Living things, especially animals [1] and plants, [2] play many roles in culture, where culture means all forms of practice and expression transmitted by social learning. [3]
Culture is the social behavior and norms found in human societies. Culture is considered a central concept in anthropology, encompassing the range of phenomena that are transmitted through social learning in human societies. Cultural universals are found in all human societies; these include expressive forms like art, music, dance, ritual, religion, and technologies like tool usage, cooking, shelter, and clothing. The concept of material culture covers the physical expressions of culture, such as technology, architecture and art, whereas the immaterial aspects of culture such as principles of social organization, mythology, philosophy, literature, and science comprise the intangible cultural heritage of a society.
Plants provide the greater part of the food for people and their domestic animals: much of human culture and civilisation came into being through agriculture. While a large number of plants have been used for food, a small number of staple crops including wheat, rice, and maize provide most of the food in the world today. In turn, animals provide much of the meat eaten by the human population, whether farmed or hunted, and until the arrival of mechanised transport, terrestrial mammals provided a large part of the power used for work and transport. A variety of living things serve as models in biological research, such as in genetics, and in drug testing. Until the 19th century, plants yielded most of the medicinal drugs in common use, as described in the 1st century by Dioscorides. Plants are the source of many psychoactive drugs, some such as coca known to have been used for thousands of years. Yeast, a fungus, has been used to ferment cereals such as wheat and barley to make bread and beer; other fungi such as Psilocybe and fly agaric mushrooms have been gathered as psychoactive drugs.
Food is any substance consumed to provide nutritional support for an organism. It is usually of plant or animal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals. The substance is ingested by an organism and assimilated by the organism's cells to provide energy, maintain life, or stimulate growth.
Agriculture is the science and art of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to live in cities. The history of agriculture began thousands of years ago. After gathering wild grains beginning at least 105,000 years ago, nascent farmers began to plant them around 11,500 years ago. Pigs, sheep and cattle were domesticated over 10,000 years ago. Plants were independently cultivated in at least 11 regions of the world. Industrial agriculture based on large-scale monoculture in the twentieth century came to dominate agricultural output, though about 2 billion people still depended on subsistence agriculture into the twenty-first.
Wheat is a grass widely cultivated for its seed, a cereal grain which is a worldwide staple food. The many species of wheat together make up the genus Triticum; the most widely grown is common wheat.
Many species of animal are kept as pets, the most popular being mammals, especially dogs and cats. Plants are grown for pleasure in gardens and greenhouses, yielding flowers, shade, and decorative foliage; some, such as cactuses, able to tolerate dry conditions, are grown as houseplants.
A pet or companion animal is an animal kept primarily for a person's company, protection, entertainment, or as an act of compassion such as taking in and protecting a hungry stray cat, rather than as a working animal, livestock, or laboratory animal. Popular pets are often noted for their attractive appearances, intelligence, and relatable personalities, or may just be accepted as they are because they need a home.
The domestic dog is a member of the genus Canis (canines), which forms part of the wolf-like canids, and is the most widely abundant terrestrial carnivore. The dog and the extant gray wolf are sister taxa as modern wolves are not closely related to the wolves that were first domesticated, which implies that the direct ancestor of the dog is extinct. The dog was the first species to be domesticated and has been selectively bred over millennia for various behaviors, sensory capabilities, and physical attributes.
The cat is a small carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species in the family Felidae and often referred to as the domestic cat to distinguish it from wild members of the family. The cat is either a house cat, kept as a pet, or a feral cat, freely ranging and avoiding human contact. A house cat is valued by humans for companionship and for its ability to hunt rodents. About 60 cat breeds are recognized by various cat registries.
Animals such as horses and deer are among the earliest subjects of art, being found in the Upper Paleolithic cave paintings such as at Lascaux.
