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AbstractA growing body of research suggests that non‐humans play a central role in many social interactions – not simply as objects used by humans as interaction props, but as fully participating agents of action. In this essay, I examine these innovative ideas, reviewing survey data that documents this trend and theoretical and empirical work that seeks to better understand it.

The growing interest in ecology has had the unexpected effect of granting new relevance to a theology interested not so much in the salvation of humans as in the salvation of the whole creation – non‐humans included. Since science studies has for many years probed several alternatives to the modernist divide between subject and object, it is interesting to combine the tools of science studies and theology to elicit a new contrast between nature and creation. Using tools from an anthropological inquiry of the moderns, the article draws a different connection between religion and science that bypasses the notion of nature.RésuméL'intérêt croissant pour l'écologie a eu pour effet inattendu de remettre en lumière une théologie qui s'intéresse moins au salut des humains qu'à celui de toute la Création, non‐humains compris. À l'heure où des études scientifiques explorent depuis de nombreuses années différentes alternatives à la dichotomie moderniste entre sujet et objet, il est intéressant d'associer les outils de ces études et ceux de la théologie pour établir une nouvelle différenciation entre nature et création. À l'aide des outils d'étude anthropologique des modernes, le présent article établit un lien différent entre religion et science, qui s'affranchit de la notion de nature.

As activism for trans rights and gender equality becomes ever more prevalent in the current American political discourse, so too has there been a rise in questions about gender. Are sexuality and gender linked? Aren't there only two genders? What is the difference between gender and sex? Is there a difference? How does one DO gender? Isn't gender just something you are born with? Helping the public understand these questions is important to transgender and gender non-conforming individuals in a time when more people are "coming out of the closet" and identifying as genders other than cisgender. As an anthropologist, and furthermore a primatologist, I thought, "How could I help answer these questions by looking at our primate cousins?" By looking at the behaviors of nonhuman primates I sought to help understand gender production in humans and possible origins of gender. In this project I scanned the academic literature concerning sex differential behavior in nonhuman primates to examine the question, "Do nonhuman primates have gender?" through this intensive literature study of sex differences in primate mating, foraging, aggression, and parenting behavior, I sought to understand what sex differences in nonhuman primates would constitute gender production. As such, this project not only sought to answer the question, "Do nonhuman primates have gender?" but if they do, "What does nonhuman primate gender say about human gender production?"

This commentary discusses the representation of individuals versus populations — human and nonhuman, present and future — in Treves et al.'s proposed trusteeship for futurity. Terminological questions are also discussed.

Pre‐school children expect falling objects to travel in a straight line even when there are clear physical mechanisms that deviate the object's path (Hood, 1995). The current study set out to determine whether this expectancy is limited to humans. Cotton‐top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus oedipus), a New World monkey species, were tested on Hood's (1995) experimental task where objects are dropped down a chimney connected by an opaque tube to one of three containers. Like human children, there was a significant tendency to search in the container underneath the chimney where the food was dropped on the first trial, even though aligned chimneys and containers were never connected. These search errors suggest that there may be a gravity bias that operates when both primate species fail to understand the constraints operating on object trajectories. Unlike human children however, tamarins were generally more likely to perseverate in making errors even though repeated testing and cost incentives were used.

In their target article, Chapman & Huffman challenge the quotation of Sir William Osler that the desire to take medication distinguishes humans from non-human animals. They provide examples of self-medication in non-human animals. Based on these examples, it can be inferred that non-human animals practice at least some form of medicine for symptom control. I would like to extend this view by showing that non-human animals not only provide self-medication, but also rescue others facing emergencies.

Rather than focus on effects, the isolatable and measureable outcomes of events and interventions, the papers assembled here offer different perspectives on the affective dimension of the meaning and politics of human/non-human relations. The authors begin by drawing attention to the constructed discontinuity between humans and non-humans, and to the kinds of knowledge and socialities that this discontinuity sustains, including those underpinned by nature-culture, subject-object, body-mind, individual-society polarities. The articles presented track human/non-human relations through different domains, including: humans/non-humans in history and animal welfare science (Fudge and Buller); the relationship between the way we live, the effects on our natural environment and contested knowledges about 'nature' (Whatmore); choreographies of everyday life and everyday science practices with non-human animals such as horses, meerkats, mice, and wolves (Latimer, Candea, Davies, Despret). Each paper also goes on to offer different perspectives on the human/non-human not just as division, or even as an asymmetrical relation, but as relations that are mutually affective, however invisible and inexpressible in the domain of science. Thus the collection contributes to new epistemologies/ontologies that undercut the usual ordering of relations and their dichotomies, particularly in that dominant domain of contemporary culture that we call science. Indeed, in their impetus to capture 'affect', the collection goes beyond the usual turn towards a more inclusive ontology, and contributes to the radical shift in the epistemology and philosophy of science's terms of engagement.