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WE ARE NOT SO STUPID ANIMALS

NEITHER
a
Vinciane Despret
a
Philosophie et Lettres, Universit de Lige, 4000 Lige, Belgium
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Published online: 18 May 2015.

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To cite this article: Vinciane Despret (2015) WE ARE NOT SO STUPID ANIMALS NEITHER, Angelaki:
Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 20:2, 153-161, DOI: 10.1080/0969725X.2015.1039855

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 ANGELAKI
journal of the theoretical humanities
volume 20 number 2 june 2015

translators foreword
Vinciane Despret is a psychologist and philoso-
pher at the University of Liege, but, as she
herself might insist, let us not go too fast
(The Body We Care For 128). Always cir-
cling back, swift to question and complicate,
Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:22 19 May 2015

Despret can be counted on to meticulously sift

through whatever is deemed true, neutral, or
objective, particularly in the eld of ethology.
Products of habit and power are not safe in
her hands. Her terrain is how we create, co-
create, and re-create our lives, identities, and
bodies, as seen through the wide viewnder of
our tales and texts about nature, culture,
animals, and science. In this, she seems to
don a third hat, that of a literary critic and
here she credits the profound inuence of nov-
elist Michel Tournier (on whom she wrote her
thesis).1
Despret is fascinated by how we report on
relationships on the different narratives
that are told and might be told about the see-
mingly same event. This burden infuses all of
her work: to judge among all the versions
not which is the most true (that is indetermin-
able) but, in line with James pragmatism,
which is the most interesting, the most fecund
the one that adds to the world, opens more
deliberations, and makes us think and
imagine.2 She often refuses to take sides,
claiming of her disparate sources: They need
one another.3
No respecter of disciplinary limits, species
borders, nodes of prestige, impact factor, pre-
existing truths and facts, or Western sciences
exclusive authority, she instead seeks out unan-
ticipated communicatory modes and dialogic
mixes highlow, inout, natureculture.
Desprets reach and popularity as a Belgian
vinciane despret
translated by hollis taylor
WE ARE NOT SO
STUPID ANIMALS
NEITHER
and French intellectual thus extend well
beyond her formal citation index. For instance,
Saturday and Sunday mornings, we can tune in
to her radio show on Bon week-end, which is
aired on Radio Television Belge Francophone.4
Her ve-minute segment is entitled We are not
so stupid Animals neither, which is
appended with: One nds plenty of evidence
of it and sometimes even contradictory
evidence.5
The Saturday programme nds Despret pre-
senting half-page vignettes sent to her by lis-
teners true stories involving a pet or perhaps
an animal someone randomly encountered.
She reads these to us as she might a bedtime
story, vocalizing animal sounds as required
and presenting them without comment. They

ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN 1469-2899 online/15/020153-9 2015 Taylor & Francis

