The Animal Highlight

Herre de Bondt and Rebecca Shen are back on the show to discuss Rosa Dyer’s season “Animal Collections/’Objects”. We delve into some of the key themes and tensions to emerge in the season including questions of value, colonization, ethics, and practices of preservation. We revisit a season that follows birds, bodies, and objects across museums and beyond, asking how ethics, beauty, and decay shape...

Rosa questions whether zoos could be thought of as “living collections” that objectifying animals in ways that are similar to the animal objects one finds in a museum or archive.  She considers the internet sensation Moo Deng and asks whether her fame as achieved much in the way of the conservation goals for pygmy hippos.  Meet Moo Deng, the baby pygmy hippo taking the internet by storm by The Tod...

Rosa returns to feathers in this episode, this time to discuss the infamous 2009 “feather heist”, in which Edwin Rist stole an invaluable collection of bright-coloured feathers from tropical birds. She uses the heist to open a deeper consideration of the value of feather collections for science and the ethics of collecting and maintaining such collections.    Pitt Rivers Museum Smithsonian Natural...

In this episode Rosa steps away from feathered objects to consider how museum collections and archives should be thought of as living ecosystems. She discusses how webbing clothes moths are understood as ‘pests’ and some of the strategies curators are trying to employ to manage them: including sexual confusion and the introduction of parasitoid wasps.  Pitt Rivers Museum Oxford University Natural...

In this episode Rosa focuses on the Oxford Dodo, attempting to trace the life history of a bird whose only trace is a fragile head and foot in the Oxford University of Natural History. She unpacks some of the competing routes the bird might have taken – from being hunted and shipped from Mauritius to being kept in an urban menagerie. She also follows the afterlife of the museum object itself once...

Rosa traces a Munduruku feather cap from Brazil to the museum case and discuss how tapirage was a process used to turned green parrots  feathers a blazing yellow by using frog toxins, dyes and time. Beauty and pain sit side by side as we weigh Indigenous innovation, care and the cost to animals. Pitt Rivers Museum Credits: Recorded: 9 November 2023 Claudia Hirtenfelder, executive producer, editor...

Using a feather fan as her base, Rosa Dyer traces how Victorian fashion turned fierce hummingbirds into quiet ornaments. The object brings into focus the differences between indigenous mythologies and western ideas of hummingbirds and what the impacts of global trade were on how we understand them today.  Pitt Rivers Museum How hummingbird and vulture mediate between life and death in Latin Americ...

We start Season 6 "Museum Collections/Objects" with Rosa Dyer looking at the Huia, a New Zealand songbird whose dimorphic beaks garnered the attention of science, fashion, and empire. Rosa uses the museum object to ask questions about how different knowledge systems value animals.  Pitt Rivers Museum Sonic Specimen with Rachel Mundy on The Animal Turn.  The 1848 lithograph by John Gould ...

Fierce, controversial, and caught between worlds—Heck cattle embody the complex intersection of dark history and modern conservation. This final episode of Season 5 of the Animal Highlight explores how these bovines were deliberately bred by Nazi zoologists in the 1920s and now find themselves at the center of rewilding debates across Europe. Recorded: 14 December 2023    Featured:   Season 6 Grad...

Virginia explores how the recovery of red kites in Britain has been shaped by international efforts and cross-border collaborations between governments and NGOs. Thinking about these birds, Virginia raises questions and concerns about translocation, culture, and species conservation.  Recorded: 14 December 2023   Featured:   International Relations with Andrea Schapper on The Animal Turn Natural E...

Virginia tells us how grey wolves are reclaiming territories across Europe and North America through a process known as auto-rewilding—autonomously returning to lands from which humans once drove them out. This powerful expression of nonhuman agency challenges our conventional approach to wildlife management and invites us to reconsider what coexistence means in the Anthropocene.   Recorded: 22 No...

In this Animal Highlight, fellow Virginia Thomas uses one of Jo-Anne McArthur’s images as her inspiration. She compares and contrasts the lives of mink kept for fur with those of wild mink before reflecting on some of the ethical and environmental concerns that emerge from using mink for fur.   Recorded: 12 October 2023    Featured:   S6E7: Animal Photojournalism with Jo-Anne McArthur on The Anima...

In this Animal Highlight, fellow Virginia Thomas talks about Brown Dog, a canine who in 1903 was subjected to vivisection at University College London. Two activists brought his plight to the attention of the International Antivivisection Society and what ensued was a series lengthy legal and social battles commonly referred to as "The Brown Dog Affair." Recorded: 26 October 2023    Feat...

