MY POSTS ABOUT ETHNOZOOLOGY
TITLE LIST
Crayfish Catching by California Indians
Methods to Gather Wasps and Bees to Eat
Ants as Native Californian Cuisine
Deer Hunting Traditions of the Apache
Hunters Take Aim for Conservation
Deer Drive Hunt Method of California Indians
Insect Diet Helped Early Humans Build Bigger Brains, Study Suggests
7 Insects You’ll Be Eating in the Future
TED Talk: Why Not Eat Insects?
Russians Put Frog in Milk to Prevent Spoilage
Bug Honeydew was a Sweet Treat for California Indians
Harvester Ants (Pogonomyrmex sp.) Used as Ritual Hallucinogen by California Indians
Cricket Hunting Method of Nevada Indians
DETAILED LIST
Crayfish Catching by California Indians
A variety of primitive methods to trap or catch crawdads and cook them.
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June Bugs are EdibleA rare account of June beetles used as food, by the Bear River Indians.
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Bone-chilling account of evil shamans who dressed as bears to kill their fellow Indians.
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How the California Indians cooked slugs to eat.
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Methods to Gather Wasps and Bees to Eat
Methods used by the California Indians and other hunter-gatherer societies to gather the delicacy of wasp and bee larvae/pupae without getting stung.
Ants as Native Californian Cuisine
Methods of gathering, processing, cooking, and storing ants for food used by the Indians of California. Genera eaten are described, as is my experience eating ants.
Deer Hunting Traditions of the Apache
Traditional methods of hunting deer used by the Apache, uses for deer parts and cooking techniques.
Hunters Take Aim for Conservation
Commentary and link to Bay Nature article about how hunters are the number one supporters of conservation in the US.
Deer Drive Hunt Method of California Indians
Methods of hunting deer, both modern and traditional, with description of a method used by Mendocino County Indians to drive deer as groups using long bark fences.
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Insect Diet Help
ed Early Humans Build Bigger Brains, Study Suggests
Links to articles about recent discoveries of a scientific study that indicates finding hidden insects during lean seasons by primates has probably led to increased sensory-motor skills.
7 Insec
ts You’ll Be Eating in the Future
Link to Livescience article about some commonly eaten insects, their potential for higher future consumption, and a recent million-dollar award to a start-up selling grasshopper flour.
TED Talk: Why
Not Eat Insects?
Link to TED lecture on the many benefits of entomophagy: better health, sustainable meat with less emissions/environmental impact, and yes, even for taste.
Russians P
ut Frog in Milk to Prevent Spoilage
Link to scientific study of many antimicrobial compounds found in the common frog’s (Rana temporaria) skin. The study was inspired by the old practice of Russians to put a frog in milk to keep it fresh.
Bug
Honeydew was a Sweet Treat for California Indians
About aphids and related sap-feeding insects, how they produce a sweet nectar, and how California Indians collected this sugar, processed it, and used it for a tasty food.
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Harvester A
nts (Pogonomyrmex sp.) Used as Ritual Hallucinogen by California Indians
The strange, unique use of harvester ants’ powerful sting to induce hallucinations for vision or power quest rites of passage (and also as medicine) by Indians of the California deserts.
Cricket Hunt
ing Method of Nevada Indians
How Indians of the Nevada desert harvested crickets in massive quantities with group hunts, and the importance of crickets in their diet.
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ting… Good PhotosAccount of enjoying my hunting trip without any kills. Some gathering of plants, nice photos, and an enjoyable camping experience were all I took.
Story about finding a ringtail cat killed on a highway, seeing it’s live brethren, and about the cave they led me to.
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merican DogsAll about the dogs of pre-settlement American Indians; their history, behavior, appearance, varieties, and many different uses.
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y HuntingGrizzly and other bear’s biology, ecology, biogeography, and brief history of human interaction in North America. Account of grizzly hunting/killing techniques practiced by Indians and Spanish colonists.
Live!Story about giant walking sticks on a tiny island near New Zealand; how they were thought extinct, were re-discovered, and are being recovered.
DEFINITION:
Ethnozoology is “the study of local knowledge of fauna, and the culturally mediated relationships between communities of people and the other animals of their environment” (Hunn 2011). Though as ancient as ethnobotany, ethnozoology got off to a slower start as a modern science, with the first complete ethnoozoologies written in the first half of the 1900′s, and these concentrated on a single taxon (Anderson 2011). Few studies describe local tribal ethnozoology (Anderson 2011). Many studies focus on hunting and animism (Hunn 2011). Zooarchaeology or paleoethnozoology is studied with much the same methods of paleoethnobotany (Anderson 2011). Ethnoentomology is a subfield that has been historically dominated by edible insect studies (e.g. Bodenheimer 1951, Ruddle 1973), but including modern linguistic-based studies (e.g. Wynman and Bailey 1964) (Hunn 2011).
REFERENCES
Anderson, E. N. Ethnobiology: overview of a growing field. In Anderson, E. N., D. M. Pearsall, E. S. Hunn, and N. J. Turner (eds.). 2011. Ethnobiology. Wiley-Blackwell, Hoboken, NJ.
Bodenheimer, F. S. 1951. Insects as human food, a chapter of the ecology of man. Dr. W. Junk, Publishers, The Hague.
Hunn, E. S. Ethnozoology. In Anderson, E. N., D. M. Pearsall, E. S. Hunn, and N. J. Turner (eds.). 2011 Ethnobiology. Wiley-Blackwell, Hoboken, NJ.
Wyman, L.C., and F.L. Bailey. 1964. Navajo indian ethnoentomology. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, NM.
Ancestral Arts 