scholarly journals Death is common, so is understanding it: the concept of death in other species

Synthese ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susana Monsó ◽  
Antonio J. Osuna-Mascaró
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Complexity ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
In The Wild ◽  
Learning Pathways ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Nonhuman Species

Abstract Comparative thanatologists study the responses to the dead and the dying in nonhuman animals. Despite the wide variety of thanatological behaviours that have been documented in several different species, comparative thanatologists assume that the concept of death (CoD) is very difficult to acquire and will be a rare cognitive feat once we move past the human species. In this paper, we argue that this assumption is based on two forms of anthropocentrism: (1) an intellectual anthropocentrism, which leads to an over-intellectualisation of the CoD, and (2) an emotional anthropocentrism, which yields an excessive focus on grief as a reaction to death. Contrary to what these two forms of anthropocentrism suggest, we argue that the CoD requires relatively little cognitive complexity and that it can emerge independently from mourning behaviour. Moreover, if we turn towards the natural world, we can see that the minimal cognitive requirements for a CoD are in fact met by many nonhuman species and there are multiple learning pathways and opportunities for animals in the wild to develop a CoD. This allows us to conclude that the CoD will be relatively easy to acquire and, so, we can expect it to be fairly common in nature.

Do nonhuman animals reason about prestige-based status?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tara M Mandalaywala
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Experimental Methods ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
High Status ◽  
Marked Variation ◽  
Selective Pressures ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
In The Wild ◽  
Nonhuman Species

Status is a complex, but crucially important, aspect of life across species. In recent decades, researchers have made significant contributions to our understanding of both the pathways by which status can be attained, as well as our underlying capacities for reasoning about these pathways. In 2001, Henrich & Gil-White proposed a prestige-based pathway to status where low status actors willingly defer to competent or knowledgeable high status actors, as a means of facilitating social learning and cultural transmission. Although this type of status hierarchy, and the capacity to reason about it, was hypothesized to be unique to humans, here I argue that there are several reasons why we might observe prestige-based status, and the capacity for reasoning about this pathway to status, in some nonhuman species as well. These reasons focus on the prevalence, importance, and sophistication of social learning in certain taxa, as well as the marked variation in hierarchy characteristics and structure across species. I point out places where our current methodologies encounter difficulties distinguishing whether a hierarchy in the wild is based on dominance or prestige, where our experimental methods leave us unable to assess whether an individual is reasoning about a high status actor as being prestigious or formidable, and provide suggestions for addressing these limitations. Adopting a comparative approach will clarify whether prestige-based status truly is unique to humans, and—if not—precisely what selective pressures facilitate the emergence of prestige-based status and the capacity for reasoning about it.

scholarly journals Rewilding Hearts and Habits in the Ancestral Skills Movement

Religions ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 300
Author(s):  
Sarah Pike
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Internet Research ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Self Reliance ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
In The Wild

This ethnographic study of the ancestral skills movement focuses on the ways that participants use tools in practices such as fire making and bow hunting to ritualize relationships with the more-than-human natural world. Ethnographic methods were supplemented with Internet research on the websites of teachers, schools, and organizations of this movement that emerged in North America in the 1980s and has recently experienced rapid growth. At ancestral skills gatherings, ritual activities among attendees, as well as between people and plants, nonhuman animals, stone, clay, and fire helped create a sense of a common way of life. I place ancestral skills practitioners in the context of other antimodernist movements focusing on tools, crafts, self-reliance, and the pursuit of a simpler way of life. The ancestral skills movement has a clear message about what the good life should consist of: Deep knowledge about the places we live, the ability to make and use tools out of rocks, plants, and nonhuman animals, and the ability to use these tools to live a simpler life. Their vision of the future is one in which humans feel more at home in the wild and contribute to preserving wild places and the skills to live in them.

scholarly journals Representing nonhuman animals as equals: An ecolinguistic analysis of vegan campaigns

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alena Zhdanava ◽  
Surinderpal Kaur ◽  
Kumaran Rajandran
Keyword(s):  
Social Action ◽  
Physical Environment ◽  
Action Theory ◽  
Social Actor ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Ecological Philosophy ◽  
Social Action Theory ◽  
Image Shape ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Nonhuman Species

