Article

Progress in Human Geography

2019, Vol. 43(1) 26–45
Animals’ atmospheres ª The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0309132517731254
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Jamie Lorimer, Timothy Hodgetts and Maan Barua

University of Oxford, UK

Abstract
This article introduces the concept of animals’ atmospheres, as a contribution to work in animal and
atmospheric geographies. It defines the concept and identifies the key factors that shape an animals’ atmo-
sphere. These offer a framework for future comparative research. The second section focuses on metho-
dological and epistemic challenges of knowing and representing animal atmospheres. The third section
examines engineering of animals’ atmospheres, in context of the biopolitics of managing animal life in the
Anthropocene. In conclusion, the article highlights its contributions. Illustrations are drawn from the
atmospheres of dogs and wolves.

Keywords
affect, animal geography, atmosphere, biopolitics, dogs and wolves

Wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone Adaptil manufacture a ‘dog-appeasing phero-

National Park in 1995. They had been absent for mone’. It is sold in a home diffuser and emits a
70 years and were unknown to the elk, which ‘strong signal of security’ (Adaptil, 2016) to reas-
grazed, slept and moved in the absence of an sure dogs in new or stressful settings. The Dazer
apex predator. The return of the wolf fundamen- is a handheld device that emits an unpleasant
tally changed elk behaviour. They now avoid high-frequency sound to deter aggressive dogs.
areas of low visibility. They gather in smaller PestBye offer wall-mounted, bark-responsive
herds. They are more flighty, watchful, and anx- ultrasonic technology designed to silence ‘nui-
ious. Ecologists speak of an ‘ecology of fear’ sance dogs’ in the immediate neighbourhood.
(Ripple and Beschta, 2004), in which new ani-
mal behaviours have had cascading, landscape-
scale effects on wildlife. I Introduction
Some domestic dogs have learnt to predict and Dogs and wolves sense and shape the atmo-
detect epileptic seizures and diabetic low blood spheres in which they live. They have distinct
sugar. These ‘service animals’ tune into shifts in means of tuning in to the world in wild and
human behaviour and the chemistry of their envi- domestic settings, and their presence can shift
ronment. They are trained to warn their compa- the experience of those spaces for others around
nion of their symptoms with a nudge, or by
whining, pawing, or anxious barking. If their
owner is incapacitated they can trigger an alarm Corresponding author:
(Rooney et al., 2013). Jamie Lorimer, School of Geography and the Environment,
University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1
The sounds and smells of urban environments 3QY, UK.
are conditioned to govern the behaviour of dogs. Email: jamie.lorimer@ouce.ox.ac.uk
Lorimer et al. 27

them. The three following vignettes serve to 2015), architecture (Degen et al., 2015), land-
introduce the concept of an animal’s atmo- scapes (Lund, 2013), balloons (McCormack,
sphere. We understand this (after Bissell, 2008), technology (Ash, 2013), light (Edensor,
2010a) to describe the affective intensities of a 2012) and sound (Gallagher et al., 2016) all fea-
particular space that gives rise to events, ture prominently. To date, however, there has
actions, feelings and emotions. The material been limited work on animals as the subjects or
envelope of the atmosphere and its affective receptors of atmospheres (though see
intensities have risen to prominence in recent Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, 2013). There is
human geography, most centrally in work thus an anthropocentrism in the literature on
developing more-than-representational under- atmospheres. This paper seeks to address this gap
standings of social life and volumetric concep- and to develop the concept of atmosphere through
tions of space and power. The concept an engagement with the affective lives of nonhu-
of atmosphere has helped spatialize long- man animals. It outlines the new concept of ani-
established concerns with affect, performance mals’ atmospheres for two broad reasons.
and assemblages. It has also helped animate First, this intervention forms part of a broader
established spatial concepts like territory, place research agenda that aims to rework prominent
and milieu. concepts in human geography to support the
Atmosphere is emerging as a multifaceted nascent field of animals’ geographies (Hodgetts
and productively nebulous concept that is still and Lorimer, 2015). While animal geography
under development (Anderson, 2014). The bur- has been reinvigorated as a sub-discipline in the
geoning literature on atmospheric geographies last 35 years, work has predominantly focused
identifies a number of defining features and ten- on the human geographies of animals (or what
sions in the concept. Atmospheres are both per- Philo and Wilbert (2000) originally termed ‘ani-
sonal and collective. Atmospheres are palpable, mal spaces’). Their ‘beastly places’, or the
sensed and felt through the body. But they are lived, sensed, and felt geographies of animals
also diffuse; they have both a material trace and themselves, have remained a more marginal
an ethereal excess (Anderson, 2009). Atmo- concern (though see Buller, 2014; Lulka,
spheres are contained. They describe a space- 2009; H Lorimer, 2006). The concept of ani-
time. But an atmosphere emerges from amidst mals’ atmospheres helps address this neglect.1
the differential mobilities of sensing subjects, It is grounded in an ontology that works across
and the ‘force fields’ (Stewart, 2011) or species divides, enabling sympathetic analysis
‘weather worlds’ (Ingold, 2007) that envelope of the affective, felt and emotional dimensions
a sensing subject. Atmospheres are precarious, of social behaviour common to animals (includ-
often fleeting and indeterminate: they are cir- ing humans). Humanist scholars have often
cumstantial (McCormack, 2014). Atmospheres denigrated affect as being ‘too animal’ to offer
are in the air. They can emanate from, and be serious grounds for theories of agency and
mediated through, the intensities of a gaseous ethics. In recuperating the human animal,
envelope (McCormack, 2008). Atmospheres more-than-representational theory intersects
can be conditioned, but they are also condition- with an ‘ethological turn’ (J Lorimer, 2007) in
ing: subject to deliberate, sometimes political, more-than-human theory. We aim to demon-
engineering (McCormack, 2008; Adey, 2014). strate that the concept of animals’ atmospheres
There is an established interest in the nonhu- has methodological potential, explanatory
man materialities of atmospheres and how these power, and that it enables novel means of criti-
come to shape human experience. Air (Engel- cally examining the biopolitics of animal
mann, 2015; Choy, 2010), weather (Ingold, (including human) life in the Anthropocene.
28 Progress in Human Geography 43(1)

