies and the subjects of our human gaze.
Copyright (c) 2025 Becky Nunes https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Copyright (c) 2024 Pauliina Rautio https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This article explores the narrative construction of interspecies relationships through the lens of equine taming practices, focusing on the work of well-known horse trainers. By analyzing the biographies of Shy Boy and Myrnah, the wild horses subjected to taming, the study critically examines how these trainers present their methods within a narrative that portrays a harmonious relationship between humans and horses. The narratives created by horse trainers, which suggest that horses voluntarily submit to taming and willingly form partnerships with their trainers, are ultimately anthropocentric constructs that mask the coercive nature of these interactions. Through a comparative analysis of horse trainers’ methods and the narrative strategies used by killer whale trainers described by Jane Desmond, I explore how these narratives influence perceptions of animal behavior and human-animal relationships. This article contributes to the ongoing scholarly dialogue on human-animal relationships, particularly in the context of taming and horsemanship. It suggests that developing an awareness of animals’ needs, respecting their boundaries, and finding new ways to build relationships based on genuine respect is essential. The article ends with a call to continue searching for methods of working with horses that minimize violence and pressure while taking into account the real needs of animals, as well as to spread awareness of real forms of relationships with horses that can be based on mutual understanding and respect.
Copyright (c) 2025 Sara Kruszona-Barełkowska https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Val Plumwood’s contribution to intersectional veganism
Copyright (c) 2024 Richard Twine https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Centring animal experience through comics-based research: The case of Pavlov’s dogs
The focus of this article is the collaborative creation of Pavlov and the Kingdom of Dogs, a graphic nonfiction novel aimed at highlighting the lives of dogs experimented upon by Ivan Pavlov in late 19th and early 20th-century Russia. The novel delves into the intricate human-canine relationships within the context of St. Petersburg’s scientific, cultural, and political landscape. The collaboration between a researcher, a professional illustrator, and a script editor aimed to challenge anthropocentric narratives prevalent in historical representations of Pavlov and experimental science. Rooted in animal studies and psychology, this project explores the potential of arts-based methods to centre animals and their relationships within historical contexts. It aims to deepen depictions of animal experiences and agency while bridging the gap between human-animal studies and psychology, where attention to animal lives in research settings remains limited. By focusing on Pavlov’s experiments, the project seeks to redefine experimental animals as active historical subjects, contributing to broader discussions on human-animal relationships and ethical responsibilities. The article delineates the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the graphic novel, provides insights into the comics-based research process, and discusses the affordances and challenges of this approach. It concludes by reflecting on the potential of comics-based research to engage both academic and public audiences, ultimately advocating for a deeper understanding of human-animal entanglements and their implications in contemporary society.
Copyright (c) 2024 Matthew Adams https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Thinking with traces: A posthumanist reading of human and nonhuman agencies in Zhu Yingchun’s The Language of Bugs
The Language of Bugs by Zhu Yingchun (2018) is an art book wavering between the linguistic and the bodily, visual arts and literature. Consisting of thousands of traces left on paper by real-life insects and their bodily movements, it does not contain any text traditionally readable for humans, but claims to be a book written entirely in the language of insects. The traces indicate nonhuman agency for the insects and present writing and literature as subjects of nonhuman actions and messy interspecies collaboration. At the same time, the book rises questions on insect “language” and the possibility of ethical representation originating from a very human point-of-experience. In this article, I reflectively explore different crossings of human and nonhuman agencies in The Language of Bugs, as well as how the book engages with questions of representation and materiality, writing and literature in the framework of posthumanist reading. I analyse the book as participating in the attempt to notice more-than-human ways of being in literature and culture, which are traditionally only perceived through human agency. The context of my reading is threat posed by ecological crises and especially the decline in insect populations for the future of the planet. I argue that Zhu Yingchun’s book represents a wider shift in thinking about the natural world and humans’ place in it. Ultimately, the book articulates one very basic question: can literature widen to include traces of nonhuman movements?
Copyright (c) 2024 Sofia Bister https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
"Ché Coco, ché Coco": An animal reading of Coco the parrot in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea
The various human characters of Jean Rhys’s novel Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) have attracted the attention of literary scholars from different perspectives. However, the novel’s nonhuman animal characters have previously been studied mainly as symbols for human actions and destinies. In this article, I problematise this type of anthropocentric approach from a Human-Animal Studies and a literary criticism perspective. I analyse Coco as a character of the novel and as a member of his own species. My analysis examines the nature of human-animal relationships, their representations in literature, and the binary oppositions inherent in them. Additionally, I critically evaluate the ways in which nonhuman animals are perceived and depicted in cultural representations. I argue that Rhys shows Coco as a parrot with species-typical behaviour and as a character with his own agency. Nevertheless, one should not disregard his symbolic functions, which draw attention to gendered colonial violence. Furthermore, the symbolic and linguistic violence in the novel forces the nonhuman animal into a position below the human animal and normalises violence towards nonhuman animals. The human-animal relationships in Wide Sargasso Sea vary from something akin to close companionship all the way to subjugation under the will of the more powerful.
