Jarrige, François <br/><br/>
Thinking at the Brink of Extinction 

 -  2025.<br/>							 
<br/><br/> 8 
<br/><br/> The work of Australian philosopher Thom van Dooren outlines an original approach to animality, recognizing the urgency of its crisis at a time of collapsing biodiversity. While his early studies focused on birds, long the subject of debates on the risks of species extinction, he subsequently turned to snails, small terrestrial mollusks often neglected but on the verge of extinction in many regions of the world. His approach consists of following scientists and ethologists specialized in different species, comparing their observations with historical accounts of environmental transformations in particular territories in order to better understand the multiple entanglements between species, both human and non-human. His accounts of crises and extinctions challenge historical approaches to the animal world, opening up rich perspectives and methodological reflections that renew our understanding of extinction phenomena and the ethical stakes of the environmental crises currently underway. Van Dooren’s study of animal extinction phenomena also inaugurates an innovative multidisciplinary field of research seeking to provide a social science perspective on the biodiversity crisis and the interactions that shape the life and extinction of species.