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2015.1039855

153
 we are not so stupid
are memorable readings of memorable
accounts.
On Sundays, she shifts to a more scientic
perspective, although without leaving behind
her penchant for narrativity and wonder. Focus-
ing both on ethologists who study animal be-
haviour in natural environments and
cognitive psychologists who question animals
in laboratories, Despret mulls over their discov-
eries and probes their methodologies. Do
animals have a face or better still, do
animals give us a face? Could mice be having
fun during experiments? Who is the star of
Darwins selection theory? These and many
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other questions intrigue her and, through her
skill as a presenter, captivate us. She excels in
delivering quick, rapid summaries of compli-
cated issues, which she describes as an exer-
cise in style that I like.6
The compilation below of recent Sunday pro-
grammes nds her sleuthing theory construc-
tion, legal status, taxonomic classication,
research conditions, and capacities vis--vis
dogs, horses, humans, cassowary, dinosaurs,
sheep, and tortoises. Does this culminate in
radio listeners who are progressing in their
understanding of animals (including
humans)? Maybe yes, a little, she responded,
but its hard to say things are changing. We
cannot know whether we are with change or
in change All that can be said is that we
accompany transformations.7
chronicle of sunday, december 22,
2013
L ast October, the Sunday Times headlined
an article: Dogs Are People, Too.8 By
the way, I thank my student at ULB, Thibault
De Meyer, who regularly sends me references
to fascinating articles, sometimes accompanied
with a comment that pinpoints exactly where
it is good to think.
Lets go back to our dogs, who supposedly are
people like any other. The article was written by
American neuroscientist Gregory Berns. He
reports how for two years he and his colleagues
trained dogs to agree to go in an MRI scanner
without the need to anaesthetize or restrain
them. Our goal has been to determine how
dogs brains work, and even more important,
he writes, what they think of us humans.
Now, he concludes, after training and scanning
a dozen dogs, he has arrived at an inescapable
conclusion: dogs are people. However, it is the
manner in which dogs have become people
that interests me most. Youll see.
Because dogs cant speak, says Gregory
Berns, scientists have relied on behavioural
observations to infer what dogs are thinking.
It is a tricky business. You cant ask a dog
why he does something. And you certainly
cant ask him how he feels. Besides, speaking
of emotions in animals frightens many scien-
tists, and most have preferred to put this ques-
tion aside as scientically unanswerable.
Until now, says Gregory Berns.
By looking directly at their brains and
bypassing the constraints of behaviourism,
MRIs can tell us about dogs internal states.
However, magnetic resonance image-taking pro-
cedures are cumbersome: they make noise, its a
bit frightening, and you must remain absolutely
still. Animals had to be anaesthetized so they
could get through it. But you cant study the
feelings of an anaesthetized animal. And so,
from the beginning, these scientists treated
dogs as people.
First, they did as is done when people are
asked to participate in an experiment: they are
asked to sign a consent form (sometimes called
an Informed Consent Form). They thus
adopted a consent form typically used for chil-
dren, not because dogs are children but
because, as with children, the form must be
signed by the person responsible in this
case, the dogs owner. The form stipulates that
participation is entirely voluntary and that a
dog has the right to leave the experiment when-
ever their owner wishes. Then, scientists used
only positive training methods. No sedation.
No restraints. If the dogs didnt want to be in
the MRI scanner, they could leave. Same as
any human volunteer.
My dog Callie, says Gregory Berns again,
was the rst. Rescued from a shelter, Callie
was a skinny black terrier mix, what is called a
154

