Making, Breaking, Reinventing: the Human-other-animal Interface in the Anthropocene

The International Geological Association places the official starting date for the Anthropocene at 1950. Do the 60% of primates, 30% of amphibians and 21% of fish species threatened with extinction in 2021 care? Those of us studying the human/other-animal interface needed no official sanction to denote contemporary rapid, radical and dramatic ecosystem churning. Human-animal interfaces are not just a central lens for the Anthropocene; they represent critical ecologies of hope and despair. But are disciplinary theoretical and methodological approaches keeping pace with the needs and complexities of these processes and patterns?  Yes and no. In this talk I argue that while we have made substantive improvements in theory and methods, historical and traditional commitments to disciplinary silos remain substantive obstacles to innovation and transformation. We (humans and others) can benefit from enhanced transdisciplinary, and trans-species, engagement. Here I offer brief examples from the research into human-primates, human-hyena, human-dog, and human-elephant interfaces to illustrate that synergies, hybridities, and contemporary evolutionary theory might be particularly useful in the current landscapes of the human and others.