Towards coexistence: human-animal co-construction of behaviour in shared spaces
Humans and animals have always shared spaces, food and lives, but little research sheds light on this coexistence. In a new study, AIAS Fellow, cultural biologist Malene Friis Hansen and Professor Agustin Fuentes from Princeton University highlight how humans and macaques co-construct behaviors. They propose a novel transdisciplinary approach, cultural biology, to study coexistence for the benefit of humans, animals and biodiversity.
Co-constructed behaviors and co-cultures among humans and animals might be crucial for coexistence, and engaging with this dynamic relation can help improve our attunement to interspecific relations a novel study, ‘Human-macaque Co-construction of Behaviours: Sharing Spaces, Sharing Food, Sharing Lives’, published in the International Journal of Primatology suggests.
Hansen and Fuentes hope that the ideas presented will spur attention to the co-construction of behavior between humans and other animals and encourage everyone to consider: “with which animals are we co-constructing behaviors in our daily lives?”
Human-macaque co-construction of behaviour
In this collaboratory study, AIAS-AUFF Fellow, cultural biologist Malene Friis Hansen and Professor Agustin Fuentes from Princeton University have reviewed existing literature on human and other-than-human-animal (animals) interfaces through the lens of co-construction of behaviour. This means considering behaviours where both humans and animals are present and enagaging in interspecific interactions and interspecific communication. They provide several examples, but focus specifically on human-macaque interfaces and on how co-constructed behaviours that become persistent and prevalent might become co-cultures.
Malene Friis Hansen explains the approach and implications of considering human-animal co-construction of behaviour:
“On a daily basis, humans and other animals constantly adjust to each other and often this occurs with us not thinking much about it. With our new approach we hope that everyone will consider how they actually practically coexist with animals throughout their day. With a focus on coexistence and on interspecific understanding instead of conflict we may better conserve biodiversity – and we may more smoothly co-live with the animals around us.”
Empirical data on human-animal interfaces across species are needed
In their study, Hansen and Fuentes present three cases of human-macaque co-construction of behaviour, their main area of expertise. Currently much research is conducted in human-other animal interfaces, yet not much on how humans and other animals collaborate and communicate.
The three case examples show how not only local communities and macaques co-constructing behaviours, such as the robbing and bartering in Bali, Indonesia, but also how the sweet-potato washing of Japanese macaques – one of the first documented animal cultures – was actually co-constructed by researchers and macaques.
The lack of analytic focus on interspecific dynamics derives from the common conception that human impact and interfaces in anthropogenic contexts are ‘non-natural’ and provide a primarily negative context for primates and other animals, Hansen and Fuentes point out in their study. Anthropogenic landscapes are often classified as “disturbed” by researchers and not seen as potentially substantive structuring aspects of animal behavioral ecology.
Hansen and Fuentes’s study encourage expanded research within human-animal interfaces to understand interspecific interactions, interspecific communication and interspecific social learning and their consequences and importance – areas that we currently know very little about as empirical data and research is lacking.
Concrete recommendations for a Cultural Biology approach
The study concludes with direct applicable recommendations for research into this phenomen via the new novel transdisicplinary framework, cultural biology, which Hansen, Fuentes, Michael Eilenberg (Aarhus University) and Felix Riede (Aarhus University) are developing together. Cultural biology merges theory and methods from biology, anthropology and the cognitive sciences to enable a deeper understanding of everything humans and animals create together and have created together over space and time.
“Co-constructed behaviors and co-culture are important for, or at least salient to, research into ecological dynamics, coexistence and conservation and we should attempt to understand them better,” Malene Friis Hansen adds.
Funding
The study has received funding from the Carlsberg Foundation, the John Templeton Foundation and the AIAS-AUFF Fellowship programme funded by Aarhus University Research Foundation and Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (AIAS) at Aarhus University.
The scientific article:
‘Human-macaque Co-construction of Behaviours: Sharing Spaces, Sharing Food, Sharing Lives’ by Malene Friis Hansen and Agustin Fuentes in: International Journal of Primatology, 8 November 2025.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10764-025-00526-x
More about Malene Friis Hansen’s AIAS project ‘Towards a Cultural Biology’:
https://aias.au.dk/aias-fellows/current-fellows/malene-friis-hansen
Contact
Malene Friis Hansen, AIAS-AUFF Fellow
E-mail: mfhansen@aias.au.dk
Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, AIAS
Høegh-Guldbergs Gade 6B
DK-8000 Aarhus C
Denmark