Category: Blog

By Amanda Minervini

For many years I have traveled throughout Italy with my American students, and for some time we sojourned in Campania. Without giving my students too much background information, I took them to visit some of the famous estates where the Water Buffaloes (Bubalus bubalis) are supposedly “massaged and happy,” and where, as a result, the mozzarella and the meat are said to be “even more delicious” and “heavenly.” Over the years, the wide range of reactions shown by the students struck me, from horror at the animals’ conditions to complete indifference, underscored by their immediate requests to taste the ice cream made from buffalo milk. What I am writing here is not the result of some secretive investigative inquiry, but simply what any tourist can see at any one of these estates. If they want to see.

Every time I hear talk of “happy buffalo”—the ones that, in promotional videos and articles, listen to music, scratch themselves on rotating brushes, and live a bucolic life on lush green meadows—I feel a deep anger. For years we have been accustomed to a pastoral imaginary, as if buffalo mozzarella were the natural result of a harmony between human beings, territory, and animal. But it only takes a little digging—and the reading of some scientific studies, not activist investigations—to discover that the truth is very different. In fact, a quick tourist visit to one of the famous “happy” masserie, perhaps after a visit to the beautiful Paestum, is enough to realize that it is… quite simply a hoax. In all my visits I have never heard a single musical note, and the brushes meant to relieve the poor buffaloes’ itching were always malfunctioning. The poor buffaloes looked quite shut down or clearly unhappy.

The buffalo is an animal whose psychophysical well-being depends on access to water and humid environments (Napolitano et al.,

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Di Roberto Marchesini

Nel panorama marcatamente antropocentrico dell’umanismo italiano, Giacomo Leopardi costituisce un esempio particolare non solo per la radicale critica all’antropocentrismo, ma altresì per la particolare sensibilità che introduce nella sua poetica, che precorre l’esistenzialismo esteso della filosofia postumanista. Leopardi nello Zibaldone ci mostra la materia come un’entità poietica e potenzialmente capace di pensiero, in una sorta di panismo che rompe qualunque forma di barriera all’interno della fenomenologia della vita. In questo continuum vitale e pensante, il poeta di Recanati sottolinea la pluralità dell’essere, di cui l’essere umano non rappresenta il vertice o la perfezione, bensì una fase transitoria, ponendo così una critica all’universalismo vitruviano.

Possiamo dire che Leopardi sia il poeta della condivisione, del sentire comune diffuso tra tutti gli esseri viventi, un con-sentire che si manifesta attraverso predicati di somiglianza e comunione. Ne è un esempio esplicito il Canto notturno di un pastore errante dell’Asia, in cui la trasversalità predicativa viene tradotta nei versi: “in qual forma o stato che sia”. Tra i predicati condivisi ritroviamo innanzitutto la fragilità, quell’essere esposto alla crudezza del mondo che rende la vita commovente per certi aspetti e nello stesso tempo dotata di una sorta di eroismo inerente, di un valore morale in sé. In questo senso la fragilità dell’essere-in-vita e l’inevitabile caducità di questa condizione, un destino ineluttabile, induce un senso di fraternità, che assegna alla pietà non solo un significato emozionale ma altresì una valenza etica. Per altri versi, la fragilità se contrapposta allo slancio vitale che caratterizza la natura naturata, proprio in virtù della tensione eroica della vita – dotata al tempo stesso di eros e di coraggio – è di insegnamento all’essere umano.

Leopardi è altresì il poeta del corpo, un corpo commovibile nella sua dimensione affettiva, in quanto emozionabile e desiderante.

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By Andreas Moser

Angela Merkel is afraid. The most “natural” explanation for fear is the presence of an actual danger. For example, being bitten or attacked by a wild animal, shot by a killer, falling while mountain climbing, or forgetting your lines while reciting on stage in front of an audience.

Zoophobias, however, are fears that do not solely arise from the presence of dangerous animals. They manifest regardless of whether wild animals are locked in zoos, dogs are kept on the leash or cats roam freely around the house when you visit their humans. A zooanthropologist knows very well that the history of civilization would have been different if our ancestors had not been scared of species such as mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, bears and wolves.

Angela Merkel is scared of dogs – cynophobia. For her, this fear is neither imaginary nor an expression of social reserve. It stems from a very real experience: she was once bitten by a dog. We know that Merkel and her family lived under Russian influence in former East Germany. Like Merkel, Putin’s cute dog might also know what it means to “be kept” by Russians.