Second, the paper explores how the (hitherto geographies. We make this selection for three
anthropocentric) concept of atmospheres might reasons: (i) these animals are familiar, well
be stretched, developed and critiqued through known to science and animal geography, and
an application to nonhuman animals. It demon- have been the focus of some of our own work;
strates that the atmospheric can be sensed and (ii) they have biological similarities with
engineered in the absence of people. It draws to humans that enable conceptual conversation
the attention of atmospheric social scientists a with work on human atmospheres; (iii) they
wealth of comparable but unfamiliar work by live closely entangled with humans and thus
animal scientists on affect. In combining ethol- give particular insight into the biopolitical
ogy and ethnography (Lestel et al., 2006), this impacts of the atmospheric engineering of the
literature offers new methodologies for atmo- Anthropocene. Like other work on canine
spheric research. It also provides an awareness worlds (e.g. Haraway, 2008), we start from an
of the capacities of animals to sense the atmo- interest in nonhuman difference, rather than a
spheric in much more radical ways than exist- desire to extend a humanist analysis to animals
ing work on humans has imagined. Attending ‘big like us’ (Hird, 2009). This analysis is very
to the engineering of animals’ atmospheres much a starting point for further work that
also highlights the entangled fates of marginal would explore the zoological and spatial hetero-
human and animal populations in the biopoli- geneity of animals’ (and other nonhumans’)
tics of the Anthropocene. The paper identifies atmospheres.
great scope to dramatically expand atmo- The heart of the paper comprises three sec-
spheric geographies. tions. The first is broadly ontological. It identi-
To deliver these aims we draw together three fies the range of factors that configure an
broad literatures. The first is work on human animal’s atmosphere. The second section is
atmospheres in cultural and political geography. epistemological. It examines the epistemic ten-
The second comes from multispecies studies sions associated with approaches to knowing
(including work by geographers) and is con- animals’ affective experience. It outlines meth-
cerned with the affective lives and emotional odologies for researching animals’ atmospheres
experiences of animals whose social and ecolo- and considers how atmospheres might be
gical worlds are closely entangled with humans. evoked in media. A third section examines the
The final literature overlaps with the second but biopolitics of human engineering of animals’
is drawn from the natural sciences, especially atmospheres. This section reflects on how pre-
ethology and ecology. There are important valent conceptions of biopolitics and political
ontological, epistemic, methodological and ter- ecology shift when animals are refigured as
minological differences between (and within) atmospheric subjects. In conclusion, the paper
these literatures. The paper acknowledges these, identifies the implications of thinking with ani-
but seeks to think generatively across the ten- mals for current work on atmospheres, and out-
sions and divergences they represent to develop lines some priorities for future research in
a shared conceptual vocabulary. animal and atmospheric geographies.
‘Animal’ describes a myriad of lifeforms and
biogeographies, entangled in a multitude of
interspecies relationships. This paper focuses
II What configures animals’
on the atmospheres of wolves and dogs, and a atmospheres?
small number of other terrestrial mammals. We Atmosphere is a nebulous concept whose mean-
are aware of the violence this selection does to ing has often been located between descriptors.
the heterogeneity of Animalia and their animal These include terms like personal-collective;
Lorimer et al. 29

Table 1. A list of factors that configure an animal’s 1 Animal subjects

atmosphere.
An animal’s atmosphere requires an animal sub-
Analytical focus Atmospheric factor ject. Animals’ atmospheres only exist through
the experience of a sensory animal body. They
Animal subject Umwelt
Emotional experience might not be emotional, but they are felt and
Individuality subjective. This approach requires a posthuma-
Collective Social relations nist approach in which conceptions of subjec-
circumstances Trophic relations tivity are reworked to respect different forms of
Electro-magnetic energy nonhuman animal phenomenology and cogni-
Sounds tion (see Donaldson and Kymlicka, 2011; Lestel
Tastes and smells et al., 2014). To understand an animal’s atmo-
Weather
sphere, we first need to know something about
Space-time Territory
Rhythms and habits its sensory, embodied existence. To do so we
Spread or contagion can turn to ethology – the study of animal beha-
Amplification and intensification viour – and specifically the writings of the 19th-
century animal ethologist Jacob von Uexkull
(2010). Von Uexkull’s ethology (and its
material-ethereal; palpable-elusive; contingent- reworking by Deleuze and Guattari, 1987) has
engineered, etc. Such accounts can seem para- influenced both more-than-representational the-
doxical, or even contradictory. We don’t believe ory (e.g. Thrift, 2007) and multispecies studies
this to be the case, but to parse this complexity (e.g. Buchanan, 2008; Despret, 2015).
we offer a three-part heuristic of what config- An ethological model places the animal sub-
ures an animal’s atmosphere. We identify a list ject in its umwelt (or lifeworld) and does away
of key dimensions (in italics in the section that with the common division between the organ-
follows and summarized in Table 1). We start ism and the environment (Adams, 2016). Start-
by outlining the phenomenological characteris- ing from the multisensory animal body, it
tics that shape an animal’s receptivity to atmo- attends to the ‘signs’ through which an animal
spheric intensities. We then shift to explore the affects and is affected by its world. Wolves, for
shared social or ‘collective’ (Anderson, 2009) example, communicate with each other through
elements of an animal’s atmosphere and the body language, voice, and olfactory means – but
material ‘circumstances’ (McCormack, 2014) their umwelt is not limited to these intra-wolf
within which atmospheres are configured. signals. Relevant signs also encompass atmo-
Finally, we outline the spatio-temporal dimen- spheric materials and vibrations sensible to
sions of this concept. We align this account with canine sight, sound, touch, taste and smell, and
McCormack’s approach to atmospheres that: the other senses that are absent or poorly articu-
lated in humans. In the canine umwelt, the
Acknowledge[s] the passage from and between significance and intensity of the resulting per-
affect (as a pre-personal field of intensity), feeling ceptions is markedly different to that for
(as that intensity registered in a sensing body), humans in both range and extent. Biosemiotic
and emotion (as that felt intensity expressed in a
analysis of umwelten focuses on animals’ per-
socio-culturally recognizable form). (2008: 426)
ceptual mechanisms, its physiological make-up,
We use these definitions of key terms, and and the reciprocal relations it develops with the
explore how they hold in the context of nonhu- other organisms that comprise its ecology (e.g.
man animals. Kohn, 2013). Ethologists develop rhythmic
30 Progress in Human Geography 43(1)

