In the (bleary) eye of the tiger: An anthropological journey into jungle backyards

Initiation

More than a fait divers, the reported Ohio prison break exposed to a worldwide audience the curious case of jungle backyards. As people often do not know – or easily forget – there is a significant number of ‘used-to-be-wild’ animals living monitored existences in human-oriented environments. If Noah’s Ark were to be found somewhere on our planet, it could well be in the United States, where thousands of exotic animals now share their daily lives with Homo sapiens (Laufer, 2010). After drugs and firearms, these animals are said to be at the heart of the third most important black market in the world (Green, 2006; Liebman, 2004). In addition to maintaining international smuggling networks, this traffic also sustains an eccentric bestiary. Along with large sums of money exchanged every day, a multitude of lives are constantly redesigned, genetically monitored as well as symbolically altered (Webber, 2010), producing considerable revenues and intense affects (Gregg & Seigworth, 2011). In many places (such as garages, studios or laboratories), an unpublished book of non-imaginary beings is constantly being written.

Performed by humans on animals, these zoological transformations can be related to a larger movement. Part of the anthropogenic process was the ability of human groups to insulate themselves from natural selective pressures (Diamond, 2002; Sloterdijk, 2000). This worldscaping bias soon included animals (Shipman et al., 2010). Capture, selection and breeding activities created zoological artificial lineages as well as cultural bends to transform not only inorganic material, but also organic substances – wood turned into spear, wolf turned into dog (Jaclin, 2009). Just as agriculture concerns crops and plant cultivation, animal manipulations constitute what can be referred to as aniculture – a concept that hints at the diversity of what is generically labeled as ‘domestication’. It embraces a baroque collection of metamorphosed living organisms. The history of these metamorphoses has proved the importance, for every civilization, of cattle, laboratory animals, pets and various other companions (Anderson, 2004; Diamond, 1999; Endersby, 2007; Kalof, 2007; Manning & Serpell, 2006). From selective crossings of desirable traits (Darwin, 1896) to operations on the genetic code itself (Bolton & Degnen, 2010), the record of our dealings with altered organisms is both old-fashioned and avant-garde. This commerce of animals (or beastness, as I explain in a moment) is therefore of considerable importance, not only for the evolutionary course of the organisms implied (including humans), but for the sake of the multi-species societies involved (Arnold, 2009). We will see that the hybrid communities thus generated (Lestel, 2001) are made of flesh and bone, but also of phantasms and other symbolic representations.

However, beyond the simple utilitarian justification (in which human needs justify the capture, selection, crossing, reproduction, breeding and killing of thousands of creatures), it seems necessary to examine these life forms’ associations not only in terms of their conditions of possibility (both biological and cultural) or even under their effective production (zoological, economical, biopolitical or ethical), but also with regard to their intrinsic potentialities (animality?).

Activation

In order to describe our contemporary way of dealing with animal otherness, I coined the concept of ‘beastness’. It is the name I give to the economy of human/animal relationships, a crucial bond that has been evolving since the dawn of Homo time to the present day. For millennia, the wear and tear of interspecific existences has shaped generations of animals through their efforts to feed, warm, transport and accompany humans. Referring primarily to our commerce with animals (and, by extension, to any form of transpecific relationality), beastness is a play on words that suggests the profitable business that has long made the best of the beast. It hints at the significant cash flow (re)injected every year into a considerable industry as well as it integrates a whole affective complex where the shared existence of humans and animals never stops modulating behavior, reproduction, population distribution as well as death conditions, cosmogonies or moral justifications. ² Thinking in terms of beastness thus traces an antique humanimal cohabitation that always exudes micro and macro biopolitics. Accordingly, conceptualizing the ‘business of the beast’ takes into account the basic work of a draconian artificial selection and reflects on this eccentric and demanding hunt for suitable domestic traits that arbitrarily favors mutating life forms. In that respect, beastness is also a contraction of ‘fitness’, in a biological sense (Bouchard & Rosenberg, 2004) and ‘beast’. Part DIY, part poaching, any commerce of animals exerts a considerable amount of (selective) pressure on a multitude of lives and generations. Indeed, commerce is not just about money, (bio)capital or investment; it is also about desire, projection, affects and meanings. In French, the word commerce used to be employed for friendships and love affairs. Engaging in any relation-ship always involves more than just self-oriented preoccupations or financial interests. It speaks for the self and the civilization, linking together various scales of action and levels of reaction. Here, nature and culture overlap. Cross-fertilized, they modulate biology and mythology, articulate physicality and discursivity, actions and thoughts. Beastness thus always refers to a kaleidoscope of relational modalities.

