Abstract
This chapter describes animal abuse in war through time, focusing especially on two of the most commonly used species: horses and dogs. It argues that animal abuse in war does not always derive from deliberately harmful human treatment, although that does occur. Rather, the worst abuse often grows out of the structural violence implicit in the form of organized activity that constitutes war as such. Animals have regularly been systematically abused alongside human soldiers, all of whom, at best, endure trying circumstances with poor nourishment in unfamiliar settings, challenging travel and logistics, and so on. The exigencies of war frequently produce the most egregious examples of abuse, with thousands or millions of horses or pigeons or dogs involuntarily exposed to suffering and death, including, too often, mass execution.
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Hediger, R. (2017). Animals in War. In: Maher, J., Pierpoint, H., Beirne, P. (eds) The Palgrave International Handbook of Animal Abuse Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43183-7_22
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43183-7_22
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