Animal Death

Animal death is a complex, uncomfortable, depressing, motivating and sensitive topic. For those scholars participating in human–animal studies, it is – accompanied by the concept of ‘life’ – the ground upon which their studies commence, whether those studies are historical, archaeological, social, philosophical or cultural. It is a tough subject to face, but, as we hope this volume demonstrates, one at the heart of human–animal relations and auman–animal studies scholarship. The sheer scale of animal death is mind-boggling. The statistics are easily accessible and the rhetoric all too familiar: ‘Animals become extinct. They are also killed, gassed, electrocuted, exterminated, hunted, butchered, vivisected, shot, trapped, snared, run over, lethally injected, culled, sacrificed, slaughtered, executed, euthanized, destroyed, put down, put to sleep, and even, perhaps, murdered’ (Animal Studies Group 2006, 3). It is not that we do not know what is going on (the information is available if we care to look), but that many do not ‘care to know’ in the sense that Stanley Cohen uses that phrase. For Cohen, caring to know is knowledge plus acknowledgment of the moral and ethical consequences of that knowledge (2001). While killing animals is a ‘defining aspect of human behavior’ (Animal Studies Group 2006, 8), understanding the ways in which animal deaths are faced up to, ob-