Human-Animal Relationships and Extension of Care During the COVID-19 Pandemic

This chapter investigates how the care of/for animals functioned during the COVID pandemic. We examine two cases in which humans extended care to animals that were dependent on human interventions for daily provisioning: animals in zoos and at temples in Asia. We reveal the fragility of shared human-animal ecologies and vulnerability in the lockdowns that disrupted standard routines of care.

Hyeonbin Park and Dolly Jørgensen. “Human-Animal Relationships and Extension of Care During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” In COVID Studies: A Reader, ed. Alexa S. Dietrich, Scott Gabriel Knowles, and Rodrigo Ugarte. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2026.

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