The Geographies of: Animals

This is a post that I have been wanting to write for a while and I have finally found the time to write it. Immediately it may not be obvious what the link between animals and geography is, but hopefully in this post I will be able to show their connections with a few interesting and thought provoking examples. 

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Agriculture

This is perhaps one of the most obvious ways in which animals link to geography, as it is well known that animals are used widely to help with agriculture. This mainly occurs within less economically developed countries which cannot afford the necessary equipment, however I thought I would talk about an example which currently happens in the more developed world. Truffle hogs are a domestic form of pig that are used to extract truffles from the group of temperate forests in Europe and North America. This is not a new activity as using a pig for this purpose is believed to date as far back as the Roman Empire. In 1975 a truffle hog could cost up to 200 francs, which is the equivalent to thousands of pounds in today's money. However, in Italy the use of truffle hogs has been prohibited since 1985 as they were believed to reduce the production of the truffle.

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Predicting Natural Disasters

There have been several accounts of occasions when animals have behaved in a strange manner or erratically in the leading hours before a natural disaster such as an earthquake strikes. One example of this was in Haicheng, China in 1975 when animals in a zoo 600 miles away from the epicenter were exhibiting unusual behavior, zebras were banging into doors, lions were walking around restlessly when they normally slept and elephants swung their trunks wildly hitting several staff members. Authorities forecast that an earthquake was about the hit the area, based largely on the observations of the animals, and Chinese officials ordered the evacuation of Haicheng which had a population of 1 million people. Days later a 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck ans only 2000 people were killed. Without the animals it is likely that the evacuation may not have occurred and many more lives would have been lost. 

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Treatment of illness

In recent years there have been insights into cancer by studying the biological similarities between humans and canines. Cancer is the leading cause of death in dogs, with lymphomas and malignancies forming in several locations within their bodies. Since the identification of the dog genome in 2005, researchers have been able to identify genetic similarities within cancers found in both species identifying where they overlap. By understanding how canines respond to standard chemotherapy, it can be seen if the same changes occur on the same human genes which could help medics to predict the responses of people diagnosed with lymphoma each year.

When searching on the internet for information to help me with this post, I came across the blurb for a book called 'Placing Animals' by Julie Urbanik and from reading I can see it relates closely to what I was trying to illustrate within my blog post. It sounds very interesting and I am therefore thinking of reading it. If anyone already has let me know if it was any good!

Thank you for reading!

My next 'The Geographies of..' will be on..........   VALENTINE'S DAY