In this Animal Highlight, fellow Virginia Thomas discusses honeybees and the ways in which they are exploited for their honey. She notes how much labour goes into making honey and the scale of the industry that relies on it. Because of the violence and exploitation in the industry vegans do not eat honey. Recorded: 26 October 2023    Featured:   S6E5: Abolition with Gary Francione on The Animal Tu...

In this Animal Highlight, fellow Virginia Thomas discusses the European Wild Cat and their entangled relationships with domesticated cats. She notes how the interbreeding between these two species has conservationists worried and has resulted in a range of, oftentimes, violent interventions into their animals’ lives. Recorded: 12 October 2023    Featured:   S5E3: Feral and Invasive Species with La...

Virginia Thomas tells us about a red-tailed hawk named Pale Male who sparked controversy and admiration when he built his nest on a luxury Fifth Avenue apartment building in New York City. Pale Male is a celebrity whose story illuminates questions about animal habitat rights in urban environments. Recorded: 12 October 2023    Featured:   Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat by Hal Herzog. S6E3:...

Virginia Thomas introduces the red maguey worm; a caterpillar often mistakenly called the "tequila worm.” She explores their biology and ethical implications of using these metamorphosing creatures as novelty ‘items’ in alcoholic beverages. Recorded: 18 September 2023    Featured:   Cosmopolitanism with Angie Pepper on The Animal Turn. Perdido Street Station by China Melville. The Life Cycle...

In this Animal Highlight, fellow Virginia Thomas focuses on the domestic dog and the ways in which they might be thought of as citizens. She thinks about some of dogs' history and discusses the work of Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka.  Recorded: 18 September 2023    Featured:   Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights by Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka. Biosecurity with Steve Hinchliffe...

The last episode of Season 4 is a review of the season “Animals and Waste.” Herre de Bondt, Rebecca Shen, and Claudia Hirtenfelder touch on some of the common themes to emerge in the season. These include how animals are valued as well as the mobility and accumulation of waste.    Recorded: 14 August 2024.    Herre de Bondt has done research on rats in Amsterdam, crows in Tokyo, and gulls in The H...

In this Highlight, Herre looks at how nuclear waste has impacted the lives of wild boars living in Japan. More specifically, he discusses how, following the 2011 triple disaster, boars responded to the departure of humans from the Fukushima area and how the animals are being impacted by their slow return.     Recorded: 15 May 2024.    Featured:   Evaluation of DNA damage and stress in wildlife chr...

In this episode Herre de Bondt discusses Singapore’s metropolitan macaques and how they use the city and its waste as a valuable resource that is not only important for their survival but contributes to the design of the city. Recorded: 15 May 2024.   Featured:   Purity and Danger by Mary Douglas Catastrophic extinctions follow deforestation in Singapore by Barry W. Brook et al.  Characterizing hu...

When it comes to talking about waste and its impacts on animals it is hard to not think about plastic. In this episode, Herre de Bondt tells us how sea turtles have been entangled with the politics of plastic. Recorded: 27 November 2023.    Featured:   Dave the Diver Sea Turtle with straw in nostril   Credits: Claudia Hirtenfelder, executive producer and host  Herre de Bondt, co-host and co-editor...

Fiddler crabs, with their one giant claw, are considered ecosystem engineers in mangrove environments. Herre de Bondt gives us a glimpse into the world of these incredible crustaceans. Recorded: 27 November 2023.    Featured:   Fiddler Crabs by Jochen Zeil et al.   Burrow-Morphological Characters of the Fiddler Crab and Ecological Correlates in a Lagoonal Beach on Pulau Hantu, Singapore by Shirley...

House finches in Mexico City use discarded cigarette butts in the lining of their nests to fend of parasites, Herre de Bondt tells us more abut this interesting behaviour and some of its potentially worrisome impacts. Recorded: 30 October 2023.    Featured:   All that breathes Lively Cities by Maan Barua. Killer Cities by Nigel Thrift. An experimental demonstration that house finches add cigarette...

Wormeries are becoming increasingly popular in cities so in this episode Herre de Bondt considers a creature at the center of this trend, worms, and how their lives are entwined with practices of composting. Recorded: 2 October 2023.    Featured:   Vermicomposting makes your garden grow on Homegrown Earthworms are more important than pandas (if you want to save the planet) by Sarah Johnson. Waste...