Zooanthropology

La tesi presenta inizialmente il pensiero di Jacques Derrida sull'animalità. Il tema affrontato è la sovranità dell'uomo sul resto dei viventi, in particolare nei riguardi della discriminazione dell'animalità. Nei capitoli a seguire si attua un'emancipazione dell'animalità e non dall'animalità come la corrente umanista voleva. Attraverso l'ontogenesi del concetto di "umanità" viene decostruito il costrutto che sorregge la soglia che divide l'uomo dagli animali, laddove essi partecipano all'animalità in maniere differenti. L'emergenza di questa composizione dei temi trattati si erge ad azione esemplare con cui Derrida, prima di morire, ha lasciato delle tracce da seguire durante il ricevimento del premio Adorno.

Le società animali presentano un’incredibile molteplicità di articolazioni sistemiche e strutturali, tese a regolare le dinamiche interattive, comunicative, affiliative che si vengono a creare e che inevitabilmente richiedono predicati funzionali specifici. Quando parliamo di comportamenti prosociali intendiamo una varietà di espressioni, non necessariamente attribuibili a una medesima famiglia motivazionale o a un ciclo funzionale specifico, che si caratterizzano per il fatto di vedere l’individuo spendere delle risorse per il gruppo, sia che tale atteggiamento comporti un ritorno vantaggioso per il soggetto agente sia che sia più difficile riscontrare tale ristorno o addirittura sia palesemente in contrasto con gli interessi dell’agente. I comportamenti prosociali presentano un panorama articolato di situazioni: dalla cooperazione per raggiungere un obiettivo comune alle pragmatiche comunicative tese all’ingaggio o alla regolazione sociale, dalle espressioni epimeletiche alle offerte e agli atteggiamenti rassicuranti-protettivi che si riscontrano nel corteggiamento.

Social media is a powerful tool for sharing information and awareness campaigns concerning environmental issues, especially as they pertain to the conservation of wild, nonhuman animals (henceforth, "animals"). This form of online engagement is a double-edged sword, however, since it can facilitate the legal and illegal trade of wild species, and promote harmful tourism encounters with wild animals. This review spans multiple disciplines and presents some key literature to date examining how public perceptions of wild animals are influenced by social media. This includes discussions of "viral" videos, "wildlife selfies," changing trends in animal encounters at wildlife tourism destinations, and the influence of social media on the wildlife trade. Avenues for future research are suggested with urgency; the adverse effects of social media are understudied, yet bear serious consequences for the individual welfare and species conservation of wild animals.

Cosa accomuna due oggetti culturali come il racconto della trasformazione dei pirati in delfini del III libro delle Metamorfosi di Ovidio e Origin, la serie di immagini in movimento dell'artista visuale contemporaneo Daniel Lee? E, soprattutto, cosa li rende così distanti?

In questo elaborato, partendo dall’analisi della caccia, uno degli innumerevoli aspetti che rispecchiano il dominio dell’uomo sulla natura, sarà esaminato il rapporto tra uomo e animale che dall’età preistorica si è evoluto fino ai giorni nostri determinando numerose conseguenze per l’attività dell’uomo e il suo modo di gestire la vita sulla Terra. Il modello che sarà utilizzato per definire i termini dell’analisi partirà dalla genealogia della caccia, analizzando da un lato il processo evolutivo dell’essere umano, e dall’altro lato la storia della caccia, circoscritta a quelle civiltà che hanno avuto un notevole impatto sull’attuale concezione di gestione dell’attività venatoria in Occidente, in particolare in Europa. Si vedrà che fin dall’età dell’Homo habilis questa pratica ha accompagnato l’ideologia del dominio dell’uomo sulle diverse specie animali considerati come totem: entità con significato simbolico alle quali ci si sente legati per tutta la vita.

This text analyzes US sheepdog culture through the lens of American pastoralism, taking its cue from the obvious connection between pastoralism and shepherds, but also locating features of the American pastoral- in particular the tension between nature and civilization and ambivalence towards technology - in the development of sheepdog trials in the US, the figure of the American shepherd, the shepherd's attitude to the dog and the training methods used in the process of training a sheepdog.

The ontology of animality, starting from Derrida's writings, determines the reconsideration of the human being and his ontological condition within an environment (Umwelt) in which the anthropocentric point of view has hitherto been predominant. The post-human represents the urgency for ethics willing to reflect on a world inhabited both by hybridizing life forms breaking the boundaries, and a common and immanent substratum yearning for its own limit: the animality partaken by all of us. The boundaries will be deconstructed starting from the ontology, through the epistemology, in order to define post-human ethics.

