ABSTRACT
Roberto Marchesini argues that human culture and identity are built from animal references and interactions, and this chapter specifies some of the ethological pathways through which this happens. His concept of the theriosphere draws on the Greek θηρίον, and θήρ to describe a process of theriomorphism in which, contrary to worries about anthropomorphism, humans are fundamentally shaped by animal interactions, images, and imaginations. Animals have long represented the only true alterity with which to build conjugative bridges, such that today it is not at all erroneous to seek to identify the animal loans to human culture or to admit that humanity would be linked by a double tie to a sort of theriosphere that in fact represents the archetypological set of every hybrid conjugation. Interaction with animals has always represented the most important fulcrum of orientation for humans, or rather the central node of knowledge.
