Lynda Birke

University of Chester | UC · Biological Sciences

Keeper-animal relationships (KARs) appear to be important in zoos, since they can enhance the well-being of both the animals and the keepers, can make animal husbandry easier, but conversely might risk inappropriate habituation of animals and possible risks to the safety of keepers. It is, therefore, important to know more about the variables invol...

Zookeepers often report strong attachment (bonds) with animals in their care. This paper reports a qualitative study of how keepers perceived these animals; the aim was to explore keepers’ experiences of bonding and how these related to the work done in zoos. Respondents were drawn from a large sample participating in a survey of zoo professionals;...

Repeated interactions within individual human and animal dyads can lead to the establishment of human–animal relationships (HARs), which may vary in quality from good to bad, defined in terms of the positivity (e.g., friendly contact, play) or negativity (e.g., aggression) of the interactions on which they are based. Particularly good HARs can be r...

This original and insightful book explores how horses can be considered as social actors within shared interspecies networks. It examines what we know about how horses understand us and how we perceive them, as well as the implications of actively recognising other animals as actors within shared social lives. This book explores how interspecies re...

Our bodies are ourselves: yet we are also more than our bodies. In the early years of “second‐wave” feminism in the West, embodiment was acknowledged implicitly in the action of women's health groups, and campaigns for reproductive rights. But simultaneously, bodies failed to enter our theorizing. Central to theorizing then was a distinction betwee...

In this paper, I explore horse-human interactions as ‘meeting points’, using three points or places at which we come together with horses. These are: in the stable, leading a horse, and riding. Each shapes the interspecies engagement, in a kind of trajectory. Ways of engaging with each other form within the confines of stable or corral, which then...

Physiological responses that occur in horses and humans during their interactions, on the ground and during ridden work, have been investigated in a number of studies with some conflicting results. These suggest that in some situations emotional state may be transferred from humans to horses and that there is the potential for the heart rates of ho...

Many living with companion animals hope for “good relationships” based on trust, mutuality, and cooperation. Relationships develop from mutual actions, yet research often overlooks nonhumans as mindful actors within relationships. This is a study of horse/human dyads, using multimethod approaches intended to include horses as participants. We ask:...

The body and intercorporeal communication are central to the ways in which horses and riders experience their own lives and one other (Thompson, Kirrilly, 2011). Recent research into the social and cultural construction of horses has sought to grasp the tacit knowledge, practices, and dispositions within which equine bodies are experienced. In thei...

Abstract. -- Like us, some kinds of animals require passports to enable movements across national borders. Passports tell all kinds of multispecies stories, in which humans and nonhumans are entangled in myriad ways. But what is a passport — human or nonhuman? What kind of symbolic, legal, material, relational identity and not least control and dis...

What role do nonhuman animals play in the construction of medical knowledge? Animal researchers typically claim that their use has been essential to progress – but just how have animals fitted into the development of biomedicine? In this article, I trace how nonhuman animals, and their body parts, have become incorporated into laboratory processes...

The behaviour of humans around horses is thought to have a substantial impact on how people are perceived in subsequent interactions and many horse trainers give detailed advice on how handlers should behave when initially approaching a loose horse. Here we report on three studies designed to explore the effect of different human approach styles on...

Other animals provide us with myriad metaphors and mirrors of our own behavior. We may at times see nobility in the characters of other animals-or parallels with our own mindlessness. Sometimes, animals seem to provide mirrors of our own society, seeming to behave in ways that fit with particular expectations of gender, for example, as Mariette Now...

This is an interview with Professor Lynda Birke (University of Chester, UK), one of the key figures of feminist science studies. She is a pioneer of feminist biology and of materialist feminist thought, as well as of the new and emerging field of hum-animal studies (HAS). This interview was conducted over email in two time periods, in the spring of...

In this paper, we report on a study of people who keep horses for leisure riding; the study was based on a qualitative (discourse) analysis of written comments made by people keeping horses, focusing on how they care for them and how they describe horse behavior. These commentaries followed participation in an online survey investigating management...

Non-human animals and their behaviour are part of the remit of what psychology studies; yet they are largely absent from feminist theory. This is in part due to earlier decades of feminist disavowal of biology and biological determinism (manifest in the sex/gender distinction). To exclude animals makes little sense, however, as animal societies con...

In this article, we explore how gender is enacted within human/animal relationships – specifically, between people and horses. Horse cultures can be gendered in several ways, from little girls and their ponies to modern versions of the cowboy. Here, we examine two specific horse/human cultures – traditional “English” riding, and the rise of what is...

Maintaining the tensions and divisions between the human and non-human, nature and culture has been a mainstay of Euro-American thought. Drawing upon two studies of people's associations with horses, we examine how these divisions are being reworked in the social sciences as well in everyday life. We focus on how different ideas about ‘horses’, ‘ho...