В статье исследуется отношение к домашним животным в низовых сообществах России - в крестьянской среде, а также у некоторых городских групп населения, преимущественно в XVIII-XIX вв. Источниками служат, главным образом, мемуары, а также произведения русской литературы того времени, особенно такие, в которых эта тема не является главной, а вводится попутно, в качестве дополнительной характеристики обстановки или героя. Мировоззрению людей, живших в традиционном обществе, была присуща мифологизированная оценка кошек и собак. Похоже, что собак воспринимали более опасливо и настороженно, чем кошек. Русская народная ветеринария не замечала болезней кошек и собак, в то время как имелись способы диагностики и классификации болезней других животных - коров, лошадей, свиней, овец, коз, домашней птицы. Славянской народной традиции были свойственны разнообразные магические обряды, при которых требовалось убить кошку. Причем в таких случаях кошек губили жестоким образом. Когда же в имеющихся в нашем распоряжении нарративных источниках заходит речь о любви к домашнему животному (например, лошади, корове), то выясняется, что эта «любовь» не связана с проявлением чувств. К тем животным, которые в условиях современной городской жизни сделались любимыми домашними питомцами, деревенские жители относились прагматично: у взрослых крестьян почти не бывало душевной симпатии и бескорыстной привязанности к кошкам и собакам. Незаменимые для сельской жизни лошади и коровы, разумеется, ценились, но как имущество, не более того. Широко распространенные утверждения, будто наши предки любили домашних животных, не находят подтверждения в нарративных источниках.  This paper deals with the attitude of the grassroots communities of Russian people (peasants as well as some urban groups) towards domestic animals, especially in the 18–19th centuries. The sources are mainly memoirs, as well as Russian literature texts of the 18th and 19th centuries, especially those in which this topic is not the main one, but appears as an additional characteristic of a situation or hero. The mentality of Russian people (who were living in a traditional society) was characterized by a mythologized perception of cats and dogs. It seems that dogs were perceived with apprehension and more cautiously than cats. Russian folk veterinary did not notice diseases of cats and dogs, while there were methods for diagnosing and classifying diseases of other animals – cows, horses, pigs, sheep, goats, and poultry. Slavic folk tradition used a variety of magical rituals in which it was necessary to kill a cat. In such cases, cats were killed brutally: they were buried alive, torn apart, were burned, and boiled alive. When in narrative sources it is something about love for a do-mestic animal (e. g. horse, cow), it turns out that this "love" is not associated with the manifestation of feelings. The animals that in the contemporary urban life have become favorite pets were treated by the villagers prag-matically: adult peasants had almost no emotional sympathy for cats and dogs. Horses and cows, indispensable for rural life, were appreciated but as a property only. The widespread opinion that our ancestors loved their domestic animals has not been confirmed in the narrative sources.

In this lecture, Roberto Marchesini will discuss topics such as human identity, our relationship with other animals and the environment, by channeling the vibrant Italian traditions of humanism, materialism, and speculative philosophy. The lecture will open a dialogue between the humanities and the natural sciences and it will also challenge the separation and oppression of animals with a post-humanism steeped in the traditions of the Italian Renaissance. A new vision of the human will be offered as a species informed by an intertwining with other animals. The human being is in fact not constructed by an onto-poetic process, but rather by close relations with otherness. The human system is increasingly unstable and, therefore, more hybrid.

Cuadrado Payeras, Lidia María. "Prefazione: Parola." In Abbecedario del postumanismo, edited by Elisa Baioni, Lidia María Cuadrado Payeras and Manuela Macelloni, editors. Abbecedario del postumanismo. Mimesis, 2021, pp, 13-20.

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Within his Nylotic excursus of NQ Book IVa, Seneca describes a spectacular fight between crocodiles and dolphins. What is the real meaning of the author’s anthropomorphic cut of the account? What kind of ‘zoo-poetic’ profile is at work here? What is the possible impact on the treatise’s dedicatee?

Referential communication occurs when a sender elaborates its gestures to direct the attention of a recipient to its role in pursuit of the desired goal, e.g. by pointing or showing an object, thereby informing the recipient what it wants. If the gesture is successful, the sender and the recipient focus their attention simultaneously on a third entity, the target. Here we investigated the ability of domestic horses (Equus caballus) to communicate referentially with a human observer about the location of a desired target, a bucket of food out of reach. In order to test six operational criteria of referential communication, we manipulated the recipient’s (experimenter) attentional state in four experimental conditions: frontally oriented, backward oriented, walking away from the arena and frontally oriented with other helpers present in the arena. The rate of gaze alternation was higher in the frontally oriented condition than in all the others. The horses appeared to use both indicative (pointing) and non-indicative (nods and shakes) head gestures in the relevant test conditions. Horses also elaborated their communication by switching from a visual to a tactile signal and demonstrated perseverance in their communication. The results of the tests revealed that horses used referential gestures to manipulate the attention of a human recipient so to obtain an unreachable resource. These are the first such findings in an ungulate species.