In most countries, such a trade extends to numerous markets (labs, farms, theatres, pet-shops, fairs and a multitude of other places where people are constantly dealing with animals) and diverse sectors (production, distribution, sales and even ‘recycling’). The myriad actors involved may be vertically integrated (affiliated along an axis of production) but also horizontally disseminated (generated in a network of distribution). Thus, such a phenomenon needs to be qualitatively and quantitatively apprehended. But accounting for any beastness, at once molecular and symbolic, requires a theoretical and methodological approach as hybrid as the situations it intends to cope with. Because any beastness plays a considerable role in the becoming of both human societies and animal populations, my research field is etho-anthropological. Because any beastness is concerned with life forms as well as forms of life, my research preoccupations are communicational (how can we conceive such processes of in/un/de-formae-tion as well as the potential of creation inherent to any of these processes that give life a form and life to forms?). Finally, because any beastness is fuelled by inter- and intra-specific dynamics, my methodological apparatus is transpecific and requires an ethnographical approach. ³

In January 2011, I embarked on a beastness trip that took me all over North America, searching for unexpected forms of life stemming from humanimal interactions. These contemporary ‘mutants’ turned out to be astro-chimps, transgenic salmon, GPS-fitted condors, spider-goats and oestrogenized tigers. They were also breeders, scientists, zoo directors, writers, care-givers, volunteers and even schoolchildren. Along 16,000 miles of winding roads, I met and interviewed people working in and around the animal field. I visited sanctuaries, laboratories, zoos, breeding facilities and domestic homes. Following the principles of multi-sited (Marcus, 1995) and multi-species ethnographies (Kirksey & Helmreich, 2010), this journey revealed an entire subculture modeled by surprisingly creative underground activities. It provided an original perspective on some 21st-century animals’ existences as well as grounds for an interdisciplinary analysis. In this article I present and discuss some of the collected dataset, but I focus primarily on clearing an uncharted territory. As jungle backyards proliferate, colonies of mutants are progressively being constituted. While many debates on bio–eco–conservation insist on diluvian struggles, I suggest looking inside what can be considered our contemporary version of the Ark, and at the daily trans-specific cohabitation that occurs in the common embarkation.

Elaboration

Hence the challenge for Animal Studies may be not to ‘capture’ animals once again, but rather to consider new modes of shared existences. As the Greek Mètis suggested long ago (Detienne & Vernant, 1974), I do not propose looking with the eyes of the tiger (an anthropomorphically centered option) but rather looking the tigers in the eyes (an anthropomorphically decentered opportunity). Since these mutagenic existences suggest original anthropological postures, we thus have to track down new animal territorialities. However, following these creatures will not be about hunting existing life forms for actualized taxidermy purposes or any other modern versions of cabinets de curiosités, but rather about following new forms of life to uncover lively creative processes (Shklovskii, 2008) and develop new modes of thinking the in-betweenness of ethological relationality.

Along with the idea of jungle backyards comes the following hypothesis: a living organism (like any medium) nurtures a real potential of information and communication. Pioneers in a way, the Zanesville animals were not ‘used-to-be-exotic’ life forms but ‘becoming-exotic’ forms of life. In fact, they were known living organisms experiencing unknown reorganization of life. As such, they invite us to rethink the emergence of a new indeterminate potential from a previously defined organic residue as well as to discuss the potentialities enmeshed in any relational dynamic (Massumi, 2002). Because jungle backyards shelter a curious menagerie of human-reoriented organisms, animal biographies turn out to be baroque agencies of vitalities. Both communication – understood as the relational activation of information – and information – understood not only as the product of a given form, but also as the process of giving form – are intrinsically concerned by the affective movements some animals are dealing with today. Indeed, postnatural case studies reflect not only the expression of a genealogy or filiations, but also that of a generation and contagions (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980). These individual expressions, both plastic and organic, deploy a determining potential of form inscriptions and zoological transformations. Nonetheless, the phenomenon remains complex and difficult to map. As it nests quantities of intra- and interspecific actions, it mobilizes different scales and levels of operation.