This paper explores how horses are represented in the discourses of "natural horsemanship" (NH), an approach to training and handling horses that advocates see as better (kinder, more gentle) than traditional methods. In speaking about their horses, NH enthusiasts move between two registers: On one hand, they use a quasi-scientific narrative, relyi...

In this paper, I explore the intersections between feminism and thinking about (nonhuman) animals. My premise is that animals matter to our politics, not only for themselves, but also for how we think about our own world. I consider three aspects of such intersecting: first, considering animals is important in terms of global environmental concerns...

This paper examines the rise of what is popularly called "natural horsemanship" (NH), as a definitive cultural change within the horse industry. Practitioners are often evangelical about their methods, portraying NH as a radical departure from traditional methods. In doing so, they create a clear demarcation from the practices and beliefs of the co...

Turning animals into art through genetic manipulation poses many questions for how we think about our relationship with other species. Here, I explore three rather disparate sets of issues. First, I ask to what extent the production of such living “artforms” really is as transgressive as advocates claim. Whether or not it counts as radical in terms...

Feminist science studies have given scant regard to non-human animals. In this paper, we argue that it is important for feminist theory to address the complex relationships between humans and other animals, and the implications of these for feminism. We use the notion of performativity, particularly as it has been developed by Karen Barad, to explo...

This paper explores the many meanings attached to the designation, "the rodent in the laboratory" (rat or mouse). Generations of selective breeding have created these rodents. They now differ markedly from their wild progenitors, nonhuman animals associated with carrying all kinds of diseases. Through selective breeding, they have moved from the ra...

This paper reports a study of the behaviour of captive orang utans (pongo pygmaeus) at Chester Zoo, UK. The study addressed two questions: what is the effect of the presence of fresh browse on the animals' behaviour; and what is the effect of the presence of visitors? The first part of the study analysed the animals' time budgets. The results indic...

In this article, we reflect upon how bodies are experienced under torture. We centre this around Consuelo's personal experience, as a feminist lesbian and political activist tortured under the Chilean military government. We also draw on the training both of us received in science, which influenced our perceptions of how bodies work. Her story prom...

In this article, we reflect upon how bodies are experienced under torture. We centre this around Consuelo's personal experience, as a feminist lesbian and political activist tortured under the Chilean military government. We also draw on the training both of us received in science, which influenced our perceptions of how bodies work. Her story prom...

Biography 24.2 (2001) 460-465 "Birth stories are everywhere and nowhere," begins Della Pollock's book. We can easily see images of birth in our culture, yet the experience of women giving birth is also simultaneously silenced by shame and secrecy. Pollock seeks to give voice to women's recollections of birthing, writing an ethnography that -- like...

In this article, the author examines the overlap between feminism and animal causes, particularly through the lives of two women, the sculptor, Alice Morgan Wright (1881-1975), and her friend, Edith Goode (1882-1970). Feminism and animal causes had connections in the late nineteenth century, particularly in campaigns to abolish vivisection. Wright...

In this article, I use the example of “gender-bending” chemicals to explore some of the ways we think about “nature.” Feminist biologists occupy a tricky position, having both to accept the reality of nature to some degree (especially if working in the lab, or when critiquing biological determinism); but we must also recognize the ways in which kno...

This article addresses some of the ways in which the development of xenotransplantation, the use of nonhuman animals as organ donors, are presented in media accounts. Although xenotransplantation raises many ethical and philosophical questions, media coverage typically minimizes these. At issue are widespread public concerns about the transgression...

This paper reports the results of an examination of the 'methods' sections of a range of experimental research papers in biomedical science, focusing on the descriptions of animal use and housing. Detailed descriptions in the methods should enable replication, and also enable readers to judge scientific quality. Relatively few papers sampled gave a...

This paper looks at the attitudes that scientists hold toward their use of animals, and at some implications for the welfare of laboratory animals. The framework for this analysis is recent changes in the law regulating the use of animals in British science. We note how ambivalent many scientists are about the way they perceive the animals they use...

In this paper, we analyze the ways in which the use of animals is described in the "Methods" sections of scientific papers. We focus particularly on aspects of the language of scientific narrative and what it conveys to the reader about the animals. Scientific writing, for example, tends to omit details of how the animals are cared for. Perhaps mor...

This article critically examines “women's ways of knowing” in relation to science and explores possibilities for developing a more feminist approach to science and science education for adults which is rooted in women's experiences and lives. Our research on women's perceptions of science forms the basis of our article. Drawing on recent debates wi...