Un girovagare rapsodico e inquieto. Sarà come seguire il volo di un calabrone (Vespa crabro), il percorso che compiremo nelle prossime pagine cercando di tracciare il ruolo che gli animali nonumani ricoprono nell’esperienza letteraria di Roberto Marchesini, filosofo ed etologo conosciuto per il suo apporto all’interno della corrente della filosofia Posthuman e dell’etologia cognitiva, ma che ha da sempre – anzi, da ancor prima di divenir “scienziato” – accostato alla ricerca una costante produzione narrativa. Compiremo - seguendo il grosso vespide, vero animale-totem dell’opera marchenisiana - sondaggi sparsi in alcune delle opere principali dell’autore, dalla prima raccolta lirica Il Dio Pan (Firenze Libri 1988) per arrivare alla recente autobiografia Ricordi di animali (Mursia 2013), cercando di mettere in luce come i nonumani hanno rivestito un ruolo chiave nell’evoluzione del pensiero dell’autore. Non, quindi, figure emerse dall’espediente narrativo della rappresentazione metaforica (l’animale come icona, raffigurazione, metonimia, allegoria), ma presenze concrete nella vita dell’autore (l’animale come soggetto) capaci di generare senso condiviso e negoziare attivamente il proprio essere-nel-mondo.

Quando osserviamo gli animali, spesso ci dimentichiamo che siamo a nostra volta oggetto del loro sguardo e della loro curiosità. È proprio l’analisi di questa reciprocità di relazioni a essere il cardine dell’etologia filosofica di Vinciane Despret, docente all’Università di Liegi e da oltre vent’anni impegnata in una ricerca interdisciplinare volta a comprendere «che cosa rispondono gli animali se facciamo le domande giuste», come
recita il titolo del suo libro più famoso.

Social media has become a powerful tool for spreading information and awareness campaigns on environmental issues, especially as they pertain to the conservation of wild animals. It is a double-edged sword, however, since it also facilitates the legal and illegal trade of wild animal species as well as the propagation of 'wild animal selfies.' This review presents some key literature to date which concerns the impact of social media on public perceptions of animals (such as through 'viral' videos), changing trends in animal encounters at wildlife tourism destinations, and the wildlife trade as it is facilitated by social media. Finally, avenues for future research are suggested with urgency, since the impact of social media on the welfare and conservation of wild animal species is most likely underestimated yet bears serious consequences.

On the origin of Catalan PIGA 'freckle' in the Latin bird name PICA 'magpie - jaw'.
[Included in Studia in honorem Joan Coromines, centesimi anni post eum natum gratia, a sodalibus et discipulis oblata, Lleida 2007, 421-428. ISBN 978-84-9779-516-6.]

Cuadrado Payeras, Lidia María. "Eugenetica." In Abbecedario del postumanismo, edited by Elisa Baioni, Lidia María Cuadrado Payeras and Manuela Macelloni, editors. Abbecedario del postumanismo. Mimesis, 2021, pp. 186-189.

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The considerable influx of tourists in parks and rescue centers represents a promising opportunity to investigate the relationship between public and non-human primates. The present study was carried out in the free-roaming sanctuary, Monkeyland (South Africa), which hosts 700 rescued primates of 11 different species. An anonymous survey was conducted among visitors, containing general questions, with the aim to evaluate their perception on wild animals, in particular non-human primates. Analysing the data, macro categories were created for reasons and motivations behind the responses given by the visitors. When inquiring on the desire to physically interact with a monkey (i.e., touching), we found no differences between male and female visitors, but this desire however decreased with the increase of age. Moreover, of the 237 visitors who would have such an interaction, only 11,39% thought it was appropriate, while 86,07% thought it was not. Among those visitors who expressed no desire to touch the monkeys, 61.5% believe it was not correct for animal welfare, while 23.80% thought it would be dangerous for themselves. Finally, visitors were asked to indicate their favorite primate, and why. The preferred species of non-human primate among visitors was the Lemur catta and, in general, the most appreciated animal trait was the cuteness. The results indicate an awareness of the importance of animal welfare from the general public, and respect for the non-human primates wildness. Anyway, as shown in this study, it should be considered the possible influence of mass media (e.g. films, animated cartoon, advertisings) on human attitudes toward wildlife .

The reflection about animal subjectivity – namely the difference between an object or a machine, on the one hand, and a nonhuman animal, on the other – demands an ontological inquiry in its broader philosophical sense. Classical ethology and behaviourism have limited themselves to describing the animal machine. The theories on animal cognition have attempted to express a pale subjectivity through the function of awareness. However, these theories have not criticised the basic model, namely that of animal expression as the result of automatism, and therefore have supported a deterministic attitude in the analysis of behaviour. A deeper analysis of subjectivity is required. Animal subjectivity is a meta-predicate condition and the accounts of an ontological difference between species or between individuals concern only predicates. We must start again, following the Cartesian comparative animal/machine path, but contrary to Descartes not to find analogies but to show differences. We must radically review animal ontology by reinterpreting not only subjective behaviour but the whole course of life.