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What role do nonhuman animals play in the construction of medical knowledge? Animal researchers typically claim that their use has been essential to progress – but just how have animals fitted into the development of biomedicine? In this article, I trace how nonhuman animals, and their body parts, have become incorporated into laboratory processes and places. They have long been designed to fit into scientific procedures – now increasingly so through genetic design. Animals and procedures are closely connected – animals in science are disassembled and reassembled in various ways. Indeed, biomedical knowledge can be said to rest on a large pile of animal bodies and body parts. The process of producing animal body parts to order has implications for how we conceptualize the body (human or nonhuman), which I discuss in the final section.

Non-human animals and their behaviour are part of the remit of what psychology studies; yet they are largely absent from feminist theory. This is in part due to earlier decades of feminist disavowal of biology and biological determinism (manifest in the sex/gender distinction). To exclude animals makes little sense, however, as animal societies continue to be used as models for humans, including gender differences. In this article, I argue that how we see gender in animal societies is not only an extrapolation from our own cultural mores, but is also produced in part by the material practices of laboratories. If laboratory animals are kept in impoverished, restricted conditions, then it is perhaps not surprising that experiments designed to investigate their sexuality or gender differences produce limited understandings. To counteract these tales of biological restriction, we need to look more at the complexities of non-human animal behaviour and society — and in particular to emphasize how we build relationships with non-humans, as mutual co-creations.

In this paper, I explore the intersections between feminism and thinking about (nonhuman) animals. My premise is that animals matter to our politics, not only for themselves, but also for how we think about our own world. I consider three aspects of such intersecting: first, considering animals is important in terms of global environmental concerns because oppression of animals is linked profoundly to how we treat nature in general. Second, although animals seldom enter feminist thought, I argue that how animals are figured matters a great deal to feminism, not least because how we think about them is so mired in problematic dualities of nature/culture and body/mind. Third, I emphasise relationships and relationality—in this case, between humans and our nonhuman kin. This offers, I believe, not only a better way of understanding how embedded in our society are many animals, but also a route to a more inclusive ethics and politics.