Hostname: page-component-89b8bd64d-b5k59 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-05-07T15:51:06.047Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Naming the Ethological Subject

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2016

Etienne S. Benson
Etienne S. Benson*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania E-mail: ebenson@sas.upenn.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Argument

In recent decades, through the work of Jane Goodall and other ethologists, the practice of giving personal names to nonhuman animals who are the subjects of scientific research has become associated with claims about animal personhood and scientific objectivity. While critics argue that such naming practices predispose the researcher toward anthropomorphism, supporters suggest that it sensitizes the researcher to individual differences and social relations. Both critics and supporters agree that naming tends to be associated with the recognition of individual animal rights. The history of the naming of research animals since the late nineteenth century shows, however, that the practice has served a variety of purposes, most of which have raised few ethical or epistemological concerns. Names have been used to identify research animals who play dual roles as pets, workers, or patients, to enhance their market value, and to facilitate their identification in the field. The multifaceted history of naming suggests both that the use of personal names by Goodall and others is less of a radical break with previous practices than it might first appear to be and that the use of personal names to recognize the individuality, sentience, or rights of nonhuman animals faces inherent limits and contradictions.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 29 , Issue 1: Animal-Man Relations , March 2016 , pp. 107 - 128
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Agamben, Giorgio. 2004. The Open: Man and Animal. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Allen, David E. [1976]1994. The Naturalist in Britain: A Social History. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Arluke, Arnold. 1988. “Sacrificial Symbolism in Animal Experimentation: Object or Pet?” Anthrozoos 2 (2):98–117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arluke, Arnold and Sanders, Clinton R.. 1996. Regarding Animals. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Barrow, Mark V. Jr. 1998. A Passion for Birds: American Ornithology After Audubon. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beinart, William. 2001. “The Renaturing of African Animals: Film and Literature in the 1950s and 1960s.” Kronos 27:201–226.Google Scholar
Bekoff, Marc. 2002. Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions, and Heart. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Birke, Lynda, Arnold, Arluke, and Mike, Michael. 2007. The Sacrifice: How Scientific Experiments Transform Animals and People. West Lafayette IN: Purdue University Press.Google Scholar
Bodenhorn, Barbara, and Bruck, Gabriele vom. 2006. “‘Entangled in Histories’: An Introduction to the Anthropology of Names and Naming.” In The Anthropology of Names and Naming, edited by Bruck, Gabriele vom and Bodenhorn, Barbara, 1–30. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Boitani, Luigi, and Todd, K. Fuller. 2000. Research Techniques in Animal Ecology: Controversies and Consequences. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Bramblett, Claud A. 1976. “Ethology and Primates: Some New Directions for the 1970s.” American Anthropologist 78 (3):593–607.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braverman, Irus. 2013. Zooland: The Institution of Captivity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Browne, Janet. 1983. The Secular Ark: Studies in the History of Biogeography. New Haven: Yale University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burkhardt, Richard W. 2005. Patterns of Behavior: Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen, and the Founding of Ethology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Candea, Mattei. 2010. “‘I Fell in Love with Carlos the Meerkat’: Engagement and Detachment in Human-Animal Relations.” American Ethnologist 37 (2):241–258.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chris, Cynthia. 2006. Watching Wildlife. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Clause, Bonnie Tocher. 1993. “The Wistar Rat as a Right Choice: Establishing Mammalian Standards and the Ideal of a Standardized Mammal.” Journal of the History of Biology 26 (2):329–349.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Craig, Wallace. 1908. “The Voices of Pigeons Regarded as a Means of Social Control.” American Journal of Sociology 14 (1):86–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Craig, Wallace. 1933. “The Music of the Wood Pewee's Song and One of Its Laws.” Auk 50 (2):174–178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crist, Eileen. 2000. Images of Animals. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Daston, Lorraine, and Mitman, Gregg. 2005. Thinking with Animals: New Perspectives on Anthropomorphism. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Daston, Lorraine, and Galison, Peter. 2007. Objectivity. New York: Zone.Google Scholar
