The Human-Animal Continuum

Human-Animal Relationship ANTH 2301 The Human-Animal Continuum There are numerous aspects of our life that involve nonhuman creatures. Animals are an essential component of many people's food and subsistence systems, especially in the fields of agriculture, hunting, and herding. There are those who worship animals as deities. Animals are often used as emblems for sports teams or tribes. For instance, did the sports or debate teams at your school have an animal as their mascot? People appreciate animals as pets and friends in many cultures, and evolutionary theory acknowledges that humans are related to animals as ancestors. Animals have a multitude of functions in human lives, making them essential to humanity everywhere. However, defining an animal might be challenging. Science defines an animal as any multicellular creature, either vertebrate or invertebrate, with the exception of a few, that is able to breathe, move, absorb and expel food and food products, and reproduce sexually. It goes without saying that humans are included in this. This inclusion is supported by the tradition of Western philosophy. Animals were classified by the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BCE) as either blooded (humans, mammals, birds, and fish), non-blooded (shelled animals, insects, and soft-skinned sea animals), or dualizers, or creatures with mixed characteristics (bats, which have four legs but fly, and whales, which live in the sea but give birth to live offspring). According to Aristotle, people are creatures with the capacity for thought. The Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus presented his binomial classification in 1735. This system included a genus and a species name to designate each living thing. Linnaeus separated the living world into the Regnum Animale (animal kingdom) and the Regnum Vegetabile (plant kingdom) in his 1735 treatise Systema Naturae. Linnaeus classed humans as animals, much like Aristotle had done before him. The scientific method of studying the animal world now acknowledges the existence of a continuum with gradations of variation among all extant animal species. Despite the fact that humans are animals, individuals identify themselves differently from animals in all civilizations. According to French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009), all civilizations identify themselves in contrast to nature, which they characterise as being outside of or on the periphery of human culture. Most people view humans and human civilization as everything that is not part of nature or an animal. Because they reveal how people view themselves as humans in the world, animals and nature thus hold great symbolic value in human society. Famously, Lévi-Strauss stated that animals are "good to think" (1963, 89), suggesting that they give people constructive methods to reflect on their own selves. All civilizations employ animals as symbols to represent the human desire to find both similarities and contrasts with other species. Every society's definition of animals is greatly influenced by its culture. Animals have different meanings in different cultures. They might be work animals, friends, ancestors, deities, or even things that are kept in zoos or bred in industrial farms for food. Consider American society, which farms pigs as a source of food while simultaneously loving and adoring dogs as members of the family. Dogs are seen as food in certain cultures. Dog meat is regarded as a curative meal by the Lakota people of North America (see Meyers and Weston 2020), and it is served as a male aphrodisiac in restaurants in Vietnam that have been given special designation (Avieli 2011). In the United States, several kinds of pigs, such the potbellied pig, are maintained as family pets, which serves as another evidence of the blending of animal borders. How can societies categorise some creatures as belonging to one group and not another? The core of anthropology is the study of group identity. Different civilizations use self-comparison to define "the other" as something other than human. This binary (two-component) comparison—also known as "us versus them," "we versus they," or even the "Other," capitalized—is a universal human inclination. Cultural groups frequently make distinctions between nonhuman creatures and humans, labelling certain individuals as "other" and not totally human, likening them to animals or even individual animal parts. Native speakers of Quechua and Aymara in the Andes call themselves runa, which translates to "people" or "humans." Since they lack social ties and a sense of community, people who do not speak their native tongues and do not reside in the Andes are therefore considered inhuman (Q'ara, literally "naked and bare") (Zorn 1995). Both within Western civilizations and among Indigenous tribes worldwide, there is a common division between those who belong to the group and those who do not. It is debatable where the term "frogs" originated as a nickname or insult for French people, although it seems to have started in France as a term for those who resided in Paris and consumed frog legs. However, by the late 1700s, the epithet "frogs" had started to appear in English newspapers and other written materials as a derogatory, offensive slur for all French people (Tidwell 1948). Not to be outdone, the French have historically called English people "rosbifs," or roast beefs, a staple of English cooking. Despite the humorous nature of these instances, human-animal iconography has a darker aspect. German free-lance writer Jan Mohnhaupt (2020) explores the warped bond that certain Nazi officials shared with animals in a new book. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler spoiled his dog, while military chief Hermann Göring kept lions as pets. The Nazi administration passed several laws against the Jewish people after seizing power in Germany in 1937, including one that forbade Jewish people from owning pets. Another method the Nazis tried to dehumanise Jews was by forbidding them from owning companion animals. Relationships between humans and animals are crucial to our sense of identity. This chapter will examine how different cultures view and relate to nonhuman animals, including both live and symbolic creatures, as well as the numerous ways that people engage with and conceptualise these "other" entities.