Harriet Ritvo discusses animals and taxonomy, unfurling the ways in which animals are categorised scientifically and in everyday vernacular. She unfurls what this might mean for how we know animals and the ways in which we understand and write their histories.
Topics Covered:
- how classification systems expose human values and power
- why herd books matter for animal history and domestication
- scientific taxonomy versus vernacular categories
- naming rules, authority, and what counts as a “real” species boundary
- how “native” and “invasive” change with politics and time
- camels in Australia, wild horses, dingoes, and conservation trade-offs
- Atlantic salmon in Kingston and the story of local extinction and restoration
Date Recorded: 20 April 2026
Harriet Ritvo is the Arthur J. Conner Professor of History at MIT. She works in the fields of environmental history, the history of human-animal relations, British and British empire history, and the history of natural history. She is the author of numerous books , including The Platypus and the Mermaid, and Other Figments of the Classifying Imagination (Harvard UP, 1997), The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age(Harvard UP, 1987), and Noble Cows and Hybrid Zebras: Essays on Animals and History (Virginia, 2010). Her articles and reviews have appeared in a wide range of periodicals and she is an editor of the “Animals, History, Culture” series published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. She has a great deal of accolades and accomplishments, not least of which is being given the Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Society for Environmental History in 2020. Learn more about her here.
Featured:
Animal Highlight: Taxonomies of Atlantic Salmon in Kingston
Quote: “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved” – Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species.
The Animal Turn is part of the iROAR, an Animals Podcasting Network and can also be found on A.P.P.L.E, LinkedIn,Blue Sky, and Instagram
Credits:
- Sponsor: Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics (A.P.P.L.E)
- Guests: Harriet Ritvo
- Host: Claudia Hirtenfelder
- Editing and Production: Claudia Hirtenfelder
- Episode Artwork: Rebecca Shen
- Content Creation and Support: Herre de Bondt and Carlo Salzani
- Technical Support: Christiaan Mentz
- Animal Highlight: Stones Walking Tour
- Sound Effects: Epidemic Sound
- Bed Music: Gordon Clarke
- Logo: Jeremy John
Support via:
A.P.P.L.E
Animals in Politics, Law, and Ethics researches how we live in interspecies societies and polities.
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The Animal Turn is hosted and produced by Claudia Hirtenfelder and is part of the iROAR Network. Learn more on our website.