understandings of animal perception attending individuated or personal. They can be shared,

to the different mobilities, temporalities and and always emerge in relation to the shifting
entangled lifelines of interacting organisms intensities of ‘background’ (Thrift, 2007) cir-
(Ingold, 2015). cumstances. Here we draw on the recent, post-
Ethology also offers understandings of ani- phenomenological development of the concept
mals’ emotional experiences. Animal emotion of circumstances by McCormack, who proposes
is a contested subject, for a range of epistemic circumstance ‘as a way of naming the extrusion
and political reasons that we detail below. of the impersonal forces excessive of a life into
Nonetheless, work on animal emotion in the the worldly textures and trajectories of that life’
animal sciences has challenged the mechanistic (2017: 3). Thinking through circumstances
models of the instinctive, animal automaton that helps identify how animals’ atmospheres are
are prevalent in animal behaviour research. shaped by social, ecological, meteorological
Some ethologists present terrestrial mammals and chemical forces.
as emotional beings, attuned to and affected As copious research makes clear, many ani-
by their social and ecological circumstances mals’ atmospheres are social and collective.
(Bekoff, 2002; Grandin and Johnson, 2006). They emerge in relation to the complex social
This work has reinvigorated a long-standing (or at least interpersonal) dynamics common to
interest in the comparable emotions of humans many animal groups. Often these sociabilities
and animals (Darwin et al., 1999). We now hear will include humans: atmospheres of play and
of animals that are playful, joyful, sad, and trau- friendship amongst people and pets are well
matized, amongst other cross-species and known and have received much attention
culturally-encoded emotional conditions (e.g. (Goode, 2007; Haraway, 2008), as have the
Bekoff, 2010; Bradshaw, 2009; Montgomery, behaviours of feral animals who actively avoid
2015). In so doing this work moves away from humans (Beck, 1973). But these atmospheres do
understanding animals as species types to not necessarily require human participants. As
acknowledge the individuality (or better, ‘indi- Lopez notes:
viduation’, after Deleuze and Guattari, 1987) of
single animals (cf. Bear, 2011) and of groups Even as adults, wolves play tag with each other or
aggregated below the level of the species romp with the pups, running about a clearing or on
a snow bank with a rocking-horse gait. They scare
(swarms, herds, flocks, etc.). Pet owners can
each other by pouncing on sleeping wolves and by
attest to the personalities of their dogs, and
jumping in front of one another from hiding
ethologists, through years of patient observa- places. They bring things to each other, especially
tion, can demonstrate the same is true of wolves bits of food. They prance and parade about with
and the packs they comprise (Bekoff, 2010). sticks or bones in their mouths. (2004: 37)

Ethologists have documented occasions where

2 Collective circumstances playful atmospheres are replaced by atmo-
A theory of umwelten provides a useful founda- spheres of grief. When wolves are killed the
tion for conceiving animal atmospheres, but the depression in pack ‘spirits’ can be marked by
two concepts are not synonymous. Umwelt recognizable postural (low tails, pinned-back
describes the ‘bubble’ of animal perception, but ears) and vocal (lone rather than group howling)
it struggles to account for the collective dimen- behaviours (Bekoff, 2007: 68).
sions and diffuse catalysts of place-based affec- In contrast to these situations of heightened
tive experience. Although they require an affective intensity, many domestic and zoo ani-
animal subject, animal atmospheres are not only mals live lives marked by solitude and the
Lorimer et al. 31

absence or impoverishment of stimuli. ‘Separa- pheromones are not commonly understood to

tion anxiety’ is a common explanation of the be significant in ocular-centric accounts of
destructive behaviours of dogs left home alone. humans’ atmospheres (though see Brennan,
There is growing evidence that animals get 2004; Grammer et al., 2005). Modulations in
bored and depressed (Davies, 2010, cf. Ander- the background intensities of these spectra are
son, 2004), resulting in psychological problems, vital catalysts for animal atmospheres. Animals
including repetitive, stereotypic behaviours, sing, grunt, and roar to mark territory, express
stress, and self-harm (Mason and Rushen, anger, fear, love and joy. They mimic, trick and
2008). The changing circumstances that shape visually disguise themselves. They spray,
animals’ affective atmospheres can be linked to secrete and roll to modulate their smell. Some
wider political ecological dynamics. For animals luminesce or sense and emit infrared
instance, landscapes torn by poaching, mining radiation. Others attune to electro- or seismic
and deforestation can generate ‘traumatic’ cir- energy for communication within more liquid
cumstances (Bradshaw, 2009). These fissured and solid atmospheric media. Animals are sen-
ecologies can induce, among other things, alco- sitive to changes in their ‘weather worlds’
hol consumption in animals (Barua, 2014), (Ingold, 2007). Shifts in temperature, wind,
including amongst dogs abandoned and having light and humidity all cue changes in an ani-
to cope with precarious urban conditions mal’s affective atmospheres. This is especially
(Siegel, 2005). true for migratory and/or temperate animals
An animal’s trophic relations, or position in whose seasonal behaviours are tied to shifts in
the food chain, also configure their affective atmospheric intensities. The service dogs intro-
atmosphere. The atmospheres (or ecologies) of duced in the opening vignette are just one exam-
fear (Brown et al., 1999) illustrated in the open- ple of animals acting as sentinels of atmospheric
ing vignette emanate from the situated experi- shifts. History, folklore and some modern sci-
ence of predator-prey interaction. Many ence offer a wealth of stories of animals as sen-
herbivores have evolved ‘affective palettes’ tinels for disease, weather, natural disasters,
(Thrift, 2007) primed to respond to the visual, pollution and acts of war.
aural, or olfactory presence of predators and
the kinaesthetic experience of being chased
(Berger, 2007). The elk in Yellowstone, for 3 Space-time
example, graze, breed and move very differ- This analysis identifies significant factors to
ently in the absence and the presence of both consider in understanding what comes to con-
wolves and of different groups of people and figure an animal’s atmosphere. These factors
their human infrastructure (Ripple and Beschta, could be encompassed by the concept of an
2004; Dorresteijn et al., 2015). affective assemblage: a material inventory, or
Animals’ atmospheres are also the outcome abstract diagram, of all the interacting elements
of changes in the intensities of the abiotic envi- in a given situation. Theorists of affect suggest
ronment. Animals are sensitive to, and instigate, that the concept of an atmosphere takes assem-
a wide range of meteorological dynamics not blage thinking further by focusing on the spatial
palpable to humans. Many animals sense and and temporal dimensions of affective experi-
make use of parts of the electro-magnetic, ence. They suggest that an atmosphere should
acoustic and olfactory spectra that are undetect- be conceived as a specific space-time of an
able to the technological unassisted human affective assemblage (Anderson, 2014; Shaw,
body. Most terrestrial mammals live socially 2014): a collective experience shared in this
through biochemical landscapes, and place, at this time, by some of those present.
32 Progress in Human Geography 43(1)

