Feral Animals in the American South
An Evolutionary History

This book retells American southern history from feral animals' perspective, examining social, cultural, and evolutionary consequences of domestication and feralization.

Abraham H. Gibson (Author)

9781316610091, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 13 September 2018

245 pages, 20 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.1 x 1.6 cm, 0.4 kg

'Abraham Gibson's Feral Animals in the American South is an ambitious work unveiling the comparative feral histories of pigs, dogs, and horses. … Those interested in teaching, researching, or simply learning about such processes should read Gibson's book. I expect it will be required reading for scholars and students engaging in the cross-section of environmental and animal studies.' Tyler Parry, Environmental History

The relationship between humans and domestic animals has changed in dramatic ways over the ages, and those transitions have had profound consequences for all parties involved. As societies evolve, the selective pressures that shape domestic populations also change. Some animals retain close relationships with humans, but many do not. Those who establish residency in the wild, free from direct human control, are technically neither domestic nor wild: they are feral. If we really want to understand humanity's complex relationship with domestic animals, then we cannot simply ignore the ones who went feral. This is especially true in the American South, where social and cultural norms have facilitated and sustained large populations of feral animals for hundreds of years. Feral Animals in the American South retells southern history from this new perspective of feral animals.

1. The trouble with ferality: domestication as coevolution and the nature of broken symbioses
2. Making and breaking acquaintances: the origins of wildness, domestication, and ferality in prehistoric Eurasia
3. When ferality reigned: establishing an open range in the colonial South
4. Nascent domestication initiatives and their effects on ferality: claiming dominion in the antebellum South
5. Anthropogenic improvement and assaults on ferality: divergent fates in the industrializing South
6. Everything in its right place: wild, domestic, and feral populations in the modern South
Epilogue: cultivating ferality in the Anthropocene.

Subject Areas: Animal behaviour [PSVP], History of science [PDX], History of the Americas [HBJK]