Animals routinely suffer violence by humans, especially during war, but it is unclear how much people in conflict environments express concern for animal welfare. Based on a 2,008-person survey in Ukraine in May 2024, we find that respondents are anthropocentric, prioritizing human over animal suffering; biocentric, regarding both as important; or, in a small minority, zoocentric, emphasizing animal over human suffering. Experimental priming on violence against animals during the Russia–Ukraine war has limited effect on changing attitudes toward animal welfare, but it does increase resource allocation to animal relief organizations. A war crimes punishment experiment also shows that while respondents sanction perpetrators of human suffering more severely than perpetrators of animal suffering, violence against animals is still strongly penalized, indicating appreciation for animal rights, justice, and accountability. We reflect on the implications of our findings for speciesist versus posthumanist understandings of suffering during war.

While the plague of Provence is the most studied outbreak of the disease in early modern Europe, there is little in the extensive historiography on this topic about fears of the cross-species transmission of disease which re-emerged in the early eighteenth century because of events in southwestern France. Concerns about the interplay between cattle murrains and human plague resurfaced in the early eighteenth century because the plague of Provence followed an outbreak of cattle disease which swept across Europe and killed tens of thousands of animals. This article focuses on the debate about the spread of contagious diseases between species which occurred in Britain during this time. Links between the health of animals and that of humans became objects of heated discussion especially following the issuing of the 1721 Quarantine Act, which was designed to prevent the plague currently ravaging southwestern France from taking hold in Britain. It then considers the different beliefs regarding contagion and the transmission of diseases between different species during the plague of Provence. While focusing on the richly documented and highly revealing discussions in early eighteenth-century Britain about the interplay between plague in cattle and plague in humans, it also utilises materials from earlier centuries to examine more fully how early modern populations understood the relationship between plague in humans and cattle murrains.

During the nineteenth century, a growing sense of empathy toward non-human animals emerged within the Habsburg Empire. The new empathy toward animals took organizational form in voluntary associations that attracted men and women in urban settings. In 1852, one of the first such associations was born in the busy port city of Trieste (Trst/Triest), drawing members from the elite. These individuals criticized the animal care practices of the working class and rural population, repeatedly accusing them of “immorality” and even “inhumanity.”

As the article depicts, the guardians of the animal kingdom were not as compassionate as they might appear. In fact, the protectors of animals believed themselves far superior to the proletarians who supposedly whipped their horses. The way the growing bourgeoisie treated their animal friends ultimately served as a tool in the creation of the social distinction between the bourgeoisie on the one hand, and the workers and peasants on the other.

While Trieste’s animal protection society reflected a broader global trend, it also displayed unique characteristics shaped by the city’s distinctive social and cultural dynamics. The article sheds light on how these local traits influenced its development.

Sometimes male ostriches emit a low guttural sound that sounds strangely like a lion. On the plains in South Africa, these sounds aimed at female ostriches might confuse an unknowing listener. But on a ship bound from South Africa to Galveston, Texas in February 1887, these lion-esque sounds would not have been heard. Instead, as these dozens of ostriches crossed the Atlantic, their vocalizations were probably a quiet chirp, despite each bird weighing well over 100 pounds. Each ostrich had a more solitary existence on the ship than they had experienced in the wild or on a South African farm. On the Atlantic, they lived in single padded stalls near the middle of the hold, with paddocks between the stalls to offer some exercise and perhaps some interaction among the birds.1

Two of the world’s greatest boxers—Muhammad Ali of Louisville, KY and George Foreman of Houston, TX—met for the legendary “Rumble in the Jungle” in Kinshasa, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) in 1974. With concerts by the African American “Godfather of Soul” James Brown and South African singer-songwriter Miriam Makeba, nicknamed “Mama Africa,” the entwining tones of the U.S. civil rights era and anti-Apartheid movement augmented a cultural moment that displayed Pan-African, Black nationalist, and anti-imperial connections. However, the appearance of an insidious symbol from each aforementioned era is what decidedly swayed the local population against Foreman and for Ali.1

Environmental problems have become increasingly evident in post-revolutionary Iran. As a result, the field of environment has come to be a focus of research studies and technical management in the country. The recent proliferation of scientific analyses of the so-called environment indicates that the schemes of modern science are developing to combat the problems therein. Research findings also suggest, however, that environmental discourses and practices are not entirely reducible only to the terms of the natural sciences; distinctively, differing ideas of “nature” are drawn on to conceptualize differing schemes of environmental activities. This article explores how the materiality of national symbols brings to light particular social histories that reflect on and unfold through environmental discourses and practices encountered in Tehran.

Repatriation of human remains and associated funerary objects under NAGPRA and the increased use of culturally informed curation practices for sacred, religious, and ceremonial objects are important steps toward restoring control over cultural patrimony to Native Nations in the United States. Many museums holding Indigenous belongings have begun a collaborative care approach involving Indigenous community voices and improving access to collections. However, this framework has not been applied to many animal remains curated in American archaeology museums, which remain broadly beyond the care or administrative purview of Native people. Because many Indigenous worldviews do not hold a clear separation between the human and animal spheres, common practices applied to animal remains are not congruent with the idea of respectful or culturally informed care. Here we outline steps to shift the treatment of animals through the application of Indigenous knowledge to museum collections.

This article opens with a mystery: why was Zizang 子臧 assassinated in the seventh century bce, and why was his assassination justified in the Zuozhuan by his fondness of snipe-feather caps? It is well established that feathers were a common item of clothing in early and medieval China, used to confer status, to flaunt wealth, to embellish rituals. This article argues that there may also have been accompanying beliefs surrounding their use; beliefs that feathers might bestow upon the wearer certain imagined characteristics of the birds from which they came. It uses case studies of soldiers and their relationship to brown-eared pheasants, dancers and their relationship to long-tailed pheasants, and immortals and their relationship to cranes and egrets. Finally, it returns to Zizang's snipe-feather cap, and suggests reasons for his fate.

This essay is the winning entry of the 2023–4 Royal Institute of Philosophy THINK Essay Prize Competition, for which there were 330 entries. Claudia Wong is 16-year-old student at Cheltenham Ladies’ College.

The article discusses a passage in chapter 49 of the Hippocratic treatise On Regimen. It defends the transmitted text against a conjecture proposed by R. Joly, the author of the Corpus Medicorum Graecorum edition.