Without jumping to conclusions, we notice that Angela Merkel shares her fear of dogs with Michael Jackson. Yet, despite his fear of mice, someone like Walt Disney could create the world’s most famous movie mouse, Mickey. However, it’s not my intention here to describe how Adolf Hitler curbed his cat phobia.

Personally, I struggle to understand why some people would like to keep fighting dogs, admire their fighting abilities and biting strength, and walk them in city parks. Nevertheless, it is absurd to assume that Putin acted in bad faith when he allowed his Labrador to roam freely during Merkel’s visit.

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By Amanda Minervini

Students today are facing a mental health crisis. According to surveys of college students, the percentage of students diagnosed with an anxiety disorder varies by source, but is generally between 34% and 37% according to this article, this study and this article  -> web surveys taken by 96,000 U.S. students across 133 campuses in the 2021-22 academic year. It found that 44% of students reported symptoms of depression.

I was born in the city of Bari, Southern Italy, with an inexplicable passion for horses since I can remember. As an early teen and without a driving license, I frequently and in a somewhat rocambolesque manner, managed to escape the concrete of the city to spend time with horses in our beautiful Apulian countryside. At age 25, I moved to the USA and began my graduate studies, during which these happy escapes became a lot harder and infrequent but I could never completely disconnect from horses. In 2022, as an assistant professor at Colorado College, I founded a nonprofit organization, the Equine-Guided Learning and Healing Experience (EGLHE) to help students develop meaningful relationships with animals, with a special focus on equines. EGLHE is my personal approach to supporting learning while paying attention to mental health, one that fosters a deep and transformative relationship between humans and equines, and which ultimately benefits everyone involved. My goals are to uproot anthropocentrism, to nurture emotional well-being, self-awareness, and mindfulness through equine-assisted learning. I studied equine behavior and ethology, as well as Warwick Schiller’s Attuned Horsemanship, Lockie Phillips’ Emotional Horsemanship, Rupert Isaacson’s Athena and Movement Method, Masterson Method, Balance through Movement Method, and horse brain seminars. I created my own ethology-based and ethical method blending principles from each of these approaches,

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By Emanuele De Gasperis

As we observe daily, the anthropocentric vision and the concept of dominance over nature have led humans to treat the entire planet as an object of greed. This distorted relationship, based on the exercise of power over fellow humans and other living beings, reflects a deeper issue. Often addressed both by the media and institutions, the relationship between human and non-human animals is affected by strong biases due to widespread sensitivities and economic interests. Unfortunately, common sense does not always align with sound judgment or current scientific knowledge, while economic interests often clash with the actual needs of living beings, particularly in terms of animal welfare.
First, we must take into consideration that there are different animal species, and our ways of relating to them differ based on individual sensitivities and cultural contexts. We can speak of animals that live more or less freely in nature, that are confined in zoos, species that have now adapted to urban environments, and wild animals forced to seek food in urban centers due to habitat invasion. There are also animals that have been selectively bred or genetically modified for ornamental purposes or used in experimentation and research.
While sensitivities vary, in our everyday lives we tend to experience two extreme and often paradoxical situations in our relationship with other animals. While we witness the commodification and objectification of living beings as production machines, we also anthropomorphize the so-called “pets”, the small companion animals who live with us.
The terms “pet” and “farm animals” epitomize the distortion we face in relation to non-human animals and our lack of respect for animal life. Pets have entered nearly every household and, notwithstanding an increased sensitivity towards them, our limited knowledge and lack of respect for their needs prevent us from recognizing their species-specific traits and individuality.