feist in the southern Appalachians, from where
she came. I looked feist up in the dictionary;
it has no translation, but feisty means spirited,
so I think we can work out the character of
this little dog. And in fact, true to her roots,
this little dog preferred hunting squirrels and
rabbits in the backyard to curling up in my
lap. She had a natural inquisitiveness, which
probably landed her in the shelter in the rst
place, but also made training a breeze.
With the help of a dog trainer, Mark Spivak,
we started teaching Callie to go into an MRI
simulator that I built in my living room. She
learned to go in, place her head on a pillow,
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and stay still for periods of up to thirty
seconds. She also learned to wear earmuffs to
protect her sensitive hearing from the frighten-
ing noise the scanner makes. After months of
training we were rewarded with the rst
maps of brain activity: [her] brain response to
two hand signals [as well as] which parts of
her brain distinguished the scents of familiar
and unfamiliar dogs and humans.
Once they published their results, Berns
explains, the local dog community learned of
our quest to determine what dogs are thinking.
Within a year, we had assembled a team of a
dozen dogs who were all MRI-certied. the room, reappeared. Do these results prove
For now, Berns says, [a]lthough we are just
beginning to answer basic questions about the
canine brain, we cannot ignore the striking simi-
larity between dogs and humans in both the
structure and function of a key brain region:
the caudate nucleus. In humans, the caudate,
rich in dopamine, plays a key role in the antici-
pation of things we enjoy, like food, love and
money. Of course, in light of the incredible
complexity of relations among interconnected
brain regions, cognitive or emotional function
cannot be assigned to a single region.
However, the caudate nucleus is quite consist-
ent: one sees it noticeably activated each time
we are involved in an activity that we enjoy,
indicating quite clearly our preferences for
food, music and even beauty.
When will we have dogs review our shows and
exhibitions? And why not? I like the idea of
stretching the limits of how we dene beauty
and broadening our wealth of diverse opinions
155
despret
by adding to them those of our non-human
companions!
We will return next week.
chronicle of sunday, december 29,
2013
We saw last week that scientists have succeeded
in teaching dogs to surrender voluntarily to an
MRI scan so that the electrical activity of their
brain may be measured, and these scientists
have begun to contemplate reading what they
think with the assistance of magnetic reson-
ance imaging.
I highlighted an important nding: that of
the similar role and function of the central
caudate nucleus, which seems to play the same
role in humans and dogs. With us, one sees
this centre activated when we are confronted
with pleasurable situations: a piece of music
that we appreciate, a painting, food, and love.
In dogs, we noted that this centre is activated
when we make a hand signal to indicate food. It
is also activated when the dog smells the scent of
a familiar human. In the rst tests, we saw it
activated when their master, who was out of
that dogs love us? We cannot conrm that in
this way. However, we can nonetheless say
that many things that activate the caudate
nucleus in humans, which indicate positive
emotions, also do so in dogs. This is what is
called in neuroscience a functional homology,
which says something about dogs emotions.
The ability to experience positive emotions
like love and attachment shows that dogs
possess a level of sensitivity similar to that of
human children. And, says Gregory Berns, the
author of this research, this should lead us to
rethink the way we treat dogs. They have long
been considered as property, as things. I will
note in passing that some European states
have changed their laws and now consider
animals as non-things, which is already
progress.
But now, says Berns, by using the MRI to
push away the limitations of behaviourism, we
can no longer hide from the evidence. Dogs,
 we are not so stupid
and probably many other animals (especially
our closest primate relatives), seem to have
emotions just like us. And this means we must
reconsider their treatment as property. One
alternative is a sort of limited personhood for
animals that show neurobiological evidence of
positive emotions. Many rescue groups already
use the label of guardian to describe human
caregivers, binding the human to his ward
with an implicit responsibility to care for her.
Failure to act as a good guardian runs the risk
of having the dog placed elsewhere.
Given that the law provides no legal basis for
this guardianship, it is difcult to intervene
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based on this concept in order to protect an
animal. For Berns, we must go a step further
and give dogs the rights of personhood. But,
he says, I suspect that society is many years
away from considering dogs as persons. Dogs
are not people.
However, he suggests, even if they have
nothing to do with dogs, two recent rulings by
the United States Supreme Court have
included neuroscientic ndings that open the
door to such a possibility. In both cases, the
court ruled that juvenile offenders could not
be sentenced to life imprisonment without the
possibility of parole. As part of the rulings,
the court cited brain-imaging evidence that the
human brain was not mature in adolescence.
And so, says Berns, [a]lthough this case has
nothing to do with dog sentience, the justices
opened the door for neuroscience in the court-
room. And we can therefore hope that one
day someone will defend a dogs right based
on its brain images!
chronicle of sunday, january 12,
2014
Two weeks ago, therefore last year, I presented a
chronicle about dogs and thanked my student at
ULB, Thibault De Meyer, who regularly sends
me references to fascinating articles, sometimes
accompanied with a comment that pinpoints
exactly where it is good to think. Not only
does this mention allow me to publicly express
my gratitude but it enables me to underline
what we have already discussed in a previous
chronicle about bees, the fact that science is a
collaborative practice (in the case of bees,
there were children in a primary school who
had led an experiment to understand how bees
locate owers from which to gather nectar)
and that this collaboration can extend far
beyond the laboratory proper. The work I am
going to talk about today is again brought to
my attention by him, but more importantly it
is accompanied by a reection that I will read
at the end: his remarks are fascinating and
expand our perspective.
Today, we will talk about horses and riders,
from a recent article by three researchers
three ethnographers Anita Maurstad, Dona
Davis, and Sarah Cowles, who interviewed
sixty riders in Norway and the US Midwest. In
the abstract preceding the article, the three
researchers write that the stories the riders
told them described how the horses, like the
riders, were changed in the course of their
relationship. To account for these changes, the
authors employ the term proposed by American
physicist Karen Barad: that of intra-action
(323).
Intra-acting refers to the fact that in a
relationship each partner is changed in the
encounter, or even comes to exist in a different
mode than before the meeting: in this perspec-
tive, partners those that are and those that
could be do not pre-date the relationship.
They become what they are in an encounter.
One becomes a rider in a tangible engagement
with a horse, in a tangible commitment to this
meeting, and one becomes a horse with a rider
during the same encounter. We sense this
from the rst lines of the article: not only do
the riders talk about their horses as subjects
as beings with their own will and not as
objects with which they would engage in activi-
ties, but, more importantly, they show that
training together constitutes part of a practice
where beings become comprehensible to each
other (325).
Thus, horsehuman communication crosses
the species divide (326). When a rider tells the
researchers that she must reassure the horse
about the fact that birds and moose do not eat
156