Davis, Hank, and Balfour, Dianne. 1992. The Inevitable Bond: Examining Scientist-Animal Interactions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Davis, Susan G. 1997. Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Bont, Raf. 2015. Stations in the Field: A History of Place-Based Animal Research, 1870–1930. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Waal, Frans. 2007. Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes, 25th anniversary edition. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Derry, Margaret E. 2003. Bred for Perfection: Shorthorn Cattle, Collies, and Arabian Horses since 1800. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Despret, Vinciane. 2004. “The Body We Care For: Figures of Anthropo-zoo-genesis.” Body and Society 10 (2-3):111–134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dror, Otniel. 1999. “The Affect of Experiment: The Turn to Emotions in Anglo-American Physiology, 1900–1940.” Isis 90:205–237.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dwyer, June. 2007. “A Non-Companion Species Manifesto: Humans, Wild Animals, and ‘The Pain of Anthropomorphism’.” South Atlantic Review 72 (3):73–89.Google Scholar
Everest, Sophie. 2011. “‘Under the Skin’: The Biography of a Manchester Mandrill.” In The Afterlives of Animals: A Museum Menagerie, edited by Samuel, J.M.M.Alberti, , 75–91. Charlottesville: University of Virgina Press.Google Scholar
Farber, Paul L. 2000. Finding Order in Nature: The Naturalist Tradition from Linnaeus to E. O. Wilson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Fossey, Dian. 2001. Gorillas in the Mist. London: Orion.Google Scholar
Goodall, Jane. 1986. The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Goodall, Jane. 1987. “Views: A Plea for the Chimpanzees.” American Scientist 75 (6):574–577.Google Scholar
Goodall, Jane. 1998. “Learning from the Chimpanzees: A Message Humans Can Understand.” Science 282 (5397)(18 Dec.):2184–2185.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodall, Jane. [1971] 2000. In the Shadow of Man. New York: Mariner.Google Scholar
Goodall, Jane. 2007. “Foreword.” In The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy, and Why They Matter, by Bekoff, Marc, xi–xv. Novato CA: New World Library.Google Scholar
Gorman, James. 2013. “Goal of Broader Protection for Chimpanzees Emerges From Changing Perspectives.” New York Times, 15 June, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/science/goal-of-broader-protection-for-chimpanzees-emerges-from-changing-perspectives.html, last accessed June 16, 2013.Google Scholar
Grier, Katherine G. 2006. Pets in America: A History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Haraway, Donna Jeanne. 1989. Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science. New York: Routledge, Chapman, and Hall.Google Scholar
Haraway, Donna Jeanne. 2008. When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Hearne, Vicki. 2007. Adam's Task: Calling Animals by Name. New York: Skyhorse.Google Scholar
Hollander, John. 1995. “‘I Named Them As They Passed’: Kinds of Animals and Humankind.” Social Research 62 (3):457–476.Google Scholar
Howard, Henry Eliot. 1964. Territory in Bird Life. New York: Atheneum.Google Scholar
Isenberg, Andrew C. 2002. “Moral Economy of Wildife.” In Representing Animals, by Rothfels, Nigel, 48–64. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Jansen, Sarah. 2002. “Den Heringen einen Paß ausstellen: Formalisierung und Genauigkeit in den Anfängen der Populationsökologie um 1900.” Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 25 (3):153–169.3.0.CO;2-1>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jolly, Allison. 2000. “The Bad Old Days of Primatology?” In Primate Encounters: Models of Science, Gender, and Society, edited by Strum, Shirley C. and Fedigan, Linda Marie, 71–84. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kete, Kathleen. 1995. The Beast in the Boudoir: Petkeeping in Nineteenth-Century Paris. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Kohler, Robert E. 2002. Landscapes and Labscapes: Exploring the Lab-Field Border in Biology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kohler, Robert E. 2006. All Creatures: Naturalists, Collectors, and Biodiversity, 1850–1950. Princeton:Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kohler, Robert E. 2011. “Paul Errington, Aldo Leopold, and Wildlife Ecology: Residential Science.” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 41 (2):216–254.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kruuk, Hans. 2003. Niko's Nature: The Life of Niko Tinbergen and His Science of Animal Behaviour. