Barbara J. King

Delighted to have a chapter in The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Death, edited by Sarah Richardson, Sarah Wagner, and Ruth Toulson, from @universitypress.cambridge.org My chapter is on animals' grief, and I can't wait to dive into my colleagues'. #anthropology #deathstudies #Booksky

I've been concerned about this pet chimpanzee for a long time. Thank you @animallegaldefense.bsky.social: "We argue that keeping Bow in solitary confinement constitutes harassment of an endangered animal under the law." Just donated. #chimpanzee #primates #primatesarenotpets #anthropology #animals

Despite the DNA findings, "if it were possible to ask #Neanderthals, they probably wouldn’t see themselves present on the planet. So why are modern humans alone now? How much of our success stems from unique abilities? How much... was just luck?" Chock full of #anthropology. #evolution #science

Me know that him different from before he start sing 'Karma Chameleon,' but make me tell you, when Boy George first come 'pon the TV is like lightning did strike him in the back and turn him on like bulb. #SundaySentence, Marlon James. #TheDisappearers. (Mesmerized all week by this amazing novel)

Rotini helping out in the studio. #Caturday #CatsOfBlueSky #cats

Intriguing piece by @jggross.bsky.social, apt for #Caturday: Why do cats love tuna so much? "Researchers determined that cats had the umami taste receptor, which enables them to taste and detect umami compounds. Tuna has a unique combination of compounds that is akin to 'super umami'." #cats

This novel. On page 380 of 600. Riveting, challenging, unsettling. Marlon James amazes. #MarlonJames #books #amreading #Booksky

For the #BirdoftheDay theme #Seasonal, here's a bird who appeared in my yard yesterday (Virginia). I am unsure of ID. Possibly indigo bunting female or immature? #birds #nature

Celebrating the release yesterday of anthropologist Adam P. Johnson's book, Living with Javelinas: Multispecies Convivality in Texas, from @utexaspress.bsky.social! #Anthropology #ethnography #javelina #animals #nature #naturewriting #books

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A forgotten Irish composer. A resourceful girl in French India. Two lives driven by ambition and shadowed by tragedy. Yiyun Li’s magnificent new novel, "Music Against the Night," is a symphony of wit, heartbreak, and suspense. My review: roncharles.substack.com/p/a-composer...

"...Evidence of natural selection for certain gene variants during the Bronze Age which began about 5,000 years ago + spanned 2 millenniums. Those same variants may increase the risk of autoimmune disease in people who carry them today." By @quammen.bsky.social #anthropology #evolution #autoimmune

"...Evidence of natural selection for certain gene variants during the Bronze Age which began about 5,000 years ago + spanned 2 millenniums. Those same variants may increase the risk of autoimmune disease in people who carry them today." By @quammen.bsky.social #anthropology #evolution #autoimmune

Such a joy to have red-winged blackbirds return to the yard now! #birds #birding #nature #autumn

Thanks @nytimes.com for acknowledging these risks... for EVERYONE: "Covid can cause long-term damage to nearly every part of the body and repeated cases can compound those harms." Then recommending vaccines and masking. #Covid #Covidcautious #health #vaccine cc @michael-hoerger.bsky.social

Thank you @nickkristof.bsky.social: "And yet. What about the animals?" Thank you to also to Animal Outlook, and all who fight relentlessly for #chickens, cows, pigs, turkeys, et al. not to die horribly (or die at all) so that people can eat meat. #plantbased #animalrights #animalwelfare #animals

Update: without explanation, and after being suspended for more than an hour during peak mobilization time, Zuckerberg's Instagram restored the No Kings account but we still lack admin access. More to come. Rest assured we will not stop organizing against this regime and its collaborators.

Very happy #GlobalCatDay to all who care so deeply and well for cats, all cats, including community cats like feral cats who need our love, our care, and our TNR. My life is way better for all the cats I've known and loved. #cats #feralcats #communitycats

Holocystis elegans, a very pretty 110 million-year-old colonial coral from the Lower Greensand on the Isle of Wight. On display in Dinosaur Isle museum. #FossilFriday 🌏⚒🧪🏵🌊🏵🌊

December 2: The opening, finally, of this wildlife crossing above rushing lanes of California traffic (101) will be amazing. It has 13 acres of habitat! #wildlife #wildlifecrossing #animals #nature #multispecies

This tree frog visits nightly now. Sometimes they hunt for insects on our glass door, once they just chilled on a chair on our deck. Lovely being (if poor photo through reflective glass). #frogs #nature

"As coral restoration projects work to bring back reefs, they're also focusing on bringing back seabird colonies, reestablishing a connection....." Article by @lsommer.bsky.social, amazing nature photography by Claire Harbage for @npr.org. Thanks @nature.org! #climate #coralreef #birds #seabirds

Follow this thread for updates bsky.app/profile/gill...

