Harriet Ritvo

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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Hybridity, Breed, and Wildness

In the view of nineteenth-century British zoologists, hybridization offered a way to test or establish the limits of species. Then as now, the conventional (although problematic) definition of species emphasized the ability to produce fertile offspring. Appearance and morphology provided an inadequate basis for making such distinctions, especially with regard to the relationship between wild and domesticated animals, or, sometimes, between more closely related breeds and varieties. Since categories and boundaries were also of more general interest, scientists or naturalists were not the only people with opinions.  Indeed, the judgments of experts often surreptitiously included criteria that they might have been reluctant to acknowledge. These debates were not confined to exchanges among humans; they were also carried out in the bodies of animals.

התכנסות לקפה וכיבוד קל בשעה 17:45, ליד חדר 449.

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