The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus. It is an odd-toed ungulate mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature, Eohippus, into the large, single-toed animal of today. Humans began domesticating horses around 4000 BC, and their domestication is believed to have been widespread by 3000 BC. Horses in the subspecies caballus are domesticated, although some domesticated populations live in the wild as feral horses. These feral populations are not true wild horses, as this term is used to describe horses that have never been domesticated, such as the endangered Przewalski's horse, a separate subspecies, and the only remaining true wild horse. There is an extensive, specialized vocabulary used to describe equine-related concepts, covering everything from anatomy to life stages, size, colors, markings, breeds, locomotion, and behavior.
Deer are the hoofed ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. The two main groups of deer are the Cervinae, including the muntjac, the elk (wapiti), the fallow deer, and the chital; and the Capreolinae, including the reindeer (caribou), the roe deer, and the moose. Female reindeer, and male deer of all species except the Chinese water deer, grow and shed new antlers each year. In this they differ from permanently horned antelope, which are part of a different family (Bovidae) within the same order of even-toed ungulates (Artiodactyla).
Art is a diverse range of human activities in creating visual, auditory or performing artifacts (artworks), expressing the author's imaginative, conceptual ideas, or technical skill, intended to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power. In their most general form these activities include the production of works of art, the criticism of art, the study of the history of art, and the aesthetic dissemination of art.
Living things further play a wide variety of symbolic roles in literature, film, mythology, and religion. Sometimes a major disease like tuberculosis, caused by a bacterium, plays a role in culture, in its case being associated for some reason with artistic creativity.
A disease is a particular abnormal condition that negatively affects the structure or function of part or all of an organism, and that is not due to any external injury. Diseases are often construed as medical conditions that are associated with specific symptoms and signs. A disease may be caused by external factors such as pathogens or by internal dysfunctions. For example, internal dysfunctions of the immune system can produce a variety of different diseases, including various forms of immunodeficiency, hypersensitivity, allergies and autoimmune disorders.
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections do not have symptoms, in which case it is known as latent tuberculosis. About 10% of latent infections progress to active disease which, if left untreated, kills about half of those affected. The classic symptoms of active TB are a chronic cough with blood-containing sputum, fever, night sweats, and weight loss. It was historically called "consumption" due to the weight loss. Infection of other organs can cause a wide range of symptoms.
Through its effect on the world's population and major artists in various fields, tuberculosis has influenced history. The disease was for centuries associated with poetic and artistic qualities in its sufferers, and was known as "the romantic disease". Many artistic figures including the poet John Keats, the composer Frédéric Chopin and the artist Edvard Munch either had the disease or were close to others who did.
Culture consists of the social behaviour and norms found in human societies and transmitted through social learning. Cultural universals in all human societies include expressive forms like art, music, dance, ritual, religion, and technologies like tool usage, cooking, shelter, and clothing. The concept of material culture covers physical expressions such as technology, architecture and art, whereas immaterial culture includes principles of social organization, mythology, philosophy, literature, and science. [3] [4] The term "bioculture" has been proposed to cover all the practical uses (but not the symbolic ones) of living things in culture, including agriculture, production of food and clothing, forestry, animal breeding and training, the pet trade, use of living things in science, zoos and aquariums, animal sports, and the raising of game animals for sport hunting. [5] Anthropology has traditionally studied the roles of animals and of plants in human culture in two opposed ways: as physical resources that humans used; and as symbols or concepts through totemism and animism. More recently, anthropologists have also seen living things as participants in human social interactions. [6] [7] [8] This article describes the roles played by living things in human culture, so defined.
Humans are the only extant members of the subtribe Hominina. Together with chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans, they are part of the family Hominidae. A terrestrial animal, humans are characterized by their erect posture and bipedal locomotion; high manual dexterity and heavy tool use compared to other animals; open-ended and complex language use compared to other animal communications; larger, more complex brains than other animals; and highly advanced and organized societies.
A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same geographical or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Societies are characterized by patterns of relationships between individuals who share a distinctive culture and institutions; a given society may be described as the sum total of such relationships among its constituent of members. In the social sciences, a larger society often exhibits stratification or dominance patterns in subgroups.
