Greyhounds, Hunters, and Hares: The Construction of Fluid Animality in Interspecies Relations

ABSTRACT

The pursuit of hares with greyhounds (known as “coursing”) is a very common hunting practice in the villages of the Guadalquivir Valley, Andalusia (Spain) and is strongly rooted in the history of the area. This kind of hunting provides an intersubjective/interspecies context that hints at the ambivalence of animality as a category. By applying a phenomenological perspective, and through the development of ethnographic research, we study the relationships between greyhounds, hares, and hunters, with the aim of showing that animality cannot be understood as a closed category. Animality emerges in the context of human–animal interactions, and within these, attributes and capacities are attributed to greyhounds or hares that are conventionally only acknowledged in humans. In addition, these attributes change throughout the animals’ life cycle. Consequently, we propose the notion of “fluid animality,” as something changing and flexible that blurs the radical separation between the human and the animal assumed by Western naturalism. We believe that approaching animality by studying multispecies practices and interactions offers a more appropriate analytical perspective when seeking to understand human–animal relations and their complexity in the Western world.

KEYWORDS:

• Anthropology
• human–animal interaction
• human–nonhuman relations
• hunting
• perception
• phenomenology

Acknowledgements

We thank the participants, galgueros and galgueras, who opened their homes and memories for our research. We also express our gratitude to Santiago M. Cruzada and Garry Marvin for their countless comments, support, and thoughts, and for being a source of inspiration to keep anthropology alive. Finally, thank you to the reviewers of this article, whose contributions have helped to deepen, concretize, and polish it.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The “slipper” is the dog handler, the person designated by the hunters to release the dogs, which are held back initially with a slip, a quick release leather leash that allows the handler to release the pair of greyhounds at the same time.

2 The management of hunting reserves and resources (in our case the hare) is regulated by Ley 8/2003 on Wild Flora and Fauna and the 2017 Hunting Regulation (https://www.boe.es/buscar/pdf/2003/BOE-A-2003-21941-consolidado.pdf). Beyond this formal legislation, there is, through associations of hare coursing hunters, an internal “informal” regulation of hunting reserves with multiple implications: ensuring the health of hunted animals (supply of medicines through drinking troughs); the condition of the hunting reserve; availability of shelter, water, and food; limitation of hare hunting numbers; guaranteeing a safe area within the reserve for reproduction and breeding. These practices can be understood as part of the ethics that govern this activity and are more closely linked to a feeling of belonging and affection than to exclusively utilitarian purposes. As proposed in other studies (Cruzada, 2019), the management of hunting resources can be understood, according to Ostrom (2009), as the management of common goods and collective action within a complex socio-ecological system. The dependence between resources and the practice of hare coursing brings about this tendency toward self-organization and self-governance in order to maintain long-term joint benefits as an association.

3 Technical study funded by Andalusia’s Greyhound Federation (Fundación de Investigación de la Universidad de Sevilla e Instituto Andaluz del Patrimonio Histórico), directed by Santiago M. Cruzada.

4 They must also be understood as a “synanthropic” species – like dogs – as they proliferate in rural areas associated with cereal crop farming and are highly adapted to such anthropized contexts (Leach, 2007).

5 The changes that have taken place in the conceptualization of hunting, and of hare coursing in particular, have resulted in a hunt that does not set out to catch or secure the prey. Although Ortega y Gasset (1962) already reflected on this, particularly the change in eating patterns and the ready availability of food in our time and space, there has been a major shift from hunting “out of necessity” to a more sporting-recreational form of hunting that is now prevalent in this region (see Gamuz & Palenzuela, 2021).

6 The fragility of the affective bond between hunter and greyhound at this moment of the hunt seems to be effectively governed by this historical co-development in which a series of behaviors and values are shared. Hunters understand that the greyhound is such in terms of interventions, care, breeding, and human efforts, generating a sort of “parental debt” through which the greyhound acquires a blood bond and obligation to act in the appropriate way for the group.

Additional information

Funding

The data used for this article come in part from the research carried out in 2021, under reference: 4158/1101, financed by the Federación Andaluza de Galgos and directed by Santiago M. Cruzada.