They stress that an atmosphere is not trans- through which they are engendered. On the one
historical but emerges at particular junctures hand, atmospheres may seem fleeting and con-
with distinct relations and concomitant effects tingent: momentary events sparked by a noise, a
(for a canine illustration see Howell’s (2015) smell or a gesture. For example, the sudden
detailed, historical account of the circumstances change in atmosphere in a tranquil living room
that come to configure the space-times of sparked by a doorbell ring or even a car door
domestic dogs in Britain). slam. The slumbering pet dog is up, hackles
Work in ethology and in cultural and raised and barking in an explosion of fur-
political geography offers further concepts for spreading intensity; but the intensity of alarm
examining the space-times (or topologies) of is fleeting as it turns out the parcel is for next
animals’ atmospheres. Here we might start with door. On the other hand, atmospheres can be
work on animal territories and the musical a sedimented remembrance of past practices
understanding of territorial practices offered and encounters. These are sensed in relation
by Deleuze and Guattari (1987) in their reading to familiar rhythms, expected durations and
of Von Uexkull’s ethology. Many animals mark habituated intensities. Atmospheres may
territories, knowing and claiming space though emanate from the surprising shock of the
repeated, routinized spatial practices: the walk, new, but they also stem from the banal repe-
the song, the spray, etc. It is through these prac- tition of the same hourly, daily, and seasonal
tices that an animal’s umwelt comes to take the practices (Dewsbury, 2012). In other words,
archetypal spatial form of the bubble or sphere animals’ rhythms get ‘coded’ such that peri-
(Anderson, 2014): a volumetric envelope odic repetition becomes significant. What is
enclosed by the geographies of an animal’s at stake here is the interplay between
movements (cf. Elden, 2013). Such volumes can momentary and more protracted durations
be relatively static (in Cartesian space) or and the effects of anthropogenic atmospheric
hypermobile (as in the case of migratory ani- disruption or decoding.
mals), but they maintain a consistent spherical Mapping animals’ atmospheres requires an
form. This topological imagination of bounded attention to processes of spread. Understanding
volumetric territories is intuitive, but it is not the passage of animals’ affective atmospheres
sufficient to capture the space-times of the involves attuning to a range of unfamiliar media
atmospheric materials listed above. The sphere and means of communicating across time and
of an animal’s atmosphere is bisected by the space. The attention of atmospheric geogra-
circulation of molecules and wave-like vibra- phers shifts to the airborne passage of sounds
tions. These vectors are ‘lines of flight’, through and smells, to seismic rumbles or to fluctuations
which an animal is entrained in a web or mesh- in pressure, temperate and humidity (Gallagher
work of intermingled territories. Animal terri- et al., 2016). We know that some animals’ atmo-
tories are formed through counterpoints, spheres can be as contagious as the spread of
reciprocity and intra-action with a heteroge- fear amongst humans (cf. Bissell, 2010b). Map-
neous entourage of bodies (animate and non- ping contagion requires an attention to the pro-
animate) and their concomitant sights, smells, cesses of atmospheric amplification and
scents and tastes. There are thus complex and intensification. We need to know how atmo-
under-researched geometries to animals’ spheric media move, how they congeal, and the
atmospheres. nonlinear, sometimes chaotic, processes
Attempts to capture the spatial heterogeneity through which atmospheric phenomena bubble
of animals’ atmospheres must also acknowl- and vortice into being. Not all atmospheres are
edge the multiple and often discordant rhythms experienced with the same intensity. While it is
Lorimer et al. 33

possible to follow the contagious howling of accept that animals are affected by their social
wolves or the barking of neighbourhood dogs, and physical environment, but doubt the possi-
not all such amplifications are as easily mapped. bility of accurate scientific representation. They
Sometimes the signs are less clear – triggers argue that representations of animals’ emotions
imperceptible to human senses (a smell or dis- are subjective acts of anthropomorphism: the
tant sound, for example) may be experienced by inappropriate mapping of human understand-
and communicated between canids in ways that ings on to animals (for discussion see Dawkins,
are hard for human observers to read. 2012). In contrast, many of the ethologists we
To summarize, this section has outlined three encountered above are more sympathetic to the
important areas of consideration when mapping idea of animals’ emotions (alongside animal
an animal’s atmosphere. This approach moves affects and feelings). They acknowledge the
from a specification of the animal’s umwelt to challenges of understanding the private minds
situating the animal in its social, ecological and of animals, but note that these challenges also
material circumstances. This model works out- apply to understanding other humans (Bur-
ward from an animal’s body to consider the ghardt, 2007). Some ethologists advocate mod-
spatial connections, temporal trajectories and els of ‘critical anthropomorphism’ (Morton
processes of intensification through which an et al., 1990), arguing that anthropomorphism
atmosphere comes into being. The italicized has epistemic value when it is coupled with
terms in the previous section serve as a frame- reflexivity by the human observer as to their
work to guide the design of future research on own situated positionality in relation to the ani-
animals’ atmospheres. This is summarized, as mal being studied. Geographers informed by
mentioned previously, in Table 1. ethology suggest that it is possible to develop
We anticipate that this framework will a ‘standpoint ontology’ for the animal: ‘a per-
enable comparative research that attends to spectivalism that is not located within thought
the subjects, circumstances and space-times or reason, but within the molecular relationship
of atmospheres across difference. As a nomo- between an organism and its umwelt’ (Shaw
thetic, rather than idiographic endeavour, et al., 2013: 263).
geographical investigation of atmospheres
would explore how a particular situation
allows one to ask questions of another. Anal- 1 Attunement
ysis would attend to how atmospheres come Practical research in this ethological tradition
into being, and with what conjunctures, polit- involves a range of methods that allow the
ical ecologies and historically situated researcher to think like a different animal. This
‘worldings’ (cf. Haraway, 2016). work starts by developing an understanding of
an animal’s physiology and perceptual mechan-
isms. It could then involve close (sometimes
III How animals’ atmospheres can covert) observation of an animal’s behaviour
be known within the specific social and ecological rela-
In this section of the paper we reflect on the tions under study (for an introduction see Daw-
epistemic and methodological challenges of kins, 2007). This would generate an ‘ethogram’,
knowing and evoking animals’ atmospheres. or diagram, of the animal’s umwelt. The atmo-
The nature of animals’ affective experiences has spheric intensities of the umwelt could then be
been the subject of long-standing and heated mapped through the comprehensive detection
discussion in zoology. Modern animal beha- and monitoring of the electro-magnetic, acous-
viourists (working on laboratory animals) tic and olfactory energies sensible to the animal
34 Progress in Human Geography 43(1)

