BASIC INTRO: animals in anthropology?

Animal studies in anthropology are still largely at mystery.  For reasons including the same misconceptions anthropologists makes in any division of anthropology.    However, animals have always been a focus of anthropological curiosity.

Isn't it so that when investigating the evolution of us (humans) we have pondered the lineage of apes and chimps to further understand our knowledge about ourself?  As you can probably assume, the role of animals gives people historical importance as well as functional importance.

What I mean by functional importance is....animals have adapted and survived the harshest of times without help from Iphone weather predictors and grocery delivery services.  They have found the food the need, the shelter to cover them, and their mates to reproduce.   Observing them over the years has not only led to insight on our own historical origins but as well as insight on survival and how animals part take in their own environment, by adapting....not adapting the environment to it.

Human-animal relationships have also taken a huge leap in the focus scale for anthropologists, it is even a subject being taught by cultural anthropologists, archaeologists, and biological anthropologists.  They may just seem like 'vehicles with which to explore a particular social formation or process' according to ethnography classics like Geertz.  But the contingency of human's relationship with animals are revealing how emerging forms of animal manufacture/management are redefining the human-animal relationship.

For example, in recent times...the topic of domestication of what once evolved from wild animals is a dichotomy for scientists.  Anthopologists are trying to conceptualize the idea that animals such as dogs and cats are life long friends (..sometimes the only friend) for some people, and bring purpose to their lives.  Where as, for others, animals serve as property that could be reproduced and multiplied.  It's almost like animals as crops for indigenous people versus colonized people.

Should we capitalize on animals like some already do? Look to it as a trade? Sell parts of animals on the black market, breed them senseless and sell them to questionable homes, use them as a sport and hunt them down?

Or should we look about it a way that many indigenous people would? As an awe inspiring thing, as gifts that we can take as friends or respect as parts of environments.   Each animal serves a purpose, we know that because of the food chain.  But do we always give animals a chance to be purposeful?  Even when we kill animals for food and material goods? Do we utilize each and every bone?  Use each and every single piece of hair or fur?

Just a thought.

kiyomi kimura