Just breaking for a moment from an intense writing morning to announce...I love my cat! She is so brave, after so long in the shelter as an older cat, to reach for new experiences with us. #cats #animals #animalrescue

Who else besides me finds this appalling? Animals deserve to live their own lives. "A transgenic #cuttlefish would serve as an animal model: specially designed for lab studies, with neurons that light up to identify where and how camouflage works in the #brain." #cephalopod #animalrights #science

For all of us who think about animals, meat, death, life: amazing writing by my @panworks.bsky.social colleague and friend Monica Ogra. #animals #animalrights #ecology #plantbased #naturewriting

As I watch this quicksilver being moving through its environment, I ask myself: How does this animal, who has more neurons in its limbs than in its brain, who tastes with its grasp, whose skin can sense light, see the world? #SundaySentence by Ray Nayler, The Mountain in tne Sea

Thank you @theguardian.com for emphasizing *why* this man, sadly, has died. The tiger reacted to this sudden incursion as... a tiger. I certainly hope the zoo will in no way punish this animal. #tiger #wildlife #zoo #Yorkshirezoo

For all of us who think about animals, meat, death, life: amazing writing by my @panworks.bsky.social colleague and friend Monica Ogra. #animals #animalrights #ecology #plantbased #naturewriting

Octopus fiction is my kind of fiction. #amreading #scifi #books #Booksky #octopus

Pillay is really well known to people who advocate for & study international human rights; she also couldn’t be more different in some ways than last year’s winner. Selecting Pillay, I imagine, is a way to underscore the value of defending human rights in an increasingly regressive, repressive world

"If we want to take them seriously as beings with their own preferences and ways of navigating the world,” Raza said, “I’m not going to make tiny Cartesian modernist villas.” Instead rats particularly enjoy chaotic spaces with lots of entries, exits, places to hide. #rats #multispecies #animals #art

"If we want to take them seriously as beings with their own preferences and ways of navigating the world,” Raza said, “I’m not going to make tiny Cartesian modernist villas.” Instead rats particularly enjoy chaotic spaces with lots of entries, exits, places to hide. #rats #multispecies #animals #art

Lepiota procera, 1894 watercolour by Beatrix Potter. Best known for her children's books. Potter also studied mycology, the scientific study of fungi and was a keen conservationist #WomensArt

Otomi embroidery is a traditional Mexican embroidery style known as "Tenangos", featuring vibrant colors, and unique floral and animal designs #WomensArt

"In a study of Africans + S. Americans, researchers identified more than 600 species of bacteria that may once have been common in the gut but are now rare or missing entirely from people in most societies." Research by Justin Sonnenburg et al., scicomm by @carlzimmer.com #anthropology #microbiome

Lots of cool questions here, and I note especially the ones about #animals #animalbehavior or in #anthropology #archaeology. A favorite: 84. Can we learn what emotions animals are experiencing? #science

"This is not normal." Here we have an understatement. #LosAngeles #SanDiego #POTUS #midterms

Here's an osprey in Gloucester, VA, where I live, my photo, set to the #BirdoftheDay theme of blue skies by @atlanticbirding.bsky.social to start off our week. #birds #birding #nature #naturephotography

More like peering around life's corner with a pocket mirror in order to get a sense of the colors, the shape, the speed of the thing that is hurrying inexorably toward me. -- Lieke Marsman, 1990-2026. #SundaySentence, On Another Planet They Can Save Me. (Soon from @catapultbooks.bsky.social)

Appalling and wrong. #highered #ColumbiaUniversity

Appalling and wrong. #highered #ColumbiaUniversity

"Neither fully land nor fully water, neither fully alive nor fully dead, boglands' ambiguity made them powerful in the human imagination"- beautiful essay on boglands and their role today in climate and ecology by @queenofpeat.bsky.social. #nature #naturewriting #bogs #climate #climatescience