Learning is the process of acquiring new, or modifying existing, knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals, and some machines; there is also evidence for some kind of learning in some plants. Some learning is immediate, induced by a single event, but much skill and knowledge accumulates from repeated experiences. The changes induced by learning often last a lifetime, and it is hard to distinguish learned material that seems to be "lost" from that which cannot be retrieved.
The human population exploits and depends on a large number of animal and plant species for food, mainly through agriculture, an essential component of human culture, but also by exploiting wild populations, notably of marine fish. [9] [10] [11] Livestock animals are raised for meat across the world; they include (2011) around 1.4 billion cattle, 1.2 billion sheep and 1 billion domestic pigs. [11] [12] [13]
Plants provide the greater part of food for humans, and for their domestic animals. They have played a key role in the history of world civilizations. Agriculture includes agronomy for arable crops, horticulture for vegetables and fruit, and forestry for timber. [14] About 7,000 species of plant have been used for food, though most of today's food is derived from only 30 species. The major staples include cereals such as rice and wheat, starchy roots and tubers such as cassava and potato, and legumes such as peas and beans. Vegetable oils such as olive oil provide lipids, while fruit and vegetables contribute vitamins and minerals to the diet. [15]
Plants grown as industrial crops are the source of a wide range of products used in manufacturing, sometimes so intensively as to risk harm to the environment. [16] Nonfood products include essential oils, natural dyes, pigments, waxes, resins, tannins, alkaloids, amber and cork. Products derived from plants include soaps, shampoos, perfumes, cosmetics, paint, varnish, turpentine, rubber, latex, lubricants, linoleum, plastics, inks, and gums. Renewable fuels from plants include firewood, peat and other biofuels. [17] [18] The fossil fuels coal, petroleum and natural gas are derived from the remains of aquatic organisms including phytoplankton in geological time. [19] Structural resources and fibres from plants are used to construct dwellings and to manufacture clothing. Wood is used not only for buildings, boats, and furniture, but also for smaller items such as musical instruments and sports equipment. Wood is pulped to make paper and cardboard. [20] Cloth is often made from cotton, flax, ramie or synthetic fibres such as rayon and acetate derived from plant cellulose. Thread used to sew cloth likewise comes in large part from cotton. [21] Plants are a primary source of basic chemicals, both for their medicinal and physiological effects, and for the industrial synthesis of a vast array of organic chemicals. [22]
Textiles are made from both animal fibres, including wool and silk, [23] [24] and plant fibres, including cotton and flax. Dyestuffs too are made both from animals, including carmine [25] [26] from the bodies of insects, and from plants, including indigo, [madder], and lichens.
Working domestic animals including cattle, horses, yaks, camels, and elephants have been used for work and transport from the origins of agriculture, their numbers declining with the arrival of mechanised transport and agricultural machinery. In 2004 they still provided some 80% of the power for the mainly small farms in the third world, and some 20% of the world's transport, again mainly in rural areas. In mountainous regions unsuitable for wheeled vehicles, pack animals continue to transport goods. [27]
Biology studies the whole range of living things.