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By Cosetta Veronese

Written by E. B. White in 1952, Charlotte’s Web continues to rank high in children’s literature. It is a bittersweet story featuring a diverse cast of characters, both human and non-human. It begins at the farm of Mr. Arable, where piglets have just been born. Mr. Arable’s little daughter Fern prevents her father from taking the life of the one runt in the litter, whom she names Wilbur and raises herself.  As Wilbur grows, he is transferred from the Arables to the bigger farm of Fern’s uncle, Mr. Zuckerman, where he befriends other animals – geese, sheep, horses, cows, Templeton the rat, and the spider Charlotte. As the Zuckermans and the farmhand Lurvey plan to butcher Wilbur with the coming of the cold season, Charlotte pledges to save his life by spinning words in her web that celebrate Wilbur’s virtues. Her plan is successful. The phrases “some pig”, “terrific”, “radiant” and “humble” that Charlotte weaves into the web persuade the Zuckermans’ of their pig’s exceptional qualities and everybody marvels at the miracle. This earns Wilbur the first prize at the annual county fair, celebrated at the end of summer. Once the festivities are over and everybody prepares to return to the barn, Charlotte announces that she is close to death and will not be going back. Wilbur promises to care for her eggs and, as spring arrives, hundreds of spiders are born. All of them leave, except for three who decide to stay with him at the barn as a token of friendship.

Charlotte’s Web has been considered a story about life and death, about the inexorable passage of time that marks the life stages of all living creatures, human and non-human alike. The emphasis on nature’s cyclical rhythms – the rhythms of life and death – is evident through the strong sensory (and sensual) appeal of the descriptions.

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By Pietro Li Causi (University of Siena)

The Εnd of the Anthropocene?

The term ‘Anthropocene’ was coined by Paul Crutzen, Nobel Prize laureate for his contributions to atmospheric chemistry, during an IGBP (International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme) conference in 2000. On that occasion, Crutzen surprised the attendees with a speech later published in Nature in 2002. In his thesis, he posited that the Holocene epoch had concluded and given way to a new geological era inaugurated by the advent of the Industrial Revolution. In his opinion, this new era was characterized by a significant acceleration in the Earth’s transformations, largely due to human activities after the end of the last ice age².
Initially considered controversial, the Anthropocene hypothesis has gradually gained ground within the Earth science scholarly community, evolving into an almost universally accepted concept. It has influenced contemporary political and philosophical debates on climate change, ecological crises, the sixth mass extinction and broader environmental concerns³. The debate on the Anthropocene has also guided the contemporary imagination, fuelling catastrophic narratives and encouraging the development of a new literary and cinematic genre, known as eco-fiction. This genre depicts future scenarios of environmental damage caused by our species.
This consensus persisted for at least twenty-four years. Early in 2024, a commission of geologists decreed that there had never been an Anthropocene⁴.
End of the story?

In the Wake of a Fading Anthropocene

As Matteo Meschiari pointed out in a recent contribution on Doppiozero, the Anthropocene has been a product of the colonial imagination, birthed by white Western males for the use of other white Western males who had begun to mourn – rather badly,

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By Andrea Pilloni

In December 2018 a funeral for 62 AIBOs, robotic dogs made by Sony, was held at Kofukuji Temple in Isumi City, Chiba Prefecture, east of Tokyo. It is not the first time the 450-year-old temple offers such a service and with time it seems the request for it is growing. Thanks to a strong media coverage that reached overseas, this phenomenon has sparked curiosity and debate among Buddhist communities, robotic enthusiasts and scholars. I think that such events, despite their small scale, perfectly fit in contemporary anthropological debates about agency, technology, non-human beings and I argue they may even lead us to challenge our own assumptions about how humans generate processes of social engagement with non-humans or artificial entities.

Living and dying as a robot

The funerary rite for AIBOs, conducted by the Buddhist priest Bungen Oi, does not appear to be very different from the ones usually performed for humans. The priest recites and chants sutras surrounded by incense smoke, addressing the dead robots frontally, and praying for their soul. Many owners attach to the body of their robot dogs coloured letters in which they write prayers, biographical details and goodbye messages. Together with traditional Buddhist decorations such as flowers and fruits, the altars are adorned with pliers, wire clippers, and circuit testers. In some occasions the sutras are recited by AIBOS specifically programmed to do so. After the ceremony, components of the bodies of the ‘deceased’ AIBOs will be recycled to repair other robots (Maiko 2019).

The funerals started in 2015 thanks to the effort of Nobuyuki Norimatsu, a Sony ex-engineer and founder of A.FUN, a company specialised in repairing electronic devices. After Sony shut down their repairing service in 2014,

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By Andreas Moser

I know that you know there are writings dedicated to the meaning of the word “animal” and its etymological kinship with the Latin word “anima” = “soul”.

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By Cosetta Veronese

I was browsing the internet in search of a photo featuring both a bird and an airplane for a presentation on zooanthropology.

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