Y ya que estamos con estudios recientes relativos a animales en el mundo hispánico, nos referimos al libro de Abel Alves, profesor asociado en la Ball State University (Indiana, Estados Unidos). En la web de la editorial Brill podemos leer una pequeña reseña de la obra: "Writings from 1492 to 1826 reveal that the history of animals in the Spanish empire transcended the bullfight. The early modern Spanish empire was shaped by its animal actors, and authors from Cervantes to the local officials who wrote the relaciones geográficas were aware of this. Nonhuman animals provided food, clothing, labor, entertainment and companionship. Functioning as allegories of human behavior, nonhuman animals were perceived by Spanish and Amerindian authors alike as bearing some relationship to humans. On occasion, they even were appreciated as unique and fascinating beings. Through empirical observation and metaphor, some in the Spanish empire saw themselves as related in some way to other animals, recognizing, before Darwin, a "difference in degree rather than kind." No obstante, a pesar de ser un intento valiente de ofrecer una aproximación global sobre la percepción del mundo animal en la cultura hispánica moderna (porque abarca también el continente americano), nos parece que la obra tiene demasiadas lagunas, a juzgar por el contenido de su índice.
1. Animals in the Atlantic World: Perceptions and Associations.
2. Throught the Prism of Human Perceptions: Spanish Intellectuals Write about Other Sentient Beings.
3. Valued Animals and Animal Values.
4. Spirit Guides to Hell? Shape-Shifting and the Power of Animals Inverted.
5. San Martin´s Companion Animals: Nature Domesticated and Blessed.
6. The Animals of Spain: Contnuity and Change.
Datos de la obra: The Animals of Spain: An Introduction to Imperial Perceptions and Human Interaction with Other Animals, 1492-1826, Brill Academic Publishers, 2011, 228 pags.