Abstract Ecolinguistics studies the interactions between language and ecology. It investigates whether the stories created by language are destructive or beneficial to all the constituents of the environment. In search of positive stories for our environment, this article focuses on vegan campaigns which generally bring awareness about veganism that, in turn, advocates protection of nonhuman animals and abstention from their exploitation. Nonhuman animals are part of the ecosystem and the way they are portrayed in language may determine the relationship between human and nonhuman animals. As vegan campaigns refer to nonhuman animals as sentient living beings, it is important to analyze whether the language and image of these campaigns articulate their purposes and create beneficial stories for nonhuman species. This article explores the stories regarding nonhuman animals in 27 posters of the vegan campaign “Go Vegan World” and examines how these stories are shaped and whether they are aligned with vegan values. The study is approached from an ecolinguistic perspective with a focus on multimodality where the language was analyzed through van Leeuwen’s Social Actor and Social Action theory, and the image was analyzed with Kress and van Leeuwen’s Grammar of Visual Design. Further, the analysis involves the ecosophy defined as a personal ecological philosophy of relationships between human and nonhuman animals, plants, and the physical environment. The findings suggest that the campaign language and image shape three stories: salience where nonhuman animals are individuals with their own feelings and lives; conviction that nonhuman animals matter as much as humans; ideology where biocentrism is promoted. By comparing these stories with the article’s ecosophy, an ecolinguistic analysis showed that they are largely beneficial in representing nonhuman animals as sentient living beings who are equal to humans.

Role of Moral Values in Evaluation of the Use of Nonhuman Animals in Research

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Maria Botero ◽  
Donna Desforges
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Research ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Moral Argument ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Human Welfare ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Moral Arguments ◽  
Animal Care

Abstract One requirement for the formation of an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) is that they include a community member who embodies the values of the general population. This study’s aim is to investigate whether community members use moral arguments when deliberating a case of nonhuman animals used in experimentation. To this end, we tested the responses of community members in a situation similar to those confronting members of IACUC. The participants’ evaluation of the protocol was consistent with the mandates of IACUC. We also found that overall no moral argument played a significant role in their evaluation of a protocol. Only arguments based on loyalty to the human species played a moderate role in the evaluation of using animals in experimental research, in a way similar to using some moral arguments regarding the importance of human welfare to justify the use of animals in experimental research.

Birding, Citizen Science, and Wildlife Conservation in Sociological Perspective

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 130-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Cherry
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Citizen Science ◽  
Wildlife Conservation ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Sociological Perspective ◽  
Quality Of Data ◽  
Science Projects ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
In The Wild

Abstract Sociological research on wildlife typically looks at how nonhuman animals in the wild are hunted, poached, or captured for entertainment, or how they play a symbolic role in people’s lives. Within sociology, little research exists on how people appreciate nonhuman animals in the wild, and how people contribute to wildlife conservation. I explore birding-related citizen science projects in the US. Citizen science refers to scientific projects carried out by amateurs. Literature on citizen science focuses on the perspective of professional scientists, with the assumption that only professional scientists are concerned with the quality of data from citizen science projects. The research showed birders share this skepticism, but they still find satisfaction in participating in citizen science projects. This paper contributes to sociological understandings of wildlife conservation by showing how birders’ participation in citizen science projects helps professional scientists study environmental problems such as climate change and its effects on wildlife.

scholarly journals The emergence of cooperation by evolutionary generalization

2021 ◽  
Vol 288 (1951) ◽  
pp. 20210338
Author(s):  
Félix Geoffroy ◽  
Jean-Baptiste André
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Evolutionary Model ◽  
Machine Learning Techniques ◽  
Cooperative Behaviour ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Learning Techniques ◽  
In The Wild ◽  
Emergence Of Cooperation ◽  
Evolutionary Analogy ◽  
Evolutionarily Stable