Animals such as the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster , the zebrafish, the chicken and the house mouse, serve a major role in science as experimental models, [28] both in fundamental biological research, such as in genetics, [29] and in the development of new medicines, which must be tested exhaustively to demonstrate their safety. [30] [31] Millions of mammals, especially mice and rats, are used in experiments each year. [32] Knockout mice are used to help discover the functions of genes. [33] [34]
Basic biological research has often been done with plants. In genetics, the breeding of pea plants allowed Gregor Mendel to derive the basic laws governing inheritance, [35] and examination of chromosomes in maize allowed Barbara McClintock to demonstrate their connection to inherited traits. [36] The plant Arabidopsis thaliana is used in laboratories as a model organism to understand how genes control the growth and development of plant structures. [37] Space stations or space colonies may one day rely on plants for life support. [38]
Vaccines have been made using animals since their discovery by Edward Jenner in the 18th century. He noted that inoculation with live cowpox afforded protection against the more dangerous smallpox. In the 19th century, Louis Pasteur developed an attenuated (weakened) vaccine for rabies. In the 20th century, vaccines for the viral diseases mumps and polio were developed using animal cells grown in vitro. [39]
An increasing variety of medicinal drugs are based on toxins and other molecules of animal origin. The cancer drug Yondelis was isolated from the tunicate Ecteinascidia turbinata . One of dozens of toxins made by the deadly cone snail Conus geographus is used as Prialt in pain relief. [40]
Since classical times and possibly much earlier, hundreds of species of plants have provided drugs to treat a wide range of conditions. Dioscorides's De Materia Medica , written by 70 AD, listed some 600 medicinal plants and around 1000 drugs made from them, including substances known to be effective such as aconite, aloes, colocynth, colchicum, henbane, opium and squill. The book remained a standard reference for nearly two thousand years, and was the basis of the European pharmacopoeia until the end of the 19th century. [41] [42]
Also since the earliest times, people have exploited some of the many psychoactive substances manufactured by plants in religious rituals and for pleasure. [43] Among the most widely used throughout history are alcohol, produced by fermenting cereals with yeast (a fungus), [44] tobacco, coffee, tea, chocolate, cannabis, coca (used as leaf for some 8,000 years in Peru, [45] [46] and in recent times also purified to cocaine), mescaline (from a cactus) and psilocybin (from a fungus). [47]
Both animals and plants are used to provide pleasure, through a range of activities including keeping pets, hunting, fishing, and gardening.
A wide variety of animals are kept as pets, from invertebrates such as tarantulas and octopuses, insects including praying mantises, [48] reptiles such as snakes and chameleons, [49] and birds including canaries, parakeets and parrots [50] all finding a place. Mammals are the most popular pets in the Western world, with the most kept species being dogs, cats, and rabbits. For example, in America in 2012 there were some 78 million dogs, 86 million cats, and 3.5 million rabbits. [51] [52] [53] There is a tension between the role of animals as companions to humans, and their existence as individuals with rights of their own. [54]
Many animals are hunted for sport. [55] The aquatic animals most often hunted for sport are fish, including many species from large marine predators such as sharks and tuna, to freshwater fish such as trout and carp. [56] [57] Birds such as partridges, pheasants and ducks, and mammals such as deer and wild boar, are among the terrestrial game animals most often hunted. [58] [59] [60]
Thousands of plant species are cultivated for aesthetic purposes as well as to provide shade, modify temperatures, reduce wind, abate noise, provide privacy, and prevent soil erosion. Plants are the basis of a multibillion-dollar per year tourism industry, which includes travel to historic gardens, national parks, rainforests, forests with colorful autumn leaves, and festivals such as Japan's [61] and America's cherry blossom festivals. [62] While some gardens are planted with food crops, many are planted for aesthetic, ornamental, or conservation purposes. Arboretums and botanical gardens are public collections of living plants. In private outdoor gardens, lawn grasses, shade trees, ornamental trees, shrubs, vines, herbaceous perennials and bedding plants are used. Gardens may cultivate the plants in a naturalistic state, or may sculpture their growth, as with topiary or espalier. Gardening is the most popular leisure activity in the U.S., and working with plants or horticulture therapy is beneficial for rehabilitating people with disabilities. Plants may also be grown or kept indoors as houseplants, or in specialized buildings such as greenhouses that are designed for the care and cultivation of living plants. Venus Flytrap, sensitive plant and resurrection plant are examples of plants sold as novelties. There are also art forms specializing in the arrangement of cut or living plant, such as bonsai, ikebana, and the arrangement of cut or dried flowers. Ornamental plants have sometimes changed the course of history, as in tulipomania. [63]
Both animals and plants are significant in art, whether as background or as main subjects.