This article considers how scientists involved in animal experimentation attempt to defend their practices. Interviews with over 40 scientists revealed that, over and above direct criticisms of the antivivisection lobby, scientists used a number of discursive strategies to demonstrate that critics of animal experimentation are ethically and epistem...

The notion of the 'core set' usually refers to that group of scientists involved in the eventual resolution of a given technical controversy. Drawing upon actor-network theory, we suggest that such core sets, especially at science/public interfaces, are, in fact, constituted from generalized agonistic sets which entail 'non-technical' issues - poli...

A nonvocational course to introduce science to women demonstrated (1) the value of women-only learning to alleviate fears and anxiety and (2) the necessity of focusing courses on issues relevant to women rather than on vocational outcomes. (SK)

The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science, by Londa Schiebinger, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989, 355 pages, hb $23.50

Feminist theory has relied implicitly on separating humanity from other animals. This has underlain, for example, feminist rejection of biological determinism, and is embedded in the distinction between nature and culture and its relationship to gender. Yet that implicit assumption is problematic, this paper argues, both for the way we view animals...

The present paper reports sex differences in exploratory behaviour by infant Spiny Mice, Acomys cahirinus, that may, in part, be related to differences in maternal behaviour towards pups; like some other rodents, mother Acomys differentiate behaviourally between male and female pups. In Experiment 1 infant Acomys were allowed to explore a novel are...

Feminist critiques of science have paid little attention to the use of animals within science. In this paper, I explore some of the ways in which beliefs about the ethics of using animals in laboratories map onto stereotypes of gender. This in turn raises questions about the kind of science that feminists criticize, and about the kind of science th...

Rough-and-tumble play is sexually dimorphic in many species of mammals. Effects of androgen exposure on this behavior have been well documented, although the possible role of other hormones is less well known. This paper reports experiments in a series designed to investigate effects of neonatal exposure to progestins on the development of juvenile...

The origins of gender, like the origins of human nature, are sometimes said to lie in biological determination, sometimes in social construction. Feminist theory began with criticising biological determinism and its portrayal of women, and inevitably emphasised the social construction of gender. However, seeing gender or human nature as wholly or m...

We begin this paper by drawing a parallel between women's exclusion from sport and their exclusion from science. Both are stereotypically masculine fields, which women enter only at risk of losing their identity. Moreover, both have justified the exclusion of women by recourse to biological arguments that women are inferior. It is thus not surprisi...

Developmental changes in patterns of exploration by infant spiny mice, Acomys cahirinus are described. These were investigated using an unbaited radial maze and under three odor conditions; that is, animals were tested in the presence of either familiar (own) odors, unfamiliar conspecific odors, or no odors (washed floor). Two hypotheses were teste...

This paper describes experiments designed to investigate long-term behavioral consequences for offspring of changes in maternal behavior directed toward them as pups. Specifically, the hypothesis was considered that experimentally induced alterations in maternal behavior would result in general and wide-ranging effects on offspring development, inc...

An experiment is described in which the relative distractibility of two species of murid rodent, Acomys cahvrinus and Mus musculus, was compared. On the basis of observations derived from our previous studies of exploratory behaviour in males of these two species, we predicted that Mus would show higher levels of distractibility when presented an u...

The present paper reports an investigation of patterns of exploratory behavior shown by laboratory-bred Spiny Mice (Acomys cahirinus) when given access to a large, novel arena. The aim was to test hypotheses suggested by our previous work with this species. Previous experiments in which the exploratory behavior of Acomys was compared with that of M...

This paper reports changes in maternal behavior of rats following progestin treatment of the neonates. There have been recent reports that hormonal treatment of pups can alter maternal behavior, particularly licking of pups, and that such effects might have implications for the later development of those pups. Accordingly, the major objective of th...

The exploratory behavior of two species of murid rodents, Acomys cahirinus and Mus musculus, was compared in four experiments: In the first, the responses of the two species to a novel arena were studied. Mus was found to take longer to enter the arena, and to spend more time in the relatively familiar or safer start box, than was Acomys. The resul...

The effects of altering neonatal levels of progestins on the later development of social play behaviour was studied. Progestin levels were raised in experiment one by administering injections of either progesterone or medroxyprogesterone acetate. This indicated that exposure to either hormone led to reduced levels of social play in juvenile rats of...

Medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA), 5 micrograms/g body wt, was given to lactating female rats 1 day after parturition. Group 1 females suckled 10-12 young, with equal numbers of males and females, while Group 2 females each suckled 10 female young. The young were weaned at 21 days of age. Exposure to MPA advanced the day of vaginal opening by 1 day...

The scent-marking behaviour of male and female rats in response to conspecific odours was investigated in two experiments. The results of the first experiment indicated that exposure to conspecific odours generally led to an increase in marking rates. However, no sex differences were found, and large differences in marking responses according to th...