Copyright (c) 2024 Reeta E. Kangas https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Unveiling the strategic discourse of european dairy industry pressure groups: A Critical Animal Studies perspective
This article examines the discourse of pressure groups within the European Dairy Industry (EDI) using a Critical Animal Studies perspective. The study first identifies the EDI as a powerful economic actor by analysing its key companies, pressure groups, and their relationships. Then, it analyses the discourse constructed and the rhetorical devices these interest groups use regarding 1) the animals exploited by the industry and 2) the nutritional recommendations influencing dietary guidelines. The dairy industry forms a significant economic and corporate conglomerate that actively influences food recommendations and maintains extensive coalitions and lobbying efforts. The EDI interest groups tailor their narrative to align with current environmental, health, and animal welfare concerns while paradoxically contradicting them. Notably, the interest groups entirely disregard the interests of animals in their discourse, representing them as inanimate objects devoid of sentience, autonomy, and individuality through a series of rhetorical devices.
Copyright (c) 2024 María Ruiz Carreras https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Weird birds and abandoned places: Pigeons’ role in post-industrial settings
This article examines the role of pigeons (Columba livia domestica) in post-industrial settings and presents a case study of an abandoned pulp mill silo in Meri-Toppila, Oulu, Finland. Pigeons and humans have a long-shared history, during which the former’s role has changed from commodity to “nuisance” species. Using participant observation and perspectives from weirding and queer theory, this study explores the transformation of the human-bird relationship by observing a colony of pigeons at a culturally and historically significant site. In our urban cities, pigeons have found nesting places in attics, on building ledges and in nooks and abandoned structures. Even though we, as humans, avoid these abandoned places, these weird pigeons do not care about our dystopian images and instead thrive in places that we no longer consider valuable. Our everyday life could benefit from interaction with pigeons more than we might believe. Pigeons have become an integral part of our industrial heritage and could have a significant role to play in our daily lives if we were to only give them a chance.
Copyright (c) 2024 Marjo Juola https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Becoming known: Practicing equine rescue and rehabilitation as a response-able ethic of interspecies care
In this paper we discuss the intertwining of care with learning to know and become with the other in interspecies relationships. Drawing on interviews at horse rescue yards (England), we ask: How does an animal come to be known? What does it mean to care with an animal well? How does animal agency shape the practicing of response-able care? Caring well for a rescue horse is centred upon establishing an intimate knowledge of horses as individuals and as agents of their own life. Often the life history of an individual animal is not known and it is up to the human to imagine a possible past and present for them by interacting with the animal. Central to this process is how the agencies of both human and horse shape the emerging relational embodied interaction. Weaving together scholarship on care, agency, and interspecies relationality, we explore how the situated and intertwined processes of getting to know the other and caring well unfold. Our main assertion is that the relational knowledge which underpins the practicing of a response-able ethic of interspecies care is itself dependent on the ability of both animal and human to actively enter into a mutual (ongoing) process of learning to know and become know-able by the other. By its very (relational) nature, therefore, practicing a response-able ethic of interspecies care is simultaneously situational, dynamic, intimate and unstable. It is beyond the control of either individual alone, yet ultimately not always determinable by mutual consent of either.
Copyright (c) 2024 Alex Franklin, Nora Schuurman https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
”You don’t have the right to steal my life”: Exploring the harms of puppy farming on ex-breeding dogs
The last decade or so has witnessed a growing body of work within green criminology exploring forms of non-human animal abuse and harms involving companion animals. To date, however, comparably less attention has been paid to the puppy trade and the phenomena of commercial dog breeding facilities (or puppy mills/puppy farms). The aim of this article is to add to this literature by exploring the multiple harms of puppy farming, focusing on its impact on the breeding dogs themselves; specifically breeding bitches. Adopting a green criminological perspective and drawing on interviews with animal rescue staff, foster carers and those who have adopted ex-breeding dogs within the UK, the article explores the harms of puppy farming on their bodies and behaviours. Interviewees describe how ex-breeding dogs are physically worn out after a life of constant breeding and often suffer from a range of often serious medical issues. In addition, they were invariably emotionally shut down, exhibiting anxiety and phobic responses when confronted with new situations, people and sounds, as well as ones that recalled the conditions in which they were kept while in the puppy farm.
Copyright (c) 2024 John Walliss https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Flying cats and dogs: Relationality, empathy and care in the transportation of animals by air
The carrying of companion animals by air has grown into an international business involving approved vets, pet travel agencies, airlines, and animal terminals. This study investigates how the experience of transportation is shaped and draws theoretically on an approach of more-than-human mobility. In detail, I approach mobility through relationality, empathy, and caring practices by considering air transportation as an anthropocentric means of animal movement. Movement, including the specific conditions used to carry companion animals, influences the experience of mobility, triggering multispecies empathy and caring practices. Empirical accounts provide 16 online interviews with cat and dog caregivers analyzed via a qualitative content analysis. The interviewees shared transportation experiences in the aircraft cabin, in the hold, or when carrying animals as cargo. The analysis reveals that caregivers and companion animals experience air transportation relationally and the separation of caregivers and companion animals causes negative transport experiences.
Keywords: companion animals, mobility, transport, relationality, empathy, care
Copyright (c) 2024 Lucia Gräschke https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0