In Islam, the metamorphosis of people into primates and pigs ( Sus sp.) after incurring God's displeasure endowed these animals with harām(forbidden) status and made them unfit for consumption due to their status as degraded humans. Īt the location of the study we report on here, people are predominantly Muslim, and their ideas about animals may be influenced by Islamic ideas and practices. Much effort has been expended in western culture to emphasise people's distance from primates while simultaneously recognising human characteristics in them. Such ambiguity causes problems in the maintenance of strict boundaries between animal and human, and thus primates are more likely to become stigmatised than other species in other words, primates are regarded as occupying spaces betwixt and between human and animal realms - they are liminal. Some animals, for example primates, possess particular characteristics that make them hard to categorise. These species are described as anomalous. Despite these metaphorical boundaries, some wild and domestic species do not fit easily into rigid categories due to conflicting associations with different spaces or spheres. In some cultures, people use religion to strengthen the culturally constructed boundaries they deploy. Postmodernist anthropologists argue that such metaphorical boundaries are not culturally universal so fail to feature in explanations of many people's natural and social worlds. Ī multispecies ethnographic approach can serve to highlight the constructed metaphorical boundaries employed to separate humans from nature in western culture. Understanding how people perceive a species of conservation concern can lead to the development of conservation approaches more attuned to local perceptions, making these approaches more holistic and more effective in fostering a positive human-wildlife interface and inspiring people to participate in conservation activities. This has led to calls for western conservationists to broaden their outlook by adopting an alternative cultural lens. The conservationists' failure to understand diverse views has led to misunderstandings and clashes with the very people with whom conservationists need to engage. In particular, local people's conceptions (ontologies) of and relationships with wildlife can diverge considerably from those of conservationists. Human-animal relations differ considerably across societies and among cultural contexts within societies. The social, cultural, political, historical and symbolic meanings people attribute to an animal species, whether domestic or wild, shape the way in which people perceive and treat that species. We recommend that conservationists examine complex place-based relations between humans and animals to improve wildlife conservation efforts. As with any ethnographic study, our interpretations of human-animal relations in Bouhachem may not extrapolate to other areas of the Barbary macaque's distribution because of the unique nature of both people and the place.

Some shepherds show intrinsic interest in the macaques, revealing potential recruits to conservation activities. Our multispecies ethnographic approach illuminates the different and, in the case of the domestic dog and the Barbary macaque, complex ways shepherds perceive each species.

We interpret these data within the framework of boundary theory.

We analyse ethnographic data to provide insights into shepherds' conceptions of Barbary macaques and the species which bring the shepherds into the forest - goats ( Capra hircus), domestic dogs ( Canis lupus familiaris), and the African wolf ( Canis lupus lupaster). We examine the relationships shepherds, living on the periphery of the mixed oak forest of Bouhachem in northern Morocco, have with animals in the context of a conservation project for Barbary macaques ( Macaca sylvanus). However, in anthropogenic landscapes, understanding and incorporating local people's perceptions may enhance species conservation. Strategies for conserving species threatened with extinction are often driven by ecological data.

Chimpanzee monkey peace fingers