Troubling Dualisms with the God in the Aquarium
God, pet, and research subject, axolotls transgress Western dualisms. Alex Ventimilla explores what these creatures tell us about science, companionship, and life in the Anthropocene …
Play Nature in These Six (More) Board Games
Nate Carlin is back to review six (more) nature-themed board games: the worlds they construct and the ecological stories they tell …
Carp as Villains and Victims
Teri Harman considers resilience, fishy companionship, and the culpability of “invasive” carp in Utah Lake. Are carp villains or victims? …
A Cage of One’s Own? On Interspecies Captive-ation
Using the concept of captivation, Quinn Georgic unpacks human-animal interspecies relations by looking closely at mutual power that binds humans and primates together—from HBO’s CHIMP CRAZY to fieldwork with lemurs …
Consensual AI? A Call for Indigenous-Led Caribou Conservation
Genevieve Pfeiffer explores human-caribou entanglements and how Indigenous relationships with them could guide future conservation efforts—avoiding past disasters like the James Bay Project …
My Strange Kinship with a Tick
What messages are shared through a tick bite? Maxime Fecteau explores his experience with Lyme disease, revealing how an undesired relationship with ticks nonetheless has profound impact on his way of seeing ecological degradation, multispecies kinship, and the Anthropocene …
Beastly Consent and Relationships Beyond Boundaries
Vita Sleigh investigates the connections between animal consent, interspecies erotics, and the (at times violent) power differentials that characterize commonly experienced relationships with animals. How can we attend to the otherness of creatures and hold our attractions to them with care? …
Love, Violence, & Respect in Animal-Human Companionship
Companionship across species is not always simple, nor always rewarding, but perhaps says something about respect for more-than-human beings. In this poem and short essay, Kelsey Dayle John reflects on how the complex fear of witnessing her two dogs fight shaped her approach to multispecies relations …
Equine Companionship and the Multispecies Construction of Wilderness
Inspired by volunteering on equestrian trail crews in the Cascade Mountains, Kathleen Gekiere argues wilderness is a multispecies performance, embodied by the practices of horses and humans on the trail …
Thinking With Animal Companions: A Keynote
In this series keynote, professor emerita and historian Harriet Ritvo sets the stage for further investigation of “companion species.” She introduces the varied threads of animal companionship—from influence and impact to proximal, favored reciprocity …
The Strange Love of Cuckoos and Currawongs
Kate Judith shares a creative and speculative story through the vertiginous voices of the cuckoo and currawong, which underscore the tension between parasitism and care. The currawong’s caregiving is marked by both sacrifice and survival, while the cuckoo’s actions highlight a demolishing invasive behavior. This form reflects the complex, often painful exchanges that define interspecies interactions …
Psycho Drain Flies
A trip to the bathroom sends Henry Hughes on a journey to discover what critters are living in the urinals and what we might learn from them in this era of environmental precarity …