I argue that animals in general and beasts in particular not only exist but also consist and often insist. In this regard, multi-species observations offer serious empirical material with which to think over current debates on transformed life. Beyond the simple and tautological framework of adaptation (life forms exist therefore they are adapted), trans-specific ethnographical material provides us with a set of numerous environmental selective pressures and their existential movements, both responsive and creative (Massumi, 2011). Looking closely at these existences, however marginal, draws solid lines of thought regarding the burden of changing worlds carried by every organism (Callon & Rabeharisoa, 2003). Because humans and animals share not only an exteriority (an environment and an ecology), but also an interiority (an existence and an ontology), they express – and share – a rejuvenated potential for silent transformations (Jullien, 2009). Between the inside and the outside, such transformations work on modular as well as modulated media-logical paths that now have to be sketched out.

Consolidation

Actualizing the metaphorical potential of Noah’s Ark can hence draw a fecund line of thought. Indeed, one can ask who is really responsible for the animals today. Or rather: how is human responsibility of herds actually shared? Are poets, as Rimbaud put it, ⁴ still in charge of naming the beasts? Who really takes care of feeding them and allowing them to mate? Who are the real beastnessmen in charge nowadays? Veterinarians, zookeepers, breeders, visitors, spectators, activists, animal owners, scientists, researchers, perhaps even poachers? However, what seems more relevant, beyond the simple allocation of roles and powers, are the actual modes of life-sharing. As the Biblical story tells and exegesis elaborates, human responsibility for animals is invariably linked both to the causes of the Flood and to its consequences for our common future. On the one hand, cultural narratives insist on our deplorable and destructive pagan misbehaviors, as well as on the necessary humanitarian rescue performed by elected proto-environmentalists Noah and his sons. On the other hand, the same narratives focus on preserving our chances of recreating the world as it was before the Flood, before sin. Responsibility as well as commitment are thus overshadowed by the whys (inputs) and the collateral damage (outputs). However, do the vessel itself and the common life it shelters not matter? What really happened during the journey? What occurred inside the ship, because of the flood, when humans and animals were forced to live together? Was this concern neglected? Regarding our current bio/ecological issues, it is most certainly not a negligible one.

The agreement between God and Noah, as told in the Book of Genesis, prescribes particular practices and meanings, and thus provides one of the earliest testimonials of a humanimal encounter. But because the Ark was never a simple black box where information comes out the same way it went in, but instead a curious microcosm of entangled dynamics, I suggest re-examining the nature of this agreement. Charged by God to fill and sail the Ark, Noah (and henceforth the entire human lineage) is given the entire responsibility of selecting, driving and saving the animal kingdom from the Flood. Humans and animals thus embark on a common destiny. At this point inseparable, they have to live together. The necessary human management of the world is thus an old-fashioned belief as well as a founding moment for Judeo-Christian culture. The Biblical story serves as a real ecological parable since the animals then depicted have changed over time and in various societies (Pastoureau, 2001). Nevertheless, aside from the interactions with a dove, the story speaks little of the effective journey per se (Schwartz, 2000).

Instead of focusing solely on the causes and consequences of the Flood, embarking on the archetypal ship could shed a new light on our humanities. The journey itself is not about teaching us why we are actually living together (which is of metaphysical concern), but rather how life is actually shared between trans-specific travelers (which is of anthropological interest). Examining these shared lives may thus initiate a genuine bio-eco-discussion. Moreover, beyond the simple question of the ecological weight of human activities on animal environments, the idea of an arkaeography is to me emblematic of a deeper phenomenon (as illustrated by some postnatural case studies such as the Zanesville escape), an idea both larger and more influential: the weight of animal activities on the human environment. This arkaeography would hence tackle the mapping of humans’ and animals’ shared lives.

