Animals in War Ryan Hediger Introduction Nonhuman animals (henceforth, ‘animals’) have been involved in human wars as long as there have been wars Indeed, given the exceedingly long association between humans and dogs, it is likely that dogs performed informal defensive roles for human encampments before war even existed Thus, human/animal partnerships likely predate war as such and are more fundamental than the waging of war This point is underscored by primatologist Frans De Waal, for instance, in his book The age of empathy There, he challenges what he calls the ‘false origin myth’ of human beings ‘that our species has been waging war for as long as it has been around’ (2009, p 22) De Waal also asserts, ‘Although archeological signs of individual murder go back hundreds of thousands of years, we lack similar evidence for warfare (such as graveyards with weapons embedded in a large number of skeletons) from before the agricultural revolution’ (pp 22–23) Instead of making some essentialist link between war and human nature, then, De Waal argues only ‘that our species has a potential for warfare’ and that ‘our ancestors probably never waged war on a grand scale until they settled down and began to accumulate wealth by means of agriculture This made attacks on other groups more profitable’ (24–25, De Waal’s emphasis) On this point, De Waal joins a R Hediger (*) English Department, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, USA e-mail: rhediger@kent.edu © The Author(s) 2017 J Maher et al (eds.), The Palgrave International Handbook of Animal Abuse Studies, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-43183-7_22 475