Weeping monkeys, or outline of an Amerindian concept of species

Abstract

This article explores part of the Guajá knowledge practices related to animals and to the hunting of howler monkeys, considering the ongoing process of their territory destruction. The article puts forward the connections, constantly done and undone, in a regime that relates humans and animals in many ways. There is no intention, however, to appeal to the idea that hunting and nurturing would be complementary ways of relating to animals. The challenge of understanding revealed by the ways that humans and monkeys live together, may point to an alternative form to think the very concept of “species”. The extra challenge of this article is to explore, from this “notion of species”, how could we think other phenomena, such as, for instance, the yellow fever burst experienced in the southeast Brazil in 2017.