Animals, often mammals but including fish and insects among other groups, have been the subjects of art from the earliest times, in both early history as in Ancient Egypt, and prehistory, as in the cave paintings at Lascaux and other sites in the Dordogne, France and elsewhere. Major artistic depictions of animals include Albrecht Dürer's 1515 The Rhinoceros , and George Stubbs's c. 1762 horse portrait Whistlejacket . [64]
Plants appear in art, either to illustrate their botanical appearance, [65] or for the purposes of the artist, which may include decoration or religious symbolism. For example, the Virgin Mary was compared by the Venerable Bede to a lily, the white petals denoting purity of body, while the yellow anthers signified the radiant light of the soul; accordingly, European portraits of the Virgin's Annunciation may depict a vase of white lilies in her room to indicate her attributes. Plants are also often used as backgrounds or features in portraits, and as main subjects in still lifes. [66] [67]
Both animals and plants appear in literature and film.
Animals as varied as bees, beetles, mice, foxes, crocodiles and elephants play a wide variety of roles in literature and film. [68] A genre of films has been based on oversized insects, including the pioneering 1954 Them! , featuring giant ants mutated by radiation, and the 1957 The Deadly Mantis . [69] [70] [71] Birds have occasionally featured in film, as in Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 The Birds , loosely based on Daphne du Maurier's story of the same name, which tells the tale of sudden attacks on people by violent flocks of birds. [72] Ken Loach's admired [73] 1969 Kes , based on Barry Hines's 1968 novel A Kestrel for a Knave , tells a story of a boy coming of age by training a kestrel. [73] Parasitoids have inspired science fiction authors and screenwriters to create disgusting and terrifying parasitic alien species that kill their human hosts, [74] such as in Ridley Scott's 1979 film Alien . [75] [76]
Plants too, both real and invented, play many roles in literature and film. [77] Plants' roles may be evil, as with the triffids, carnivorous plants with a whip-like poisonous sting as well as mobility provided by three foot-like appendages, from John Wyndham's 1951 science fiction novel The Day of the Triffids , and subsequent adaptations for film and radio. [78] J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional world Middle-earth features many named kinds of plant, including the healing herb athelas [79] the yellow star-flower elanor which grows in special places such as Cerin Amroth in Lothlórien, [80] and the tall mallorn tree [81] of the elves. Tolkien names several individual trees of significance in the narrative, including the Party Tree in the Shire with its happy associations, [81] and the malevolent Old Man Willow [82] in the Old Forest. [83] Trees feature in many of Ursula K. Le Guin's books, including the forest world of Athshe and the Immanent Grove [84] on Roke in the Earthsea series, to such an extent that in her introduction to her collection The Wind's Twelve Quarters , she admits to "a certain obsession with trees" and describes herself as "the most arboreal science fiction writer". [85] James Cameron's 2009 film Avatar features a giant tree named Hometree, the sacred gathering place of the humanoid Na'vi tribe; the interconnected tree, tribe and planet are threatened by mining: the tribe and the film's hero fight to save them. [86] Trees are common subjects in poetry, including Joyce Kilmer's 1913 lyric poem named "Trees". [87] [88] Flowers, similarly, are the subjects of many poems by poets such as William Blake, Robert Frost, and Rabindranath Tagore. [89]
The bacterial disease tuberculosis played a role in culture, associated for some reason with artistic creativity. It was known as "the romantic disease". [90] Many artistic figures including the poet John Keats, the composer Frederic Chopin and the artist Edvard Munch either had the disease or were close to others who did. Tuberculosis played prominent and recurring roles in diverse fields. These included literature, as in Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain , set in a sanatorium; in music, as in Van Morrison's song "T.B. Sheets"; in opera, as in Puccini's La bohème and Verdi's La Traviata ; in art, as in Monet's painting of his first wife Camille on her deathbed; and in film, such as the 1945 The Bells of St. Mary's starring Ingrid Bergman as a nun with tuberculosis. [91] [92] [93] [93] [94] [95]
