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The Animal Highlight
Set around specific themes, The Animal Highlight offers glimpses into the wonderful and complex worlds of animals. This is a spinoff of The Animal Turn Podcast, a podcast that unpacks important concepts in animal studies.
Episodes
56 episodes
S6E8: A Review of Museum Collections and Objects
Herre de Bondt and Rebecca Shen are back on the show to discuss Rosa Dyer’s season “Animal Collections/’Objects”. We delve into some of the key themes and tensions to emerge in the season including questions of value, colonization, ethics, and ...
S6E7: Moo Deng – Questioning if Zoos are Living Collections
Rosa questions whether zoos could be thought of as “living collections” that objectifying animals in ways that are similar to the animal objects one finds in a museum or archive. She considers the internet sensation Moo Deng and asks whet...
S6E6: Feather Heists and Questions of Value
Rosa returns to feathers in this episode, this time to discuss the infamous 2009 “feather heist”, in which Edwin Rist stole an invaluable collection of bright-coloured feathers from tropical birds. She uses the heist to open a deeper considerat...
S6E5: Moths and Wasps – Tasty Collections and ‘Confused’ Insects
In this episode Rosa steps away from feathered objects to consider how museum collections and archives should be thought of as living ecosystems. She discusses how webbing clothes moths are understood as ‘pests’ and some of the strategies curat...
S6E4: The Oxford Dodo - Science, Myth, and a Fragmented Afterlife
In this episode Rosa focuses on the Oxford Dodo, attempting to trace the life history of a bird whose only trace is a fragile head and foot in the Oxford University of Natural History. She unpacks some of the competing routes the bird might hav...
S6E3: Parrots and frogs - Multispecies Assemblages and the Changing of Feathers
Rosa traces a Munduruku feather cap from Brazil to the museum case and discuss how tapirage was a process used to turned green parrots feathers a blazing yellow by using frog toxins, dyes and time. Beauty and pain sit side by side as we w...
S6E2: Hummingbirds - Warrior birds and feathered jewels
Using a feather fan as her base, Rosa Dyer traces how Victorian fashion turned fierce hummingbirds into quiet ornaments. The object brings into focus the differences between indigenous mythologies and western ideas of hummingbirds and what the ...
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S6E1: Huia - Birds, Museums and Global Commodification
We start Season 6 "Museum Collections/Objects" with Rosa Dyer looking at the Huia, a New Zealand songbird whose dimorphic beaks garnered the attention of science, fashion, and empire. Rosa uses the museum object to ask questions about how diffe...
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S5E10: Heck Cattle - Where Nazi Eugenics Meets Modern Rewilding
Fierce, controversial, and caught between worlds—Heck cattle embody the complex intersection of dark history and modern conservation. This final episode of Season 5 of the Animal Highlight explores how these bovines were deliberately bred by Na...
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S5E9: Red Kites - Conservation and The Ethical Dilemmas of Wildlife Translocation
Virginia explores how the recovery of red kites in Britain has been shaped by international efforts and cross-border collaborations between governments and NGOs. Thinking about these birds, Virginia raises questions and concerns about transloca...
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S5E8: Wolf Rewilding - Rethinking Risk and Coexistence
Virginia tells us how grey wolves are reclaiming territories across Europe and North America through a process known as auto-rewilding—autonomously returning to lands from which humans once drove them out. This powerful expression of nonhuman a...
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S5E7: Mink Concerns - The Cost of Fur Through a Photographer's Lens
In this Animal Highlight, fellow Virginia Thomas uses one of Jo-Anne McArthur’s images as her inspiration. She compares and contrasts the lives of mink kept for fur with those of wild mink before reflecting on some of the ethical and environmen...
S5E6: Brown Dog - The Forgotten Terrier Who Sparked a Movement
In this Animal Highlight, fellow Virginia Thomas talks about Brown Dog, a canine who in 1903 was subjected to vivisection at University College London. Two activists brought his plight to the attention of the International Antivivisection Socie...
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S5E5: Honeybees - Exploited Labour and Sticky Ethics
In this Animal Highlight, fellow Virginia Thomas discusses honeybees and the ways in which they are exploited for their honey. She notes how much labour goes into making honey and the scale of the industry that relies on it. Because of the viol...
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S5E4: European Wildcat - Dilemmas of Conservation
In this Animal Highlight, fellow Virginia Thomas discusses the European Wild Cat and their entangled relationships with domesticated cats. She notes how the interbreeding between these two species has conservationists worried and has resulted i...
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S5E3: Pale Male - Manhattan's Famous Red-Tailed Hawk
Virginia Thomas tells us about a red-tailed hawk named Pale Male who sparked controversy and admiration when he built his nest on a luxury Fifth Avenue apartment building in New York City. Pale Male is a celebrity whose story illuminates questi...
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S5E2: Misunderstood Magueys - Thinking about Multispecies Justice
Virginia Thomas introduces the red maguey worm; a caterpillar often mistakenly called the "tequila worm.” She explores their biology and ethical implications of using these metamorphosing creatures as novelty ‘items’ in alcoholic beverages....
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S5E1: Citizen Dogs - Reimagining Canine-Human Societies
In this Animal Highlight, fellow Virginia Thomas focuses on the domestic dog and the ways in which they might be thought of as citizens. She thinks about some of dogs' history and discusses the work of Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka. ...
S4E8: Animals and Waste Review
The last episode of Season 4 is a review of the season “Animals and Waste.” Herre de Bondt, Rebecca Shen, and Claudia Hirtenfelder touch on some of the common themes to emerge in the season. These include how animals are valued as well as the m...
S4E7 - Radioactive Boars
In this Highlight, Herre looks at how nuclear waste has impacted the lives of wild boars living in Japan. More specifically, he discusses how, following the 2011 triple disaster, boars responded to the departure of humans from the Fukushima are...
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S4E6: Metropolitan Macaques
In this episode Herre de Bondt discusses Singapore’s metropolitan macaques and how they use the city and its waste as a valuable resource that is not only important for their survival but contributes to the design of the city. Record...
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S4E5: Entangled Sea Turtles
When it comes to talking about waste and its impacts on animals it is hard to not think about plastic. In this episode, Herre de Bondt tells us how sea turtles have been entangled with the politics of plastic. Recorded: 27 Novemb...
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S4E4 - Engineering Fiddler Crabs
Fiddler crabs, with their one giant claw, are considered ecosystem engineers in mangrove environments. Herre de Bondt gives us a glimpse into the world of these incredible crustaceans. Recorded: 27 November 2023. ...
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