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 2000. “A Well-Articulated Primatology: Reflections of a Fellow-Traveler.” In Primate Encounters: Models of Science, Gender, and Society, edited by Strum, Shirley C. and Fedigan, Linda Marie, 358–381. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Law, John and Lynch, Michael. 1988. “Lists, Field Guides, and the Descriptive Organization of Seeing: Birdwatching as an Exemplary Observational Activity.” Human Studies 11 (2/3):271–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lederer, Susan E. 1992. “Political Animals: The Shaping of Biomedical Research Literature in Twentieth-Century America.” Isis 83 (1):61–79.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lestel, Dominique. 1995. Paroles de singes: L'impossible dialogue homme-primate. Paris: Decouverte.Google Scholar
Lorenz, Konrad. 1964. King Solomon's Ring: New Light on Animal Ways. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Lorimer, Jamie. 2008. “Counting Corncrakes: The Affective Science of the UK Corncrake Census.” Social Studies of Science 38 (3):377–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lutts, Ralph H. 2001. The Nature Fakers: Wildlife, Science, and Sentiment. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.Google Scholar
Lynch, Michael E. 1988. “Sacrifice and the Transformation of the Animal Body into a Scientific Object: Laboratory Culture and Ritual Practice in the Neurosciences.” Social Studies of Science 18 (2):265–289.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
MacGregor, Arthur. 2012. Animal Encounters: Human and Animal Interactions in Britain from the Norman Conquest to World War One. London: Reaktion Books.Google Scholar
Masson, Jeffrey, and McCarthy, Susan. 1996. When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals. London: Vintage.Google Scholar
Miller, Ian. 2013. The Nature of the Beasts: Empire and Exhibition at the Tokyo Imperial Zoo. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, Robert W., Thompson, Nicholas S., and Lyn Miles, H.. 1997. Anthropomorphism, Anecdotes, and Animals. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Mitman, Gregg. 2005. “Pachyderm Personalities: The Media of Science, Politics, and Conservation.” In Thinking with Animals: New Perspectives on Anthropomorphism, edited by Daston, Lorraine and Mitman, Gregg, 175–198. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Mitman, Gregg, and Burkhardt, Richard W. Jr. 1991. “Struggling for Identity: The Study of Animal Behavior in America, 1930–1950.” In The Expansion of American Biology, edited by Benson, Keith R., Rainger, Ronald, and Maienschein, Jane, 164–194. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Montgomery, Georgina M. 2005. “Place, Practice and Primatology: Clarence Ray Carpenter, Primate Communication and the Development of Field Methodology, 1931–1945.” Journal of the History of Biology 38:495–533.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montgomery, Georgina M. 2009. “‘Infinite Loneliness': The Life and Times of Miss Congo.” Endeavour 33 (3):101–105.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Montgomery, Sy. [1991]2000. Walking with the Great Apes: Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, Biruté Galdikas. White River Junction VT: Chelsea Green.Google Scholar
Moss, Cynthia. 1988. Elephant Memories: Thirteen Years in the Life of an Elephant Family. New York: W. Morrow.Google Scholar
Munz, Tania. 2005. “The Bee Battles: Karl von Frisch, Adrian Wenner and the Honey Bee Dance Language Controversy.” Journal of the History of Biology 38:535–570.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Munz, Tania. 2011. “‘My Goose Child Martina’: The Multiple Uses of Geese in the Writings of Konrad Lorenz.” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 41 (4):405–48.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nance, Susan. 2013. Entertaining Elephants: Animal Agency and the Business of the American Circus. Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nice, Margaret Morse. 1930. “The Technique of Studying Nesting Song-Sparrows.” Bird-Banding 1 (4):177–181.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nice, Margaret Morse. 1934. “The Opportunity of Bird-Banding.” Bird-Banding 5 (2):64–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nice, Margaret Morse. 1935. “Edmund Selous: An Appreciation.” Bird-Banding 6 (3):90–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nice, Margaret Morse. 1939. The Watcher at the Nest. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Nice, Margaret Morse. 1979. Research Is a Passion with Me: The Autobiography of a Bird Lover. Toronto: Consolidated Amethyst.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nyhart, Lynn K. 1995. Biology Takes Form: Animal Morphology and the German Universities, 1800–1900. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Nyhart, Lynn K. 2009. Modern Nature: The Rise of the Biological Perspective in Germany. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patterson, Francine, and Linden, Eugene. 