Animals including many insects [96] and mammals [97] feature in mythology and religion; indeed, animals and plants appear in what has been suggested to be the world's first religion in the Paleolithic era. [98] Among the insects, in both Japan and Europe, as far back as ancient Greece and Rome, a butterfly was seen as the personification of a person's soul, both while they were alive and after their death. [96] [99] [100] The scarab beetle was sacred in ancient Egypt, [101] while the praying mantis was considered a god in southern African Khoi and San tradition for its praying posture. [102] Among the mammals, cattle, [103] deer, [97] horses, [104] lions [105] and wolves (and werewolves), [106] are the subjects of myths and worship. Of the twelve signs of the Western zodiac, six—Aries (ram), Taurus (bull), Cancer (crab), Leo (lion), Scorpio (scorpion), and Pisces (fish)—are animals, while two others, Sagittarius (horse/man) and Capricorn (fish/goat) are hybrid animals; the name zodiac indeed means a circle of animals. All twelve signs of the Chinese zodiac are animals. [107] [108] [109]
Plants including trees are important in mythology and religion, where they symbolise themes such as fertility, growth, immortality and rebirth, and may be more or less magical. [110] [111] Thus in Latvian mythology, Austras Koks is a tree which grows from the start of the Sun's daily journey across the sky. [112] [113] A different cosmic tree is Yggdrasil, the World tree of Norse mythology, on which Odin hung. [114] [115] Different again is the barnacle tree, believed in the Middle Ages to have barnacles that opened to reveal geese, [116] a story which may perhaps have started from an observation of goose barnacles growing on driftwood. [117] Greek mythology mentions many plants and flowers, [118] where for example the lotus tree bears a fruit that causes a pleasant drowsiness, [119] while moly is a magic herb mentioned by Homer in the Odyssey with a black root and white blossoms. [120] Magic plants are found, too, in Serbian mythology, where the raskovnik is supposed to be able to open any lock. [121] [122] In Buddhist symbolism, both the lotus and the Bodhi Tree are significant. The lotus is one of the Ashtamangala (eight auspicious signs) shared between Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism, representing the primordial purity of body, speech, and mind, floating above the muddy waters of attachment and desire. [123] The Bodhi Tree is the sacred fig tree under which the Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment; the name is also given to other Bodhi trees thought to have been propagated from the original tree. [124]
Mammals are vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia, and characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex, fur or hair, and three middle ear bones. These characteristics distinguish them from reptiles and birds, from which they diverged in the late Triassic, 201–227 million years ago. There are around 5,450 species of mammals. The largest orders are the rodents, bats and Soricomorpha. The next three are the Primates, the Cetartiodactyla, and the Carnivora.
Sassafras is a genus of three extant and one extinct species of deciduous trees in the family Lauraceae, native to eastern North America and eastern Asia. The genus is distinguished by its long and rubbery properties, which have made the tree useful to humans.
Streptomycin is an antibiotic used to treat a number of bacterial infections. This includes tuberculosis, Mycobacterium avium complex, endocarditis, brucellosis, Burkholderia infection, plague, tularemia, and rat bite fever. For active tuberculosis it is often given together with isoniazid, rifampicin, and pyrazinamide. It is given by injection into a vein or muscle.
A renewable resource is a natural resource which will replenish to replace the portion depleted by usage and consumption, either through natural reproduction or other recurring processes in a finite amount of time in a human time scale. Renewable resources are a part of Earth's natural environment and the largest components of its ecosphere. A positive life cycle assessment is a key indicator of a resource's sustainability.
Animal husbandry is the branch of agriculture concerned with animals that are raised for meat, fibre, milk, eggs, or other products. It includes day-to-day care, selective breeding and the raising of livestock.
Bushmeat, wildmeat, or game meat is meat from non-domesticated mammals, reptiles, amphibians and birds hunted for food in tropical forests. Commercial harvesting and the trade of wildlife is considered a threat to biodiversity.
