Man and Beast:
Two colleagues cross disciplines to probe the human-animal dynamic

Tom Laqueur and Steve Glickman seem like a natural partnership, but it took a very old mistake by Aristotle about the nature of hyena genitalia to bring them together.

Last fall, the two professors co-taught “Man and Beast in History and Nature,” a seminar that had them crossing disciplines to look at the historical and current interaction between humans and animals.

Steve Glickman with one of the hyenas at the Berkeley Field Station for Behavioral Research

Laqueur, a professor in the Department of History, has specialized in bodies and culture, and Glickman teaches in the Department of Integrative Biology. Glickman also oversees the study of a colony of 40 hyenas at the Field Station for Behavioral Research in the hills above the Berkeley campus.

In their class, they tried to bridge the divide between the perspectives of the historian and the scientist. The effort was a first for both, and Laqueur – who had previously taught a similar course from a historical approach – says it was eye-opening.

“Before, I was really talking about how animals figure in culture and taking it all at the level of figuration and representation,” he says. “Working with Steve, I had to think about a lot of questions I’d never thought about before. For each point, Steve would start with asking, ‘Well, what exactly does the animal do?’ That wasn’t how I was used to looking at things.”

Glickman calls it a natural fit. “Tom really came up with the basic structure of the class, and we added our different area of expertise, mine in animal behavior and endocrinology, and Tom’s in everything else,” he says.

The seeds of the collaboration were planted thirteen years ago, when Laqueur published Making Sex: Body and Gender from Greeks to Freud, a book about understanding the biology of sexual differences through history. In one chapter, Laqueur discusses the genitalia of hyenas.

In classical Greece, it was thought that hyenas changed gender every year. This belief was sparked by the fact that a certain species of female hyenas has a long, protruding clitoris, leading the Greeks to think of the animals as hermaphrodites. Aristotle decided to investigate this himself, and through observation, reported that it was not true. Laqueur related this story in his book.  

An engraving of dogs from Edward Topsell's Histories of Four-footed Beasts.

Glickman was familiar with Aristotle’s work on the subject and had concluded that the philosopher had mistakenly observed a different type of hyena– striped, not spotted – from the one with the unique genitals. He sent Laqueur a note about Aristotle’s error, and a friendship was born.

When Laqueur had the idea to co-teach a class on the relationship between animals and humans, Glickman says he jumped at the chance.

To narrow down the subject matter, Laqueur and Glickman decided to concentrate on human interaction with three types of animals: a companion animal, a domestic animal and a wild animal. They eventually settled on dogs, sheep and,of course, hyenas.

They didn't lack for materials.

“The literature on sheep was too rich,” Laqueur notes. “It was so deeply connected with the settlement of Asia Minor and the Mediterranean area. There is a lot about trying to understand different types of wool.”

For dogs, Laqueur had the students read Flush, Virginia Woolf’s biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s dog, and examine historical depictions of animals, such as ones from Edward Topsell’s 17th Century Histories of Four-footed Beasts. Glickman focused on how dogs have co-evolved with humans. To add to the discussion, the class took a trip to the Oakland Zoo.

The course also studied Darwin’s theories on the development of the souls of animals in the book The Descent of Man. “This work is from a particular point in Darwin’s career where he wants to argue that there’s continuity in mental process between animals and people,” Glickman explains. “What he’s doing is looking for evidence of human-like mental processes in animals and animal-like emotions in people. He’s going to close the gap by finding all this stuff. That was a starting point for the class in terms of modern animal biological behavior.”

For the students, the course offered a unique opportunity to study hyenas with Glickman, who has been working with the animals for the last 20 years. In addition to introducing the students the hyenas at the lab, Glickman tackled difficult issues such as the ethical concerns of euthanizing animals for scientific testing.

Drawing from a 12th Century Latin bestiary portraying hyenas scavenging on human corpses

“It’s really a complex set of issues,” says Glickman, adding that the students, most of whom were animal lovers, grappled with such questions.

Both Glickman and Laqueur say the cross-disciplinary experience also helped them to engage with their own work in new ways.

“I realized how some things that work as an anthropologist don’t work for a scientist, how different disciplines frame and answer questions,” Laqueur says. “It put me a bit more on my toes for my own discipline.”

-- Doug Merlino