in question (Manning and Dawkins, 2012). This design a piece of atmospheric research. We
mapping might be supplemented by tracking might begin to address this lacuna by drawing
and remote sensing technologies, including: on work in the emerging fields of multispecies
GPS tags, weather monitoring equipment, cam- (Kirksey and Helmreich, 2010) and ‘more-than-
era traps, and other remotely operated audio- human’ ethnographies (Barua, 2014). These
visual devices (for wider discussion see Benson, conjoin methods from ethnography and
2010; Tomkiewicz et al., 2010; Hodgetts ethology to enable the time-deepened and situ-
and Lorimer, 2015). A more innovative, ated study of animals and their affective rela-
post-phenomenological take on the ethogram tionships (e.g. H Lorimer, 2006; Hodgetts and
would expand analysis to the broader range of Lorimer, 2015). To date, multispecies ethnogra-
encounters with bodies, materials, and sensa- phers have not engaged explicitly with the con-
tions that humans and other animals make cept of animal atmospheres, but we can get
meaning from (see Wilson, 2017). some glimpses of what this might comprise
This perspectival approach generates a from existing studies.
wealth of data on the abstract animal umwelt. For example, recent work has utilized etho-
But critics suggest that it is premised on a false logical and empathetic approaches not simply to
sense of objectivity that masks the necessary attune to animals, but to attune with them. The
and shaping presence of the human body in the aim here is to gain a sense of the animals’ atmo-
conduct of ethological research (Despret, 2013). spheres so as to better understand particular
Despret proposes that it is more appropriate to situations and environments. Working with
understand ethological research as the pursuit of dogs to trace other forms of wildlife is a case
‘embodied empathy’ with animals. She argues, in point. Human handlers can access unseen
in ways that are similar to the arguments of non- presences and temporal clues by attending care-
representational cultural geographers, that ani- fully to the postural and vocal communications
mal research is affective, not just semiotic or of tracking dogs, and by attuning to the shared
perspectival. She presents research as embodied atmospheres such communications contribute
and immersive processes of ‘learning to be to shaping (Hodgetts and Hester, 2017). For a
affected’ by the world, in which ‘the scientist dog (or wolf), the atmosphere of tranquil wood-
risks being touched/affected by what matters for land is probably more lively than for a human
the animal he/she observes’ (2013: 57). This given the lingering scent-lines and pheromone
approach intersects with a growing body of traces that permeate the atmosphere, in addition
work by feminist animal scholars (Donovan and to the visual signs of wildlife presence. As the
Adams, 2007; Geiger and Hovorka, 2015; sniffing of the tracking dog increases in inten-
Gruen, 2015), and has informed a range of sity and focus, as movements become faster and
methodological experiments, by geographers more targeted, as the atmosphere of excitement
and others, in attuning to canine life worlds (see intensifies and is shared with the human hand-
Kohn, 2007; Mancini et al., 2012; Brown and ler, both know when the dog has found the scent.
Dilley, 2012; Fletcher and Platt, 2016). Atmospheres, as we outlined in the previous
This literature has yet to engage with the section, are collective and shared. Such canine
concept of animals’ atmospheres. Indeed, there multispecies methods rely on the lack of inhibi-
is very little methodological guidance in cul- tion in dogs when displaying emotions (see Dar-
tural geography on how to research affective win et al., 1999), and the long-noted (if often
atmospheres. Textbook accounts of non- dismissed) ability of humans to make sense of
representational methodologies (Vannini, some of these emotions (Bradshaw, 2011).
2015) offer scant practical advice on how to Indeed, Bradshaw suggests that dogs are (like
Lorimer et al. 35

