The beast that never forgot? Baboon conservation and the role of multispecies history

Abstract

History and culture were long seen as definitionally human. As other distinctive traits that once defined our species as unique disappeared, at least we still had those two. But are we really the only species shaped by our pasts and who have cultures that change over time? This article explores animal cultures, the significance of history (and individual and group memory) in the survival of social animals and the role the discipline of History can play in conserving them. Haraway contends that people are “becoming with” other species and that these shared histories matter ethically. I argue that it is not only a matter of ethics but one of coexisting better with each other. By considering animals’ culture with a historical lens, we understand them better and adjust interactions with them. Human-wildlife connections can be fundamental to ecological assemblages rather than ancillary. Second, I show how human-animal history can push back into Deep History, also challenging static representations of human-animal relations in indigenous cultures or the pre-colonial past. Most importantly, I argue that other animals (especially social ones) have cultures themselves (neither static nor uniform) and that these can be reconstructed and used in conservation.