Title: Feral Animals in the American South: An Evolutionary History
Abstract: The historical subfield of evolutionary history is concerned with the coevolution of humans and other species. It draws on biological understandings of evolutionary processes while seeking to show how those processes are shaped by human action in specific historical contexts. Although informed by research on evolutionary processes spanning hundreds of thousands or even millions of years, evolutionary history usually focuses on shorter time scales ranging from decades to millennia. Like environmental history, it is concerned with nonhuman actors and ecological relationships, but it is especially attentive to the causes and consequences of heritable biological traits. Abraham H. Gibson's Feral Animals in the American South is an engaging example of this approach to integrating biology and history. It begins with an overview of the history of Eurasian domestication and the origins of feral animals—that is, animals descended from domesticated animals but who manage to survive without human control or care. Succeeding chapters focus on human relationships to domesticated and feral pigs, dogs, and horses in the region east of the Appalachian Mountains and south of the Potomac River from the beginnings of European colonization to the present. The book concludes by considering humanity's ethical obligations to feral animals in an increasingly human-dominated world.
Publication Year: 2017
Publication Date: 2017-12-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 3
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