humans) ‘emotionally transparent’ for a number human life, walking without shoes, swimming
of social, trophic and evolutionary reasons, and crawling naked and eating raw food. Or
which were then selected for in domestication. they could involve the construction of elaborate
Dogs are adept at reading human emotional prosthetics designed to align the human anat-
cues, affective intensities, and shared atmo- omy with those of animals. Importantly, Paul-
spheres. As such, attunement to multi-species sen (1994) also writes of the dangers when
atmospheres can and does work in both direc- animals’ atmospheric signs are missed and attu-
tions – as reflected in our opening anecdotes nement fails.
about service dogs who alert human compa- Attuning to animals’ atmospheres can be dif-
nions to imminent seizures, low blood sugar, ficult, even with species as ‘accessible’ to
or other medical conditions. Both humans and humans as dogs and wolves. It is not limited
dogs can ‘learn to be affected’ in these recipro- solely by our own ecological affordances as
cal interactions. A comprehensive mapping of humans, but also by our ideas. Returning to the
animals’ atmospheres involves tracking the cir- work of Barry Lopez, in comparing indigenous
culation of active materials (see, for example, and western scientific understandings of wolves
Barua (2014) on the effects of sugar and alcohol at the end of the 1970s he wrote: ‘we do not
on animal behaviours). know very much at all about animals. We can-
In his classic account of sled-dog racing in not understand them except in terms of our own
Alaska the author Gary Paulsen traces his var- needs and experiences. And to approach them
ious attempts to learn from his team of sled solely in terms of the Western imagination is,
dogs and their predilections and personalities. really, to deny the animal’ (2004: 86). Attune-
His method could be described in terms of ment, even when enacted as an empathetic and
immersive attunement. ‘I had to sleep in the bodily practice, remains shaped by cognitive
kennel’, he explains, ‘I had to be with the dogs considerations that in turn require reflexive
all the time, learn from them all the time, know attention. Reflection does not imply a reifica-
them all the time. More than sleep, I had to live tion of indigenous knowledges that would con-
in the kennel. I had in some way to become a struct certain peoples as ‘closer to animals’,
dog’ (Paulsen, 1994: 97). The idea of bodily with all the problematic implications such a
attunement to ‘become canine’ has a long framing entails. But it does suggest a critical
back-story, both in cultural histories of ‘were- attention to one’s own situation, while also
wolves’ (see Lopez, 2004) and in scientific remaining open to other ways of thinking with
experiments to make sense of animals’ lives the dog or wolf.
(see Despret, 2013, on the work of the wolf
ethologist Farley Mowatt).
In recent years this immersive approach has 2 Evocation
become something of a trope in literary experi- A further epistemic challenge in researching
ments – examples include Thomas Thwaite’s animals’ atmospheres lies in providing compel-
(2016) Goat Man and Charles Foster’s (2016) ling representations or ‘lively ethnographies’
Being a Beast. These exemplify a wider set of (Van Dooren and Rose, 2016). How do we
performative methods involving bodily evoke the fleeting, affective experiences of ani-
enhancement and reconfiguration, and novel mals that may be witnessed through these meth-
forms of transportation with the aim of simulat- ods? The practical and epistemic challenges of
ing animals’ perceptual lifeworlds and different recording and replicating atmospheres have
forms of mobility. These experiments might been the subject of discussion in non-
comprise shedding the basic accoutrements of representational theory (e.g. Anderson and Ash,
36 Progress in Human Geography 43(1)

2015). Many of the issues raised are relevant animal behaviour (Burt, 2002; Bousé, 2000).
here. Indeed these challenges are amplified by Big budget blue chip wildlife documentary
a general unfamiliarity with animal experience films increasingly trade off the affective
and the perceptual anthropocentrism of much potential of their imagery and offer compelling
media: screens, books and recordings struggle renditions of intense animals’ atmospheres
to simulate the kinaesthetic and olfactory expe- (J Lorimer, 2010). The BBC series The Hunt,
rience that is so central to animal lifeworlds. A for example, combines a nonlinear montage of
comprehensive review of efforts to evoke ani- carefully choreographed shot sequences with a
mals’ atmospheres is beyond the scope of this dramatic musical score to draw out the affective
paper and a few illustrations must suffice. intensities of free-ranging predator–prey
One resource is provided by autobiographical dynamics. Anticipation is built through close-
accounts of those who live and work with ani- ups of prey animals’ eyes, and twitching ears
mals, especially in books for a popular audience and noses. We see slow, stalking predator bod-
in which the author adopts a more informal tone ies. Tension is amplified through a muted, eerie
that than expected by their professional peers. soundtrack. Then aerial shots of fast-running
Examples include works by ethologists, ecolo- bodies set to drums evoke a mixture of fear and
gists, zookeepers, vets and animal trainers, as excitement. Death or escape arrives with a full
well as those by authors more interested in hunt- orchestral crescendo.
ing, eating or eradicating animals (cf. Anthony The power of music to create and evoke
and Spence, 2009; Bradshaw, 2011; Rebanks, atmospheres is well known. Animal sounds
2015; White, 2012). These works deploy a range have been the subject, or at least motifs within,
of literary techniques, including narrative; perso- a wide range of music (Kraft, 2013). The musi-
nification; and thick, placed-based description. cian and ecologist Bernie Krause (Krause and
This work bleeds into the related genre of animal Payne, 2016) has pioneered the recording of
fiction: books written from the perspective of an naturalistic soundscapes and has collaborated
animal. Much of this work is written for children. with a number of composers and musicians. In
It is often allegorical and sentimental and heavily the Great Animal Orchestra, United Visual Art-
moralized in its anthropomorphism (McHugh, ists develop an immersive, visual and interac-
2011; Armstrong, 2008). However, some works tive encounter with Krause’s recordings. This
stand out either for their fidelity to the alterity of aims to simulate and amplify the human acous-
the animal subject or because of their willingness tic atmospheric experience of remote places –
to keep open multiple interpretations of the including a compelling orchestration of Alaskan
recounted animal experience (for discussion wolves. This experience makes clear the differ-
see Beer, 2005; Daston and Mitman, 2005; ent animal components of the ‘biophony’ and
Crist, 1999; Cadman, 2016). Canine literature the ways these sounds relate to one another. In
spans this range. Dogs and wolves feature as so doing it gives a sense of the affective acoustic
the central protagonists in accounts from atmospheres catalysed for animals by the sonic
authors as diverse as Jack London, Olaf Staple- presence, behaviour and dynamics of other ani-
don, Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf, John Berger mal and geological sounds.
and Paul Auster (for discussion see Marvin,
2012; McHugh, 2004).
Similar resources can be found in the evoca-
IV How animals’ atmospheres are
tions of animals on film. These range from car- engineered
toon and CGI renditions of animal fiction to In this section we explore how the concept of
naturalistic and avant-garde efforts to evoke animals’ atmospheres helps develop recent
Lorimer et al. 37