Bacteria are economically important as these microorganisms are used by humans for many purposes. The beneficial uses of bacteria include the production of traditional foods such as yoghurt, cheese, and vinegar; biotechnology and genetic engineering, producing substances such as drugs and vitamins; agriculture; fibre retting; human and animal digestion; and biological control of
Entheogenic drugs have been used by various groups for thousands of years. There are numerous historical reports as well as modern, contemporary reports of indigenous groups using entheogens, chemical substances used in a religious, shamanic, or spiritual context.
Human uses of birds have included both economic uses such as food and symbolic uses such as art, music and religion, for thousands of years.
Human uses of plants include both practical uses, such as for food, clothing, and medicine, and symbolic uses, such as in art, mythology and literature. The reliable provision of food through agriculture is the basis of civilization. The study of plant uses by native peoples is ethnobotany, while economic botany focuses on modern cultivated plants. Plants are used in medicine, providing many drugs from the earliest times to the present, and as the feedstock for many industrial products including timber and paper as well as a wide range of chemicals. Plants give millions of people pleasure through gardening.
Human uses of mammals include both practical uses, such as for food, sport, and transport, and symbolic uses, such as in art and mythology. Mammals have played a crucial role in creating and sustaining human culture. Domestication of mammals was instrumental in the Neolithic development of agriculture and of civilisation, causing farming to replace hunting and gathering around the world, and cities to replace scattered communities.
Culture consists of the social behaviour and norms in human societies transmitted through social learning. Fish play many roles in human culture, from their economic importance in the fishing industry and fish farming, to recreational fishing, folklore, mythology, religion, art, literature, and film.
Human uses of reptiles have for centuries included both symbolic and practical interactions.
Human interactions with microbes include both practical and symbolic uses of microbes, and negative interactions in the form of human, domestic animal, and crop diseases.
Culture consists of the social behaviour and norms in human societies transmitted through social learning. Arthropods play many roles in human culture, including as food, in art, in stories, and in mythology and religion. Many of these concern insects, which are important both economically and symbolically, from the work of honeybees to the scarabs of Ancient Egypt. Other arthropods with cultural significance include crustaceans such as crabs, lobsters, and crayfish, which are popular subjects in art, especially still lifes, and arachnids such as spiders and scorpions, whose venom has medical applications. The crab and the scorpion are astrological signs of the zodiac.
Human uses of animals include both practical uses, such as the production of food and clothing, and symbolic uses, such as in art, literature, mythology, and religion. Animals used in these ways include fish, crustaceans, insects, molluscs, mammals and birds.
Human interactions with fungi include both beneficial uses, whether practical or symbolic, and harmful interactions such as when fungi damage crops, timber, or food.
animal/human interfaces have been a neglected area of research, given the ubiquity of animals in human culture and history, and the dramatic change in our material relationships since the rise of agribusiness farming and pharmacological research, genetic experimentation, and the erosion of animal habitats.
addressing the broad question of the relationship between animals and human culture. The committee argues that zoos should foster awareness of the involvement of animals in literature, music, history, art, medicine, religion, folklore, language, commerce, food, and adornment of the world's culture's, present and past
Creatures previously appearing on the margins of anthropology—as part of the landscape, as food for humans, as symbols—have been pressed into the foreground in recent ethnographies. Animals, plants, fungi, and microbes once confined in anthropological accounts to the realm of zoe or 'bare life'—that which is killable—have started to appear alongside humans in the realm of bios, with legibly biographical and political lives.
That would be frightening enough in a normal forest, but the Old Forest's trees have mobility and intelligence and are directed by a malevolent force, centered in Old Man Willow
I will argue that the images of animals, plants, and hand prints were drawn primarily by women as a result of the perceptual processes of animism, anthropomorphism, dream imagery, and the analogically reasoned gynocentric view that the interior of the earth was the female-like greater origin of life.