Hunting and Human-Animal Relations (4)

Question 1

True or false? Multispecies ethnography is relatively modern, but anthropologists were always interested in these relationships even if the definition wasn’t there.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

What is an example of linguistic ethnoecology for Inuit people?

Answer 2

Many terminologies for snow

Question 3

Describe the human-animal relationships for the Archuar people of the Upper Amazon of southeastern Ecuador and Peru.

Answer 3

• Stalk their prey
• use blowgun despite shotguns available
• hunting dogs, well cared for
  Learned the behaviour of the species that are hunted: imitating their calls, knowing their habitat, picking out and killing the dominant male, and predicting the response of a wounded animal.

Question 4

Anthropologists who studied the Achuar claimed that hunting was organized in ways that enhanced its ____________.

Answer 4

Sustainability

Question 5

What is the mystification of land-based or hunting societies?

Answer 5

Concept of the “Noble savage”
Uncorrupt by civilization, innate goodness and moral superiority of a primitive people living in harmony with Nature.
When in reality…
Sustainability is based on intelligence and skills, not inherent innocence or primitive closeness with nature.

Question 6

Define optimal foraging theory.
Give an example that supports this model.

Answer 6

a behavioral ecology model that helps predict how an animal behaves when searching for food

Optimal foraging theory is a set of concepts and models that aim to explain the wide variation in foraging strategies among individuals and between species, guided by the assumption that living things are designed by a history of natural selection.

Piro hunters in the Upper Amazon: using shotguns but did not over hunt because of small populations and hunting over a large area