work concerned with the biopolitics of modern engineering (cf. Adey, 2014). For example,
animal management (e.g. Holloway et al., 2009; 20th-century pest control is deeply entangled
Biermann and Mansfield, 2014; Shukin, 2009; J with the chemicals, practices and technologies
Lorimer, 2017). Our broad concern is with how of human ‘atmospheric warfare’ (Zierler, 2011;
animals’ atmospheres become subject to forms Shaw, 2016). Chemical interventions modify
of deliberate and/or inadvertent ‘atmospheric the material composition of the air to engender
engineering’. The biopolitics of atmospheric a palpably inhospitable and/or unpleasant affec-
engineering has become a central concern of tive atmosphere for the target pest. The best-
recent work in political geography concerned known and most controversial examples relate
with volumetric understandings of space to the engineering of atmospheric chemistry for
(Elden, 2013; Adey, 2014) and forms of atmo- insect eradication (see Kelly et al., 2017; Phil-
spheric warfare (Sloterdijk, 2009; Shaw, 2016). lips, 2013). The aerial spraying of endocrine
We draw on and develop this literature in disputing chemicals (like DDT) disrupts the
this analysis. lifecycles of insect species and creates toxic
It is useful to frame this account in relation to atmospheres with radically simplified ecologies
the discussions of the Anthropocene and the and ecosystem dynamics. While the use of DDT
fundamental changes in the ‘spheres’ of the is now closely regulated, the environments of
Earth caused by human activity. It is widely urban and agricultural animals are awash with
accepted that the Anthropocene ‘Great pesticides and the residues of contraceptive and
Acceleration’ (Steffen et al., 2015) has a psychoactive drugs designed to disrupt human
‘multi-modal’ pollution profile (Halfwerk and endocrine function (Clotfelter et al., 2004).
Slabbekoorn, 2015) with significant and largely There is growing concern about how these che-
deleterious effects on animals’ atmospheres micals come to shape animal mood and beha-
(cf. Choy and Zee, 2015). Radical changes have viour (Zala and Penn, 2004; cf. Shapiro, 2015).
occurred in the electro-magnetic, sonic and ‘Wildlife-friendly’ approaches to the deter-
chemical composition of the Holocene atmo- rence of avian and mammalian pests engineer
spheres to which animals are adapted. This the sonic and visual components of an animal’s
largely inadvertent atmospheric modification atmosphere. Some sonic interventions, like
has had far-reaching effects on animal commu- those for dogs mentioned in the opening vign-
nication, navigation and basic survival (Francis ettes, are designed to be physically painful.
and Barber, 2013; Longcore and Rich, 2004; They are located to create ‘acoustic fences’ and
Lürling and Scheffer, 2007; Peterson et al., ‘exclusion zones’, for example in private gar-
2017). Accelerated climate change has dramatic dens and around vulnerable infrastructure. Such
implications for animals’ biogeographical cacophonic contraptions are often automated
envelopes and seasonal rhythms. Earlier and choreographed towards unpredictable com-
springs, and warmer and more extreme weather, positions to prevent animal habituation. Many
scramble the choreography of existing beha- work at frequencies inaudible to (adult) hearing,
vioural cues (Parmesan, 2006). though some are promoted as also deterring
Animals in the Anthropocene are also subject human trespassers (cf. Feigenbaum and Kann-
to a range of deliberate biopolitical interven- gieser, 2015; Gallagher, 2016). Other sonic
tions involving both deterrence and death, and devices simulate the ecologies of fear triggered,
affirmative efforts to make certain forms of ani- for example, by predator calls. Visual interven-
mal life live. In both cases, interventions secure tions like scarecrows (H Lorimer, 2013) and
some forms of life at the expense of others kites employ a similar trophic logic. As do live
through deliberate practices of atmospheric animals like guard dogs, farm cats and raptors
38 Progress in Human Geography 43(1)

(Atkins et al., 2017). In these cases, biomimetic Lin, 2015), charismatic, captive zoo animals are
technologies modulate the intensities of a prey trained to catalyse specific affective atmo-
species’ atmosphere with cascading effects on spheres for their human audiences (J Lorimer,
their wider ecologies. 2015). Zoo atmospheres of wonder, joy and
In many cases, these lethal, deterring, carc- excitement are carefully choreographed using
eral, or otherwise governmental practices of a range of closely guarded and (often controver-
atmospheric engineering aim to secure the pro- sial) techniques (Davis, 1997; Grazian, 2015).
ductivity of a small number of agricultural plant Many of the most captivating zoo mammals are
and animal species. They seek to exclude those on anti-depressants and live in atmospheres
animals who would normal predate or parasitize engineered by synthetic pheromones to offset
them. These interventions form part of the far- the boredom and depression caused by a lack
reaching forms of atmospheric engineering of social and environmental stimuli (Braitman,
geared towards the optimization of animal 2014, cf. McCormack, 2007). Like the dogs we
productivity in intensive agricultural settings encountered in the opening anecdotes, these
(cf. Jones, 2005). Chickens provide the limit animals come to live in chemical atmospheres
case. The temperature, humidity, lighting, designed for careful mood management.
acoustics and smells of intensive poultry farms Atmospheric engineering occurs even in the
are carefully coordinated to accelerate and max- most naturalistic forms of human animal man-
imize egg production (Miele, 2011). Such atmo- agement: rewilding and wildlife conservation.
spheric engineering interfaces with long As we mentioned in the opening anecdote, con-
histories of selective breeding for animals with servationists concerned with the ecological
particular ‘affective palettes’ (Thrift, 2007: implications of missing predators have begun
227) disposed, in the case of chickens, towards to explore methods for simulating or reintrodu-
docility, hardiness and agoraphobia. The autis- cing the atmospheres of fear created by species
tic ethologist Temple Grandin has used her abil- like the wolf or lynx (Estes et al., 2011;
ity to tune into bovine affective atmospheres to Terborgh and Estes, 2010). Wolves are valued
redesign the standard US slaughterhouse. as keystone species, whose effects on the graz-
Through embodied empathetic fieldwork she ing behaviour of their prey can have landscape
identifies and addresses seemingly subtle archi- scale consequences. This critical analysis draws
tectural and acoustic factors that cause the ani- attention to atmospheric engineering and its
mals stress, slow down the slaughter process entanglements with the biopolitics of the
and compromise the quality of their meat Anthropocene across a wide range of human-
(Grandin and Johnson, 2006). We can animal relations. Such an approach to animals’
develop this analysis of atmospheric engi- geographies foregrounds both the ethical and
neering to consider the biopolitical means political imperatives, and the potentials, for
through which some dogs have emerged as multispecies studies to imagine and become
discerning consumers in the pet care and pet involved with new, more affirmative and benign
food industries of late capitalism, and made forms of atmospheric engineering for life
subject to affective atmospheres of taste and beyond the Anthropocene.
wellbeing (Haraway, 2008).
Atmospheric engineering to generate lively
‘animal capital’ (Shukin, 2009) is also central V Conclusions
to the purportedly non-consumptive relations This paper has outlined the concept of animals’
performed in zoos and aquaria. In a similar fash- atmospheres. It has defined the term and identi-
ion to human workers in the service sector (e.g. fied the key components by which animals’
Lorimer et al. 39