Modulation

Called into action by Sheriff Lutz in the Zanesville escape, Jack Hanna, director of the Columbus Zoo, lamented in front of the cameras the tragic loss of so many threatened animals (Williams, 2011). Despite his support for the actions of the law enforcement agents, he notably regretted the killing of tigers, a well-known endangered species. From a beastness perspective, his statement was paradoxical. It revealed an inflection point that numerous natural-historical narratives tend to reach. When an animal specialist deplores the loss of isolated individuals because of the status of their entire species, what kind of logical operations and reasoning are at play? By considering Zanesville animals and their wild peers as equals, is Hanna taking for granted the immutability of beings and becomings? Does a Bengal tiger remain a Bengal tiger notwithstanding activities and relationships, historical or biographical vagaries? What if ‘it’ lives in a Sumatran forest, or in Bronx concrete? How does our idea of a tiger hold up when a majority of actual tigers now live in captivity? Is a tiger still ‘tiger’ if it remains caged, eats meat from the supermarket and reproduces only when allowed to? If captivity is not a recent phenomenon, it is now becoming a considerable industry that shapes not only a few individuals but the majority of the species itself. By considering tigers only as gene carriers, Jack Hanna triggers an explosive argument about life forms and existences.

Before further discussion, I would like to recall, in a global context marked by major ecological upheavals (UN Convention on Biological Diversity, 2010), some important data on tigers (Panthera tigris). In 1900, our planet was home to just over 100,000 specimens. In 2008, the most optimistic estimates suggested a population of fewer than 20,000 individuals (Luo et al., 2008). Of these, there may be only 4000 that still roam free (IUCN, 2012). In a hundred years, the tiger species has lost over 80% of its total population while its ‘wild/captive’ distribution has been radically reversed. Now, more than 75% of tigers live in captivity. For example, the southern US states shelter more captive tigers than remain in the wild throughout the world (Marsh, 2010). Under these conditions, anyone who intends to draw a realistic portrait of these big cats cannot confine himself to the Himalayan plateaus or the Indonesian jungles, but must instead peer inside Texas ranches. He might find a cement cage rather than tall grasses, and a weekly meat distribution instead of a frenzied hunt. In fact, for the overwhelming majority of tigers today, there is no longer big game, but rather small play. They do not chase gazelle but jump through hoops or even dive into small plastic pools when summer gets too hot. Instead of pacing a territory, they walk round and round. And if they still sleep as much, it is with a stainless steel chain around their neck to ensure their peaceful digestion.

There is no question that such animals may still be dangerous to humans. But there is no doubt that humans too are a danger to tigers (Ellis, 2005). Indeed, questions arise regarding some of our antique dichotomies. Are tigers still our predators? Are we still their prey? Are tigers still ‘wild’? Who is hunting whom? To return to the episode of Zanesville, one can ask what we really know about these big cats and other exotic animals evolving in captivity. What kind of bestiality are these jungle backyards home to? What happened – for wolves, bears, tigers and cheetahs – when the cage was opened? Was it a release, the long-awaited opportunity for rabid beasts to devour their captors? Was it more of an experiment, the virgin immensity of freedom experienced for the first time, or perhaps simply a threatening breach into the unknown? Frightening for the farmer and his cattle, for the parents and their children, were these animals not frightened themselves? What about the ‘horde effect’? What happened between the animals when the bars of the cages that had held them captive for so long disappeared? Did they smell each other? What about the immediate neighbor, long observed from a distance, but never really encountered? Who, then, did what? All of the animals seem to have crossed the threshold of the cage (which is, if they were not forced to do so, already a step). Did they go in the same direction? They probably did not react the same way. Could they still fend for themselves? Who would know, by dodging man, his pickup and his guns, how to survive a little longer … and eventually find another safe cage? In other words: how were these animals affected by this ‘escape’? What did they do with this kind of novelty? At this point, the only certainty is what Sheriff Lutz, his deputies and a self-appointed crew of gun holders did.

