In this Animal Highlight, fellow Virginia Thomas discusses the European Wild Cat and their entangled relationships with domesticated cats. She notes how the interbreeding between these two species has conservationists worried and has resulted in a range of, oftentimes, violent interventions into their animals’ lives.

Recorded: 12 October 2023

Featured:

• S5E3: Feral and Invasive Species with Lauren van Patter on The Animal Turn.
• S6E4: Violence with Dinesh Wadiwel on The Animal Turn.
• Scottish ‘Highland Tiger’ wildcat more endangered than Asian cousin on the BBC.
• Giraffe Marius slaughtered in Copenhagen Zoo, fed to lions on Euronews.
• The Violent Conservation of the European Wildcat by Virginia Thomas

Virginia Thomas is an environmental social scientist with a PhD in Sociology. She is interested in people’s interactions with their environment and with other animals. Virginia’s work explores the social and ethical questions in human-animal relationships. She is currently a research fellow on the Wellcome Trust funded project ‘From Feed the Birds to Do Not Feed the Animals’ which examines the drivers and consequences of animal feeding. This leads on from her previous research which examined human-animal relations in the media (as part of zoonotic disease framing) and in rewilding projects (in relation to biopolitics and human-animal coexistence). You can connect with Virginia via Twitter (@ArbitrioHumano).

Credits:

• Claudia Hirtenfelder, executive producer, editor and co-host
• Virginia Thomas, script write, narrator and co-host
• Rebecca Shen, content producer and designer (logo and episode artwork)
• Gordon Clarke, bed music composer
• Sound clips taken from: BBC Sound Effects, BBC, Euronews.
• Learn more about the team here.

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