1981. The Education of Koko. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Payne, Katy. 1998. Silent Thunder: In the Presence of Elephants. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Pemberton, Stephen. 2004. “Canine Technologies, Model Patients: The Historical Production of Hemophiliac Dogs in American Biomedicine.”; In Industrializing Organisms: Introducing Evolutionary History, edited by Schrepfer, Susan and Scranton, Philip, 191–214. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Peterson, Dale. 2006. Jane Goodall: The Woman Who Redefined Man. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Pettit, Michael. 2010. “The Problem of Raccoon Intelligence in Behaviourist America.” British Journal for the History of Science 43 (3):391–421.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips, Mary T. 1994. “Proper Names and the Social Construction of Biography: The Negative Case of Laboratory Animals.” Qualitative Sociology 17 (2):119–142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rader, Karen. 2004. Making Mice: Standardizing Animals for American Biomedical Research, 1900–1955. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Radick, Gregory. 2008. The Simian Tongue: The Long Debate about Animal Language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Rees, Amanda. 2001. “Anthropomorphism, Anthropocentrism, and Anecdote: Primatologists on Primatology.” Science, Technology, & Human Values 26 (2):227–247.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rees, Amanda. 2007. “Reflections on the Field: Primatology, Popular Science and the Politics of Personhood.” Social Studies of Science 37 (6):881–907.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rees, Amanda. 2009. The Infanticide Controvery: Primatology and the Art of Field Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ritvo, Harriet. 1987. The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Ritvo, Harriet. 2010. “Possessing Nature: Genetic Capital in Eighteenth-Century Britain.” In Noble Cows and Hybrid Zebras: Essays on Animals and History, edited by Ritvo, Harriet, 157–176. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.Google Scholar
Rose, Gilbert P. 1979. “Odysseus' Barking Heart.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 109:215–230.Google Scholar
Roth, Wolff-Michael G., and Bowen, Michael. 1999. “Digitizing Lizards: The Topology of ‘Vision’ in Ecological Fieldwork.” Social Studies of Science 29 (5):719–764.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sabloff, Anabelle. 2001. Reordering the Natural World: Humans and Animals in the City. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sapolsky, Robert M. 2002. A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life among the Baboons. New York: Touchstone.Google Scholar
Schaller, George B. 1993. The Last Panda. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Sellbach, Undine. 2011. “The Traumatic Effort to Understand: Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man.” In Considering Animals, edited by Freeman, Carol, Leane, Elizabeth, and Watt, Yvette, 41–52. Surry UK: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Shukin, Nicole. 2009. Animal Capital: Rendering Life in Biopolitical Times. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Silvy, Nova J., Lopez, Roel R., and Peterson, Markus J.. 2012. “Techniques for Marking Wildlife”. In The Wildlife Techniques Manual, edited by Silvy, Nova J., 230–257. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Sowards, Stacey K. 2006. “Identification through Orangutans: Destabilizing the Nature/Culture Dualism.” Ethics and the Environment 11 (2):45–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stam, Henderikus J., and Kalmanovitch, Tanya. 1998. “E. L. Thorndike and the Origins of Animal Psychology: On the Nature of the Animal in Psychology.” American Psychologist 53 (10):1135–1144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, Keith. 1983. Man and the Natural World: Changing attitudes in England 1500–1800. London: Lane.Google Scholar
Todes, Daniel P. 2001. Pavlov's Physiology Factory: Experiment, Interpretation, Laboratory Enterprise. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tuan, Yi-Fu. 1984. Dominance and Affection: The Making of Pets. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Tyler, Tom. 2012. CIFERAE: A Bestiary in Five Fingers. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Whitney, Kristoffer. 2014. “Domesticating Nature? Surveillance and Conservation of Migratory Shorebirds in the ‘Atlantic Flyway’.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Part C 45 (1):78–87.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wilson, Robert M. 2010. Seeking Refuge: Birds and Landscapes of the Pacific Flyway. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Woodward, Wendy. 2011. “Naming and the Unspeakable.” In Considering Animals, edited by Freeman, Carol, Leane, Elizabeth, and Watt, Yvette, 53–65. Surry: Ashgate.Google Scholar