Transduction

Readdressing events such as the Zanesville escape in a beastness perspective can therefore suggest new ways of dealing with current biodiversity issues. One of these issues pertains to the limitations of characterizing animals primarily as members of a species. Another may be discussing captivity itself. Do living conditions in captivity only marginally affect the existence of individuals? Both of these concerns relate to a philosophical dilemma: are beasts only living organisms or do they also exist as individuals (Burgat, 2011)? Statistically speaking, most of the 21st-century tigers now live encaged, in zoos or sanctuaries, in spaces built and managed to a precise end. In these highly artificialized environments, physiological needs are fully supported: water, food, shelter and reproduction are under close surveillance. In these cases, human companionship has turned the cousin of the jungle king into the adopted roommate of the common housecat.

The mere existence of these animals seems to defy the conventional biological and ethological narratives as it suggests a shift in our taxonomic and ontogenetic categories associated with species. Indeed, is a tiger born and raised in captivity not more akin to a Felis domesticus than to its ‘wild’ congener? Therefore, traditional affiliations are no longer sufficient to describe these animals’ lives, as they fail to account for the movements of information and communication operating at the heart of every individuation (Simondon, 2004). Animals are not passive vehicles thus reducible to a transmission device, or even to a collection of signals. They are milieus, intermediaries, agents of production, complex message traders. They are not simply channels or carriers, but also intensifiers. Indeed, beastness is not limited to achieving good signal-to-noise ratios. Like any relationship, it necessarily implies medialogical and communicational movements. When put into relation, two terms (a human and an animal, for instance) are not simply added to one another but rather intensified and multiplied (Bardini, 2011). Thus, a medium is anything but neutral: as an intermediary, its power increases and its scope for action extends proportionally to the importance of the message it nurtures (Strate, 2006). Products as well as processes, animal existences are an elaborate mesh of synchronous and asynchronous mediations. Focusing on these mediations as an ecological ground at the basis of which physis and techne operate conjointly allows for a global appreciation of complex communicational situations. Such situations include conjunctions of more or less predictable factors, emergent properties at different levels of organization, and interactions between random and deterministic processes. They also encompass effects propagated upward and downward, as well as causes operating simultaneously and on several levels.

To further anchor my argumentation, I would like to discuss a particular aspect of our current beastness, namely the artificial reproduction of animals in zoos all around the world. Jungle backyards (underground reproduction centers, private collections of exotic pets or even improvised sanctuaries) can be considered as ‘rogue’ menageries in the sense that animal husbandry is more or less randomly operated. Official zoos, on the contrary, use hi-tech molecular biology tools to ensure efficient techniques of ‘pure’ breeding-population management. With conservation a growing concern, detailed studbooks make precise inventories of lineages while Species Survival Plans (SSP) dictate who is allowed to reproduce with whom. In many cases, long before it is born, the animal’s destiny is already written, a situation that puts many beasts under pressurizing subjectivities, both taxonomical and political. Because subspecies have to be protected, first from extinction, second from mixing, mammals are under serious eugenic control in most modern zoos (Asa & Porton, 2005). A majority of lionesses, tigers, giraffes or even chimpanzees take the contraceptive pill. Otherwise, cubs are euthanized upon reaching adulthood to prevent bloodlines from being adulterated – which caters both to zoos’ standards of animal parenthood and to the public taste for family portraits (Kaufman, 2012). Because of zoos’ contemporary status (gone from displaying ‘used-to-be-wild’ animals to preserving ‘soon-to-be-extinct’ specimens), eugenics are not only tolerated, but promoted – a scheme that would be legally, ethically and politically unacceptable, were it not justified by conservation imperatives. I argue that conservation is no longer effective when conservationism reduces preservation to a mere collection of attributes.

