%0 Journal Article
%T Ethnozoology in Brazil: current status and perspectives
%A R£żmulo RN Alves
%A Wedson MS Souto
%J Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine
%D 2011
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1746-4269-7-22
%X There have been extremely close connections of dependence and co-dependence between humans and animals throughout history [1-7]. Research suggests that humans evolved from a vegetarian lifestyle to the one including meat in their diets around 2.5 million years ago (at the dawn of the genus Homo) [8,9], though just how much of the prehistoric diet included animals is difficult to tell from archeological evidence [10]. Up until around 12,000 years ago, humans derived food and raw materials from wild animals and plants [11]. Other evidence of ancient human-animal relationships can be seen in rock paintings that depict wild animals such as bison, horses and deer with human figures hunting them. This sort of evidence corroborates the observation of Marques [12] that human-animal interactions have constituted basic connections in all societies throughout history.The variety of interactions (both past and present) that human cultures maintain with animals is the subject matter of Ethnozoology, a science that has its roots as deep within the past as the first relationships between humans and other animals. According to Sax [13], human attitudes towards animals probably evolved long before our first attempts to portray them artistically or examine them scientifically. In this sense, it has been speculated that the origin of ethnozoology coincides with the appearance of humans as a species or, perhaps more correctly, with the first contacts between our species and other animals [14]. This view of ethnozoology assumes that these interactions are an integral part of human culture and society.The rich fauna and cultural diversity found in Brazil, with many different species of animals being used for an extremely wide diversity of purposes by Amerindian societies (as well as the descendents of the original European colonists and African slaves), presents an excellent backdrop for examining the relationships that exist between humans and other animals. The first records and contri
%U http://www.ethnobiomed.com/content/7/1/22