Why the Porcupine Is Not a Bird is a comprehensive analysis of knowledge of animals among the Nage people of central Flores in Indonesia. Gregory Forth sheds light on the ongoing anthropological debate surrounding the categorization of animals in small-scale non-Western societies.

Forth’s detailed discussion of how the Nage people conceptualize their relationship to the animal world covers the naming and classification of animals, their symbolic and practical use, and the ecology of central Flores and its change over the years. His study reveals the empirical basis of Nage classifications, which align surprisingly well with the taxonomies of modern biologists. It also shows how the Nage employ systems of symbolic and utilitarian classification distinct from their general taxonomy. A tremendous source of ethnographic detail, Why the Porcupine Is Not a Bird is an important contribution to the fields of ethnobiology and cognitive anthropology.

Preface

Note on Orthography

Chapter 1. Introduction

Chapter 2. Investigating Folk Knowledge: A Methodological Prospectus

Chapter 3. Animals, Humans, and Other Mammals

Part 1: Mammals

Chapter 4. Animals of the Village: Domestic and Partly Domestic Mammals

Chapter 5. The Giant Rat of Flores and Other Never Domesticated Mammals

Chapter 6. Symbolic and Utilitarian Dimensions of Mammal Categories: Varieties of Special Purpose Classification

Part 2: Non-mammals

Chapter 7. Birds, or “Creatures that Fly High in the Sky”

Chapter 8. Snakes: The Life-form Nipa

Chapter 9. Neither Fish nor Fowl: A Non-mammalian Miscellany

Chapter 10. Things with Tails but without Backbones: Invertebrates in Nage Folk Zoology

Part 3: Comparisons and Curiosities

Chapter 11. What’s in an Animal Name: Comparative Observations on Animal Nomenclature, Classification, and Symbolism

Chapter 12. When Birds Turn Into Mammals and Mammals into Fish: Nage “Beliefs” about Animal Transformation

Chapter 13. Animal Mysteries and Disappearing Animals

Chapter 14. Concluding Remarks

Appendix 1. Terms for Human and Animal Body Parts

Appendix 2. Growth Stages in Several Wild Animals

Appendix 3. Nage Invertebrate Categories

Appendix 4. Animal Names Used as Personal Names in Central Nage

Gregory Forth is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.