We know that reproduction is one of the pillars of the modern Theory of Evolution (Gould, 2002). It is a necessary pathway for any generation as well as the inescapable path of transmission and selection. Without reproduction, nothing lasts. Reproduction may be identical (mitosis) or different (meiosis) from one generation to another, but it always gives life a chance to renew itself. Vector for every form, reproduction oscillates between conformism and innovation, conservation and intensification. Are some animals actually entering the age of their bio-mechanical reproduction? In the case of modern tigers, reproduction is not just assisted, it is planned in every detail – a demiurgic responsibility that is not without recalling Noah’s duties. American and European zoo and aquarium associations recently turned out to be leading a contemporary version of the Ark, as they implemented SSPs and other selective programs made to ensure the diversity of the future genetic pool. But this type of enforcement rapidly transmutes some animals into simple DNA sherpas. Paradoxically, while portaging genes for scientists, tigers also convey symbolic representations in popular culture. But, while discourses about ‘what is or is not a Tiger’ multiply apace, tigers continue to occupy cages, black markets, international conferences as well as stages, screens and novels.

Dissemination

Tawny Richey is in charge of educational programs at The Wild Animal Sanctuary, a vast Colorado ranch that has been taking in the rejects of a booming industry for over 30 years. The Keenesburg facility shelters 165 large exotic animals, including dozens of big cats. For reasons both budgetary and educational, the sanctuary is now open to the public. Despite all the credit the project deserves, Tawny is often faced with the perplexity of visitors. Frequently, people admit being disappointed with their ‘safari’. Because the staging is made for the animals and not designed to highlight them, cages are not built for potential viewers. On the contrary, the entire setup is made to prevent tigers from being disturbed by visitors. No clowns, no hoops or fire, no tricks like those a good movie or a bad circus can offer. A kitsch, savannah-inspired wallpaper adorning a small information room where documentaries are played on TV is the only reminder of a distant wilderness. Most of the time, the tigers sleep – increasing the gap between ethological realities and the fictional patterns that many visitors have in mind. Some of them demand a refund. ‘The problem is not about money,’ Tawny says. ‘The real problem is that people believe what they see. And what they see nowadays are mainly tigers in the movies.’

Walt Disney productions anthropomorphized Hollywood creatures, and certain television programs draw the outlines of modern animal representations. They suggest influential trompe l’oeil that provide visual material for constructed cultural imageries. In studios, tigers are made to be ‘sexy’. Resulting from multiple media-logical processes, these creatures participate in a daily zoo star academy that rapidly turns animals into totems. If cultural representations of tigers differ from their ethological realities, these two modes of existence have to be distinguished, but they cannot entirely be disassociated. Neither simple biology nor complete mythology, the tiger displays the traits of a true assemblage – both that of Panthera tigris and Shere Khan, but also of a Chinese Zodiac sign and a gas station logo. Paradoxically, the tiger’s value is sometimes higher when the animal is dead. Skins, penises, fangs and other body delicacies have their own trading places and prices that correspond to fluctuating trends. A ticket to the zoo or a good Chinese aphrodisiac can hence determine the animal’s worth (Nowell, 2000). While an important scientific community is striving to maintain a genetic diversity that is said to be necessary – and we tend to think sufficient – to the conservation of this emblematic endangered species (Hedrick, 1992), poets and scriptwriters are struggling with other forms of tiger (Burt, 2002; Wells, 2009), and popular cultures continue to be hopelessly fascinated by the rolling gait of the cat, the mysterious look in its almond-shaped eyes and the fire of its coat.

Indeed, the existence of many contemporary tigers consists not only of genes, or even flesh and bone; it is also composed of a complex imaginary and many beliefs that come with it (Davies, 2011). Each of these dimensions tends to inscribe its ongoing development on the organism, making animals the product and the process of a real individuation (Simondon, 1989). As such, these individuals are both ‘singular’, as their life cannot be confined to pre-existing categories, and ‘collective’, because their life forms concern multiplicities. In this respect, tigers participate in a powerful political economy where the organic and symbolic potential of bodies is tirelessly refined. Cultivated over and over, the very life of these animals shows a profound sense of information (the Latin word informae originally meant giving shape to something as well as deforming an already stable shape). Discerning the natural and the cultural thus appears problematical. In the case of many tigers, the organic is increasingly artificialized (as discussed earlier in the case of reproduction). Meanwhile, the supposedly ‘natural’ part of life is exhibited and constantly replayed according to market imperatives and entertainment-industry goals. However, an analysis of jungle backyards cannot afford to stigmatize unnatural situations. Rather, it must embody the postnatural perspective previously exposed, before broadening the angle to examine continually shared movements of information and communication (Simondon, 2005).

