Though not often acknowledged openly, killing represents by far themost common form of human interaction with animals. Humans killanimals for food, for pleasure, to wear, and even as religious acts, yetdespite the ubiquity of this killing, analyzing the practice has generallyremained the exclusive purview of animal rights advocates. KillingAnimals offers a corrective to this narrow focus by bringing together theinsights of scholars from diverse backgrounds in the humanities, including art history, anthropology, intellectual history, philosophy, literary studies, and geography. With killing representing the ultimateexpression of human power over animals, the essays reveal thecomplexity of the phenomenon by exploring the extraordinary diversityin killing practices and the wide variety of meanings attached to the