In principle, any cooperative behaviour can be evolutionarily stable as long as it is incentivized by a reward from the beneficiary, a mechanism that has been called reciprocal cooperation. However, what makes this mechanism so powerful also has an evolutionary downside. Reciprocal cooperation faces a chicken-and-egg problem of the same kind as communication: it requires two functions to evolve at the same time—cooperation and response to cooperation. As a result, it can only emerge if one side first evolves for another reason, and is then recycled into a reciprocal function. Developing an evolutionary model in which we make use of machine learning techniques, we show that this occurs if the fact to cooperate and reward others’ cooperation become general abilities that extend beyond the set of contexts for which they have initially been selected. Drawing on an evolutionary analogy with the concept of generalization, we identify the conditions necessary for this to happen. This allows us to understand the peculiar distribution of reciprocal cooperation in the wild, virtually absent in most species—or limited to situations where individuals have partially overlapping interests, but pervasive in the human species.

The Face of the Nonhuman: Human-Animal Encounters in Pu Songling’s Liaozhai Zhiyi

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Thomas William Whyke ◽  
Melissa Shani Brown
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
The Face ◽  
Human Animal

Abstract In this article, we expand the scholarly investigation of the representation of nonhuman animals (henceforth, “animals”) in historic literature, specifically focusing upon Pu Songling’s Liaozhai Zhiyi [Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio]. This is partially a response to other scholars who argue that blurred boundaries between human and nonhuman in this genre challenge anthropocentrism by rendering humans and animals as basically the same. This point is often contextualized with reference to traditional Chinese philosophies including Daoism. Drawing upon various tales within Liaozhai, we explore the forms of ethical reciprocity that are enabled through shapeshifting; however, we trouble the assertion that blurred physical boundaries necessarily de-center the human. We argue that despite the fact that animals can become human and vice versa, Liaozhai depicts a natural world which privileges “becoming-human” and naturalizes “human virtues.”

Hunting and Illegal Violence Against Humans and Other Animals: Exploring the Relationship

2002 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clifton Flynn
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Family Member ◽  
Demographic Characteristics ◽  
Animal Abuse ◽  
College Males ◽  
Public Property ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
In The Wild ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis study examined the relationship between hunting and illegal violence among college males. Although similar on many socio-demographic characteristics such as age and social class (parents' education and occupation), hunters were more likely than non-hunters to be white and Protestant. They also were more likely to have grown up with a family member who hunted. Hunters were about twice as likely to have been violent toward nonhuman animals; however, one type of violence—killing wild or stray animals—accounted for this difference. Regarding violence toward people, hunters were more than twice as likely to have damaged or destroyed private or public property during their last year in high school but were no more likely during that year to have fought with other persons. Thus, at least for this sample, hunting related to harming animals in the wild and to property damage but not to other forms of animal abuse or violence against humans. This paper discusses possible explanations for this result and limitations of the study.

Degrees of Anthropocentrism in Accounts of Wildlife-Vehicle Collisions

2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mai Kuha
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Vehicle Collisions ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Land Vehicles ◽  
News Reports ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
In The Wild ◽  
English Speaking

AbstractAn investigation of language use in news stories about collisions involving vehicles and nonhuman animals in the wild reveals that reports of bird-airplane collisions tend to focus on the safety of the humans involved, even to the point of constructing the bird as a projectile, rather than a victim. Reports of land vehicles and boats colliding with larger nonhuman animals tend to demonstrate a greater concern for nonhuman participants, attributing greater responsibility to humans for the collisions, although they are more dangerous to humans. Although similar patterns are found in news reports in several languages and in several English-speaking countries, anthropocentrism alone does not fully explain the patterns in journalists’ choice of expressions and structures in these news stories.

Moby-Dick and Compassion

2004 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Armstrong
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Shape Representations ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Moby Dick ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Structures Of Feeling ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Nonhuman Species

AbstractBecause the notions of "anthropomorphism" and "sentimentality" often are used pejoratively to dismiss research in human-animal studies, there is much to be gained from ongoing and detailed analysis of the changing "structures of feeling" that shape representations and treatments of nonhuman animals. Literary criticism contributes to this project when it pays due attention to differences in historical and cultural contexts. As an example of this approach, a reading of the humanization of cetaceans in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick - and more broadly in nineteenth-century whaling discourse - demonstrates how radically human feelings for nonhuman species are affected by shifting material and ideological conditions.

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