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Should we consider that nature is the world reserved for non-humans, while culture is home to humans, the latter being endowed with reflexivity, a moral sense, rights and the ability to transform their environment through technology, unlike the former? Should we oppose a world of non-humans accessible through science to a world of humans accessible through the social sciences? By challenging the idea of a radical separation between nature and culture and relativising the universalist scope of the concept of nature, contemporary anthropology has drawn our attention to the underlying principle that structures modern Western thought, while at the same time revealing other ways of being in the world and dealing with non-humans. This article looks at the notion of “nature” and some of the debates to which it has given rise – particularly in ethical and legal terms – and asks whether the interests of non-humans can be taken into account.