horses, she is in the process of perceiving the
world as a horse perceives it, and things and
beings no longer have the same meaning.
Similarly, many riders explain how it is essen-
tial to modify their body movements because
they know that certain movements are difcult
for a horse to interpret, and that they must con-
stantly pay attention not only to what each
gesture may mean to the horse but also to
what a gesture may signify that could prompt
the horse to consider, hey, there, my rider is
talking to me and telling me something:
sitting straight, head resting on the body,
being balanced (326), ensuring that every
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movement will be received by the horse, etc.
Every muscle twitch of the rider will be like
a loud symphony to the horse (326, citing
Hearne 108). Humans learn to play softer and
softer symphonies as they progress in develop-
ing their riding talent, learning to make sense
via their own body movements, and to attune
to and understand the feel of a horses body
(326). And the horse does the same, adjusting
and coordinating what it transmits and what it
perceives. The horse speaks differently with
humans than it does with its conspecic compa-
nions. And the riders say their body acquires a
different language, which they say is evident
even in their relationship with other humans,
with whom they become more attentive to
body language on account of what they have
learned with their horse. In other words, these
riders are, with their horse, constantly trying
to develop a shared language, a bodily
language. They call this a third language,
one that is co-created by horse and human
(326).
It is around this third language that Thibault
De Meyer made a most interesting remark to
me, which accompanied the article:
Implicitly, he writes, one can read here at
what point to anthropomorphize a horse is to
zoomorphize a rider (as in isopraxism). One
nds this feature, in particular, in the concept
that the riders themselves mobilize: the third
language, the invention of a new language
which is neither the riders nor the horses,
but an undened meeting point. The language
is the result of a relationship; it is only with
157
despret
the construction of modern national languages
that language became a prerequisite to
relationships. What if animals were simply
teaching us to resist nationalism and other
empires?
chronicle of sunday, january 19,
2014
I would suggest that today we do a bit of anthro-
pology and talk about an amazing animal, the
cassowary. In fact, listeners who regularly
follow this programme must be aware that I
have become increasingly interested in non-
scientic knowledge, or even the fact that non-
scientic aspects are increasingly invoked in
science: primary school children publish their
scientic experiments; a researcher conducts
fascinating research on his own dog; to know
about horses, we question their riders, etc.
This means that the sacrosanct separation
between scientic knowledge, academic knowl-
edge, and that of amateur experts is less and
less clear-cut and the fact that we invite our lis-
teners to tell stories is part of this movement:
what can we learn about animals from those
who live with them?
However, this separation between scientic
knowledge and pre-scientic knowledge has
long (since the nineteenth century) been the
rule. This separation between objective knowl-
edge (conducted under very specic rules) and
a more empirical knowledge (said to be stained
by subjectivity) falls under the rubric of what
sociologist Bruno Latour calls the Great
Divide. Latour borrowed that term from
anthropologist Jack Goody, who was referring
to anthropologists persistent (if not congeni-
tal) tendency to divide up human societies,
types of knowledge, and, more importantly,
systems of thought into two classes, each separ-
ate and distinct one from the other. He [Goody]
lists as an example some of the classications
drawn since the nineteenth century: primitive/
civilized, traditional/modern, pre-logical/
logical, scientic/pre-scientic (Journet 40).
This approach resulted in our considering
 we are not so stupid
other cultures knowledge in an entirely differ-
