Chapter 5 considers the ways in which animal responses to music were used as evidence of their intelligence and sensitivities. In the context of the cultural and philosophical search for the origins of music in so-called primitive forms of communication and animal cries, the medium of music provided a means of constructing and imaginatively exploring animal subjectivities, while positing an experience of listening that lay entirely beyond the limits of the human self. Such discussions, though at times making use of scientific data, contained a wealth of anecdotal evidence and casual observations, which I include as a critical component of understandings of animals and music in both the popular and scientific imagination of the period. I also consider the musical animals of fiction by George Eliot and Charles Dickens in order to demonstrate that music offers a familiar point of access into the unfamiliar mind of the other.

Defeat by Rome in the first Punic war (264−241) had nevertheless left a Carthaginian political and military presence in Iberia. Hannibal’s father Hamilcar and brother-in-law Hasdrubal commanded there in turn, and were succeeded after their premature deaths by Hannibal. He attacked the Rome-friendly city of Saguntum, and the outbreak of the second Punic war followed. Its much-disputed causes are addressed. Hannibal wrong-footed the Romans by crossing the Pyrenees and Alps with elephants and descending into Italy. By brilliant tactics, he won four battles in rapid succession (218−216) and increasing order of scale and gravity: at the Ticinus and Trebia in north Italy, then an ambush at Lake Trasimene in Etruria, and finally the massive victory at Cannae. But he rejected his lieutenant Maharbal’s advice to march on Rome. Appendix 3.1 argues that Hannibal became increasingly isolated after these successes, and Appendix 3.2 that there was only one Maharbal.

So far, Christianity in Mizoram has been understood as having a specific birthdate: 11 January 1894, the day two Christian missionaries from London carried the world religion - along with technologies of writing, education, and print media - into the foothills. Despite the centrality of forest animals and spirits to everyday life in the past, the roles of forest-dwellers in this story have drawn little more than a cursory glance in historical writings. This chapter paints a different picture. The story of the Christianization can be seen afresh by paying attention to both continuity and change in older human relationships with the forest as well as by taking seriously both vernacular sources and the environmental knowledge of uplanders. Ecological transformations and catastrophic collapses in animal populations attended the arrival of the colonial state in the late nineteenth century, alongside the mass ‘vermin’ eradication schemes of the early 1900s. The changes wrought during this period altered the most historically significant of human relationships in the Lushai Hills - those with other animals, plants, and non-human beings. In this complicated ecosystem, these shifts both shaped and mirrored changes in upland society towards modern institutions: a cash economy, state rule, missionary and state medicine, and, most importantly, the near total conversion of the human population to Christianity from the early to mid-twentieth century. It was through the actions and reactions of specific forest species, and through changing human relations with them, that Christian missionaries first become relevant to upland people.

Several species are stolen from the wild and forced into tiny cages, small tanks, or other terrible conditions, where they are forced to work or be physically or emotionally abused. This chapter provides examples of animals in captivity, describes how they were captured, and describes their current "living" conditions. Many animals in captivity do not have their basic physiological or psychological needs met. Examples include Tilikum, a male orca, who was captured at the age of 2 and confined to a tiny cell (14 hours a day) with two female orcas who attacked him mercilessly. Tilikum eventually snapped and killed two humans. He died at only 35. Lolita (aka Tokitae), another captive orca, was captured from her family at the age of 4, and has lived in isolation for over 50 years in the smallest orca tank in the US. There are hopes to recuperate and potentially release her back to her family (native to the Pacific Northwest); except, the aquarium where she "lives" will not release her. Two additional examples are the dolphin-capture hunts of Taiji, Japan, and the horrific lives of enslaved, captive, working elephants in Southeast Asia. This chapter advocates to end animal captivity.

We protect species or hasten their extinctions. We protect the environment or destroy it. We slow down the climate crisis or ignore it and hit a point where Earth cannot remain a viable planet. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) is supposed to protect wild species (over 5,800 animal and 30,000 plant species) from overexploitation and trade. However, it does not seem like CITES protections work. Despite capture and trade bans several species remain endangered and some are critically endangered or at risk of extinction. When humans decide which species to protect or not, corruption (and poaching) often follows. Examples of highly poached and endangered species are provided throughout the chapter including sharks (fins), elephants (tusks), rhinoceros (horns), tigers (bones), giraffes (skins), pangolins (scales), bears (bile), turtles (eggs), and totoabas (bladders) and the incidentally nearly extinct Vaquita. It is predicted we will lose 99.9% of critically endangered and 67% of endangered species within the next 100 years leaving cows as the largest land species on Earth. To retain biological and genetic diversity on Earth, we must stop the trade and exploitation of wildlife now.

In this chapter I uncover the place of animals within imperial discourses. This repertoire of representations served to denigrate Burmese populations as being too close to animals but did so ambivalently. Imperial texts also revealed their authors’ barely sublimated desires for the colonized Other and their own close, emotional connections with non-human creatures.

Focussing on elephants and oxen to uncover how they came to be fostered, mobilized, and employed as vital workers in Myanmar’s two major industries of timber extraction and rice cultivation, this chapter explores how both became framed as particular types of resources.

In this chapter I focus on interspecies relationship in moments of open insurrection and disorder. It first applies an animal lens to the history of the Hsaya San rebellion which swept across the colony at the end of 1930 and took more than a year and in excess of 10,000 troops to suppress. It then explores the shifting material and symbolic place of animals in the colonial order as Rangoon fell to the Japanese in 1942, focussing particularly on the zoo.

Here I outline two crucial concepts that are returned to throughout the book. The first is the notion of ‘undead capital’, a concept that provides a lens to analyze the specific commodity form that working animals took in the colony. The second is an expanded understanding of colonial bio-politics, a politics that I argue served to render animals (including humans) into three states, namely, as subjects, as objects, and as abject. Together these concepts outline two key underpinning forces that shaped how animals came to be valued under colonial rule in Myanmar. In the first concept, this was through a process of valorisation as animal capital. In the second concept, this was through a governmentalizing evaluation of an animal.

This chapter develops an argument about what is wrong with captivity beyond its impact on animal well-being. It proposes a discussion of the harms that denying liberty and dignity creates. Zoos, companion animals, and sanctuaries are discussed as sites of captivity.

The study of convergent cognitive evolution aims to understand how similarities in physical and social intelligence emerge in evolutionarily distant species. This field, which is relatively new, has focused on a number of taxa, including nonhuman primates, corvids, and other birds, cetaceans, canids, and elephants. In this chapter, we highlight the social minds of elephants in particular, with a review of existing observational and experimental research. Investigations of the proximate mechanisms that underlie social behavior require an understanding of how an animal "sees," "hears," "touches,"and "smells" its world. Thus, we emphasize the need to take elephants’ sensory perspective into account when investigating their cognition, especially considering their exceptional olfactory and acoustic senses. We briefly review the literature on elephant social cognition, and discuss the relevance of such research to elephant conservation.