Prezentare

The adaptation of sedentary life and the process of plant and animal domestication in the Early Holocene helped humans to become from the dependents to the transformers of Earth. The inventions of metal, the industrialized production systems, and the rise of modern technology eventually made the species absolute regulator of the natural world. Today humanity is living in a world shaped by the human will–where other animals either face extinction at an alarming rate or experience potential threat of their survival, mainly caused by severe human effects on their natural habitats. The majority of the human population is urbanized and mostly detached from the natural world. This whole picture appears to be very unnatural for the human species too–given the fact that we have passed 99.7% of our time on the planet as hunter-gatherers and simple citizens of the natural world. Hence, the extreme and deteriorated environmental condition that we have created within only 0.3% of our time is not only leading to the diminishment of fellow nonhuman animals but also brings up potential threats to our very survival on Earth. In this regard, unlike the anthropocentric attitude of seeing non-human animals as mere ‘natural resources that have been created as ‘secure supplies’ for the ‘more intellectual human species, the discipline of anthrozoology highlights the status of humans as common citizens of the natural world, just like any other species–emphasizing our deep interconnections and symbiotic relationships with other animals throughout hundreds of thousands of years.