ent way from how we view our own.
Latour takes up the work of the anthropolo-
gist Bulmer, who notes and wonders why for
the Karam the cassowary is not a bird. First of
all, this question is based on an unexamined
conviction, since it supposes that to think that
the cassowary, a large feathered biped that
does not y, is not a bird would be a deviation
from the normal and natural trajectory that
would make the cassowary a bird. And one
notes that this position is so unambiguous to
Bulmer that he only inquires about the contin-
gency of Karam classications when they
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differ from ours: those that are the same as
ours require no explanation.
Taxa are only subject to investigation when,
and it is Bulmer who stresses this, objective
biological facts no longer dominate the scene
(Why is the Cassowary Not a Bird? 6). Since
the reasons behind the confusion of the cassow-
ary must be unravelled, Bulmer analyses how
the Karam invoke a complicated story of
cross-cousins that justies how the cassowary,
a bird by nature, nds itself in the taxon of
kobtiy, of which it is the sole representative
(5). Happy Englishmen! exclaims Latour.
No one ever arrived on their shores to investi-
gate by what quirk they placed cassowaries in
the taxon of birds (Comment redistribuer
211).
No cultural explanation is necessary to
account for objective facts. But the cassowary
is it a bird? Well, it all depends on how the
classications are constructed. And if one
follows closely how such taxa are formulated,
one comes to realize that even the category
birds could be problematic. I propose, given
the complexity of the problem, to take this up
again next week.
chronicle of sunday, january 26,
2014
Last week, we saw on the question of animal
classications in the example of the cassowary
(a large feathered biped that does not y) that
these classications could depend, even in our
world run by scientic knowledge, on the
culture and selections of those who categorize.
Reality does not impose itself by waving a
magic wand, but instead each of these classi-
cations is the subject of discussions, debates,
hesitations, and stories. Adrian Desmond, in
his book on warm-blooded dinosaurs, provides
exemplary material for understanding how
classications can be constructed in such a way.
In one of the books chapters Desmond asks
why, for some palaeontologists, Archaeopteryx
is a bird and not a dinosaur. Obviously, for
Desmond Archaeopteryx is not a bird. In fact,
while Archaeopteryx indeed has feathers, it is
quite incapable of ying (and so the cassowary
would not have, after all, much reason to be a
bird either) all the more so since Archaeop-
teryx closely resembles a dinosaur and would
probably be considered one beyond doubt if
we had not found fossil feathers. However, for
those palaeontologists who hold to the idea
that dinosaurs are cold-blooded, the presence
of feathers excludes Archaeopteryx from the
class of dinosaurs. There are nonetheless propo-
nents of the idea that there have been warm-
blooded dinosaurs. And if that is the case,
Archaeopteryx can very well be one of those.
It does not y; its feathers do not make it a
bird. But what purpose do they serve, then? In
fact, Archaeopteryx solved the problem of
warm-blooded dinosaurs, that is to say, the
problem of maintaining a constant body temp-
erature of how to ensure thermoregulation.
Either one becomes very large, increasing in
volume and thus reducing heat loss, or natural
selection favours another means, allowing the
dinosaur to stay small and occupy a distinctive
ecological niche: it lies in growing feathers on
the forelimbs. With these feathered forelimbs,
Archaeopteryx could not only ensure its thermo-
regulation by having a protective layer but also
by waving its limbs; this enabled it to snare
ying insects, its feathered arms serving as a
net. And in the long run, by dint of beating its
wings, Archaeopteryx (therefore no longer
Archaeopteryx) became a ying animal. The
problem of pre-adaptation is solved: we won-
dered how birds got wings if they could not
help them y when they rst emerged; this
158