atmospheres are configured. It identified some non-representational methodologies to be used

of the epistemic, methodological and represen- in conjunction with methods for multispecies
tational challenges associated with work in this ethnography and ethology. Animal atmospheres
area. It then explored the utility of the concept are not necessarily different from human atmo-
for developing established concerns with the spheres. What differs is the capacity to sense
biopolitics of animal management in the variations in the milieus in which different forms
Anthropocene. In conclusion, we will return to of life take shape. We foresee ample opportunity
the two aims of the paper and reflect on some of for future research that thinks with animals as
the contributions we foresee the concept of conceptual guides to alternative atmospheres,
animals’ atmospheres making to progress and for collaborations with animals as sentinels
in geography. and savants for sensing the atmospheric.
The first aim of this paper was to develop We wager that animals’ atmospheres offers
work on the lived geographies of animals, or their new approaches to critical human and animal
beastly places. Here the concept of animals’ geography. The methodologies of embodied
atmospheres helps ongoing efforts to open up the empathy we encounter in this paper demand
category ‘animal’ and attend to the different life- an ethological ethics that is attuned to the lived
worlds that this label subsumes. When drawn experience of the animal subject. While empa-
together, the atmospheric factors summarized thy does not eliminate animal death, and can
in Table 1 comprise a new research agenda for inform violent forms of care (Van Dooren,
work in animal geography. While this paper 2014), it does inculcate a sense of shared suffer-
largely focuses on a familiar terrestrial domesti- ing and response-ability. Attending to the affec-
cated animal, future work might explore what tive atmospheric intensities of human and
happens to both animal geography and our con- animal life helps ground ethical theory and to
ception of the atmospheric if we transpose this work though the lived experience of our shared
framework from dogs to octopi, swallows, or vulnerability to the air. Working out from the
parasitic worms. Attending to animal atmo- individual animal, the concept of animals’
spheres opens analysis to a rich and underex- atmosphere helps trace the trans-species
plored diversity of ways of being in the world. processes of immiseration associated with the
It also raises questions as to how far we might biopolitics of the Anthropocene. Thinking
stretch the concept. Can we transpose the concept atmospheric warfare and planetary stewardship
of atmosphere into other kinds of elemental with dogs and wolves offers new insights into
milieu, particularly the watery spaces and aquatic the entangled fates of marginal human and ani-
lives rising to prominence in recent work in mal populations.
human geography (Steinberg and Peters, 2015; The second aim of the paper was to see what
Anderson and Peters, 2014; Bear and Eden, happens to the (hitherto largely anthropo-
2011)? To what extent does the capacity to sense centric) concept of atmosphere when it is
an atmosphere require a relatively elaborate form applied to animals. In this paper we have
of life, or can a virus sense an atmosphere? stretched, developed and critiqued existing
The paper identifies the methodological work on atmospheres in cultural and political
potential for animal geography of approaching geography. In so doing the paper makes a num-
fieldwork as a process of learning to be affected ber of contributions to work in this field. The
by animals and their atmospheres. This approach first, and perhaps most obvious, is to flag how
help overcome the cognitive, representational the atmospheric does not require a human sub-
bias that thwarts the import of ethnographic ject to be sensed. Myriad animals’ atmospheres
methods into animal studies. It also enables exist independent of human sensation. Going
40 Progress in Human Geography 43(1)

further, thinking and sensing the atmospheric Declaration of conflicting interests

with animals opens analysis to a wide range of The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of inter-
hitherto neglected atmospheric intensities and est with respect to the research, authorship, and/or
experiences. Even from the position of our publication of this article.
canine ‘best friend’, the atmospheric emerges
through sensations and media alien to most peo- Funding
ple: smell and scent are paramount here. And The author(s) received no financial support for the
these olfactory atmospheres adhere to spatial research, authorship, and/or publication of this
patterns and temporal rhythms that differ in article.
important and interesting ways to the sonic and
Note
visual atmospheres that predominate in human
1. As we are especially interested in the experience of
geography. Attending to the diversity of ani-
animals we refer in this paper to an animal’s atmo-
mals’ atmospheres has the potential to greatly
sphere (and animals’ atmospheres in the plural). The
enrich conceptual work in this field. term animal atmospheres might better describe the
Animals have long served as human surro- atmospheric experiences of humans and other animals
gates in scientific research, standing in for human as shaped by encounters with animals.
pathologies associated with a range of affective
and atmospheric conditions. Laboratory and field References
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Lorimer et al. 45

Zierler D (2011) The Invention of Ecocide: Agent Orange, Timothy Hodgetts is the Kadas Senior Research
Vietnam, and the Scientists who Changed the Way We Fellow in the Geopolitics of Wildlife Conservation
Think about the Environment. Athens: University of at Worcester College and the Wildlife Conservation
Georgia Press. Research Unit, University of Oxford. His research
explores the political geographies involved in living
with megafauna.
Author biographies
Jamie Lorimer is an Associate Professor in the Maan Barua is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fel-
School of Geography and the Environment at the low at the School of Geography and the Environment
University of Oxford. His research examines popu- at the University of Oxford. Maan’s research is
lar and scientific understandings of nature and the focused on the politics, spatialities and governance
politics of managing biological life. Past projects of the living and material world, engaging political
have crossed scales from elephants to microbes. ecology and posthumanist thought. His past and
He is the author of Wildlife in the Anthropocene: ongoing research projects include work on urban
Conservation after Nature (University of Minne- ecologies, traffic between nature and capital, and
sota Press). animals’ geographies.
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