History of American Urban Squirrel

Dec. 6, 2013 — Until recently, Etienne Benson, an assistant professor in the University of Pennsylvania's Department of History and Sociology of Science, has trained his academic eye on the history of conservation of large, charismatic wildlife, such as tigers, grizzly bears and orcas.

With his latest publication, however, he consciously chose to investigate a creature that may be considered less exotic, and is certainly smaller.

"I wanted to write about something a bit closer to home, about things we see and encounter every day," Benson said. "I wanted to shift the focus to the urban and the quotidian and, in some sense, the trivial, to see what we can learn by looking at trivial nature, or nature that is at risk of being interpreted as trivial."

So he turned his attention to the squirrel.

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