issue is resolved: the wings are a response to the
problem of thermoregulation; wings only
became a ying device later.
However, if Archaeopteryx is a warm-blooded
dinosaur, then it means that the divisions no
longer hold between mammals and birds but
between mammals and dinosaurs, of which
birds would be the living representatives. Isnt
this in the end an interesting perspective? Not
only did dinosaurs not go extinct (they merely
underwent a crisis at the end of the Cretaceous
65 million years ago), but, what is more, some
have become very good musicians. So, lets
take good care of them, and if you would, put
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small balls of fat and seeds in your gardens so
that dinosaurs remain a while longer among
us. But if you go to your seed merchant, and
you order food or shelters and tell them that it
is for the preservation of dinosaurs, do not be
surprised if he looks at you strangely and asks
if you listen to a radio show called Bon week-
end on Radio Cro-Magnon.
chronicle of sunday, february 2,
2014
We spoke last week about dinosaurs and the
change of status that was imposed on certain
animals. Today, we are again going to speak
about change of status and descendants of dino-
saurs.9 So, lets talk about reptiles. For listeners
who have followed us since the beginning of this
chronicle, one could say that reptiles are under-
going a revolution similar to that of sheep when
primatologist Thelma Rowell observed them.
Once we thought to ask questions that allowed
them to show of what they are capable, sheep
demonstrated much more complex and
intelligent behaviours than scientists had pre-
viously believed. Note in passing that this revo-
lution continues with the work of Michel
Meuret, who had the good idea to query shep-
herds, who show us the extent to which sheep
are inventive and socially sophisticated crea-
tures. But lets go back to our sheep of today,
reptiles.
For a long time, reptiles have been, in com-
parative intelligence studies, ranked last. Few
159
despret
scientists were keen to see what was going on
in their heads, and those who tried came back
with results conrming that there was nothing
to expect from them; they were relatively
stupid, primitive, some kind of instinctive
machines without hearts, and, above all
more scientically without a hippocampus:
in short, cold-blooded animals are rough drafts
of what was to come after them in the triumphal
march of evolution. We diverged from them 280
million years ago, with good reason. But in
recent years, other researchers have decided to
give reptiles a chance.
It was discovered that lizards are capable of
solving complex puzzles, that they adapt to
novel situations, and that they can teach us
about the evolution of cognitive abilities, includ-
ing the fact that some skills are much older than
previously thought, or an alternative hypoth-
esis that these emerged on several occasions
during the course of evolution. Im going to
focus on the research of an English researcher
in cognitive psychology, Anna Wilkinson, and
her red-footed tortoise, named Moses (Mueller-
Paul et al.). She asked her tortoise to navigate
in an eight-armed radial maze around a central
area, which formed a kind of cartwheel. At the
end of each arm was a strawberry. The tortoise
only got one chance in each arm to retrieve the
strawberry; the tortoise couldnt return to
where it had previously been. He had to memor-
ize each of the arms that he had already passed.
In the rst experiment, the walls of each arm
were lined with a curtain with different cut-out
shapes pinned to it.
One notes that the tortoise relied on these
cues (which he memorized) to remember
where he had already passed. If the curtains
were removed, he would nd himself in dif-
culty. Indeed. Except that the tortoise came
up with another strategy: in this case, he under-
stood that he had to follow, in order, the arm
adjacent to the one he had just visited. And he
succeeded. The tortoise thus demonstrated
what is called behavioural exibility, reecting
the fact that he was capable of adapting to new
environments and inventing new strategies to
deal with different events. Hence, reptiles are
capable of innovation.
 we are not so stupid
Why had this not been seen before? For the
simple reason that researchers had hitherto
used the equipment employed for mammals
and birds, which is not at all suited to reptiles.
And furthermore, to shorten the learning
curve, they had used a method also employed
with rodents: bright lights or strident sounds
associated with events to mark the memory of
experimental subjects. But with reptiles these
sounds and lights are totally counter-pro-
ductive; they paralyse them and put them in a
kind of cataleptic state. Moreover, they were
asked to accomplish impossible tasks: reptiles
never use their paws to manipulate objects,
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unlike rodents and other mammals that can be
asked to open boxes or unpack things. So, rep-
tiles were constantly confronted with impossible
tasks. And nally, being cold-blooded animals,
reptiles are very sensitive to temperature; they
need warmth. If rats can feel comfortable with
a laboratorys twenty degrees, reptiles need
higher temperatures; they learn considerably
less well in lower temperatures. Either research-
ers imposed their norms on reptiles and
obtained poor results, or they had to adapt to
the norms of their subjects, which was very
uncomfortable and discouraged many.
With these new studies, one can conclude
(along with one of the researchers) that intelli-
gence is probably much better distributed
than we imagined. By taking some of the tests
devised for animals known to
be intelligent, and adapting
them to other species, we dis-
cover that so-called intelligent
animals are ultimately not that
unique!
disclosure statement
No potential conict of interest was reported by
the author.
notes
1 E-mail to author, 16 Jan. 2015.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 On nest pas si btes Les Animaux non plus
is a feature La Premire on RTBF, the public broad-
casting organization of French-speaking Belgium.
See <http://www.rtbf.be/lapremiere/emissions_
bon-week-end?programId=312> (accessed 5 Jan.
2015). This translation fails to take into account
the titles double entendre, since btes can refer
not just to stupidity but also to beasts. Not as
beastly as you may think and Far from stupid
are just two alternative translations of something
best read in the original French, where we are
left to confront the supposed synonyms animal
and stupid.
5 Ethology is a fabulous story, begins the pro-
grammes Facebook page, acting as a sort of
mission statement (https://www.facebook.com/pa
ges/On-nest-pas-si-btes/858670957485128). The
most recent programmes are available for
podcast, and the website is replete with compelling
images of animals.
6 E-mail to author, 9 Jan. 2015.
7 Ibid.
8 All quotes from Berns below are from this unpa-
ginated article.
9 And I wish to again thank the tireless and gener-
ous researcher Thibault De Meyer, who sent me
the article Im going to talk about today and who
fully understands its significance.
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Vinciane Despret
Philosophie et Lettres
Universite de Liege
4000 Liege
Belgium
E-mail: v.despret@ulg.ac.be

Hollis Taylor
University of Technology, Sydney
CB10.05.113
PO Box 123
Broadway, NSW 2007
Australia
E-mail: hollis.taylor@uts.edu.au