Conclusion

The trans-specific communities we form with other animals are part of an overarching system that constantly informs and transforms the very plasticity of all living organisms (Kohn, 2007; Sebeok, Umiker-Sebeok & Young, 1992). Alongside this complex biotic life evolution, animals have often been used culturally and symbolically as media for humans – both as means and as mediators of meaning – as well as philosophically relegated to a position of otherness (Derrida, 2006; Pettman, 2011; Wolfe, 2003). The biopolitical relationships (Lazzarato, 2000; Wolfe, 2012) we have long nurtured with animals constitute a forceful catalyzer of any anthropological reality, perhaps even a significant pillar of the entire anthropogenic process (Shipman, 2011).

Fuelled by multi-species ethnographical material, this article has critically examined humanimal case studies of shared lives. It reviewed biographical facts of ‘used-to-be-wild’ (but not quite domesticated) animals that now cohabitate daily with Homo sapiens and face major ecological transformations. As they carry, tacked on to the very end of their evolutionary history, the expression of some specific human desires, these animals are the result of two historical narratives, a biological one and a cultural one, both permanently etched in their family tree (Pell, 2012). Instead of an eternal return to natural history, I proposed a little detour via some postnatural stories to account for these mutagenic life forms. While many current organisms are struggling with the flood of ecological transformations, the prevalence of what I call beastness reveals an entire subculture modeled by surprisingly creative underground activities. Several of these activities hint at the diversity of situations where known living organisms experience unknown reorganizations of life. Their discrete modes of existence provided us with strong case studies for an anthropological perspective on communication processes, both biological and cultural. Thus, I suggested looking at the shaping of our world not only from an inorganic point of view – sand becoming microchips, stones becoming homes – but also from an organic point of view – tigers becoming gene carriers, animated filmstars and big beastness intercessors. Readdressing events such as the Zanesville escape from a beastness angle hence suggests new ways of dealing with current biodiversity issues, while examples taken from such postnatural case studies shed new light on adaptation processes, organic plasticity and new ways for animals to express not only life, but vitality.

When conservationism reduces preservation to a mere collection of attributes without taking into account their potential activation, we can ask what it really strives to conserve. It may not be possible to safeguard many life forms as they used to be – such is the curse of any Flood (and, furthermore, of any natural or artificial evolution). Nonetheless, these individuals still express significant vital intensifications as they exist, consist and insist, and as they continuously enter the (re)production of other forms of life. Therefore, the challenge is to seriously reconsider information processes in order to go beyond mere reproduction of beings and the study of elements that constitute them.

I have suggested looking for another dimension, not separated from present elements, but different; one that could describe the changing state and the potentialities inherent to any movement. Thus, I insisted on the relational potential that is attached to every situation, especially humanimal ones. At a time when conservationism is repeatedly on the political agenda, case studies from trans-specific communities help us reflect upon the crucial part played by information and communication processes in contemporary media ecologies. These processes have their own productivity, in very much the same way that, in ecology, the waste of one organism can be the food of another. Indeed, this article insisted on aniculture as a particularly significant anthropogenic movement in which humanity designs animals, which are, in turn, part of our humanity and a condition of our survival. Living together thus shapes not only organisms but organizations, biology and mythology, morphologies and customs, DNA and politics. By developing an animalistic perspective on communicational processes, I proposed reconsidering what a 21st-century animal’s existence could be (rather than decree what is or is not an Animal). Pioneers in a way, these emergent humanimalities speak out about singularity, adaptive responses to selective pressures as well as complex manifestation of creativity.