Fierce, controversial, and caught between worlds—Heck cattle embody the complex intersection of dark history and modern conservation. This final episode of Season 5 of the Animal Highlight explores how these bovines were deliberately bred by Nazi zoologists in the 1920s and now find themselves at the center of rewilding debates across Europe.

Recorded: 14 December 2023

Featured:

• Season 6 Grad Review on The Animal Turn
• The Cow with Ear Tag #1389 by Kathryn Gillespie
• From “Nazi Cows” to Cosmopolitan “Ecological Engineers” by Jamie Lorimer and Clemens Driessen
• Conceptualizing the multispecies triadby Andrea Petitt
• American Cows in Antarctica by Elizabeth Leane and Hanne Nielsen

Virginia Thomas is an environmental social scientist with a PhD in Sociology. She is interested in people’s interactions with their environment and with other animals. Virginia’s work explores the social and ethical questions in human-animal relationships. She is currently a research fellow on the Wellcome Trust funded project ‘From Feed the Birds to Do Not Feed the Animals’ which examines the drivers and consequences of animal feeding. This leads on from her previous research which examined human-animal relations in the media (as part of zoonotic disease framing) and in rewilding projects (in relation to biopolitics and human-animal coexistence). You can connect with Virginia via Twitter (@ArbitrioHumano).

Credits:

• Claudia Hirtenfelder, executive producer, editor and co-host
• Virginia Thomas, script write, narrator and co-host
• Rebecca Shen, content producer and designer (logo and episode artwork)
• Gordon Clarke, bed music composer
• Sound clips taken from: BBC Sound Effects, xeno canto: https://xeno-canto.org/species/milvus-milvus
• Learn more about the team here.

Support the podcast via:

• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/TheAnimalTurn
• Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theanimalturn
• Buzzsprout: https://theanimalturn.buzzsprout.com/

Send us a text

Support the show

The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast.

Connect with us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

Virginia explores how the recovery of red kites in Britain has been shaped by international efforts and cross-border collaborations between governments and NGOs. Thinking about these birds, Virginia raises questions and concerns about translocation, culture, and species conservation.

Recorded: 14 December 2023

Featured:

• International Relations with Andrea Schapper on The Animal Turn
• Natural England
• Royal Society for Protection of Birds
• Animal Culture with Carl Safinaon The Animal Turn
• Bears on Displayat Queen’s University

Virginia Thomas is an environmental social scientist with a PhD in Sociology. She is interested in people’s interactions with their environment and with other animals. Virginia’s work explores the social and ethical questions in human-animal relationships. She is currently a research fellow on the Wellcome Trust funded project ‘From Feed the Birds to Do Not Feed the Animals’ which examines the drivers and consequences of animal feeding. This leads on from her previous research which examined human-animal relations in the media (as part of zoonotic disease framing) and in rewilding projects (in relation to biopolitics and human-animal coexistence). You can connect with Virginia via Twitter (@ArbitrioHumano).

Credits:

• Claudia Hirtenfelder, executive producer, editor and co-host
• Virginia Thomas, script write, narrator and co-host
• Rebecca Shen, content producer and designer (logo and episode artwork)
• Gordon Clarke, bed music composer
• Sound clips taken from: BBC Sound Effects, xeno canto: https://xeno-canto.org/species/milvus-milvus
• Learn more about the team here.

Support the podcast via:

• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/TheAnimalTurn
• Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theanimalturn
• Buzzsprout: https://theanimalturn.buzzsprout.com/

Send us a text

Support the show

The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast.

Connect with us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

Virginia tells us how grey wolves are reclaiming territories across Europe and North America through a process known as auto-rewilding—autonomously returning to lands from which humans once drove them out. This powerful expression of nonhuman agency challenges our conventional approach to wildlife management and invites us to reconsider what coexistence means in the Anthropocene.

Recorded: 22 November 2023

Featured:

• S6E8: Re-Animalization with Krithika Srinivasan on The Animal Turn
• Re-animalising wellbeing: Multispecies justice after development by Krithika Srinivasan
• Respecting Nature’s Autonomy in Relationship with Humanity by Ned Hettinger

Virginia Thomas is an environmental social scientist with a PhD in Sociology. She is interested in people’s interactions with their environment and with other animals. Virginia’s work explores the social and ethical questions in human-animal relationships. She is currently a research fellow on the Wellcome Trust funded project ‘From Feed the Birds to Do Not Feed the Animals’ which examines the drivers and consequences of animal feeding. This leads on from her previous research which examined human-animal relations in the media (as part of zoonotic disease framing) and in rewilding projects (in relation to biopolitics and human-animal coexistence). You can connect with Virginia via Twitter (@ArbitrioHumano).

Credits:

• Claudia Hirtenfelder, executive producer, editor and co-host
• Virginia Thomas, script write, narrator and co-host
• Rebecca Shen, content producer and designer (logo and episode artwork)
• Gordon Clarke, bed music composer
• Sound clips taken from: BBC Sound Effects, We Animals Media, NBC News Story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PbsuGGWUrM
• Learn more about the team here.

Support the podcast via:

• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/TheAnimalTurn
• Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theanimalturn
• Buzzsprout: https://theanimalturn.buzzsprout.com/

Send us a text

Support the show

The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast.

Connect with us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook.