Animals have become the focus of much recent art, informing numerous works and projects featured at major exhibitions. Contemporary art has become a privileged terrain for exploring interspecies relationships, providing the conditions for diverse disciplines and theoretical positions to engage with animal behaviour and consciousness. Artists' engagement with animals opens up new perspectives on the dynamics of dominance, oppression and exclusion, with parallels in human society; and animal nature is at the heart of debates on the 'anthropocene' era and the ecological concerns of scientists, thinkers and artists alike. Centred on contemporary artworks, this anthology attests to the trans-disciplinary nature of this subject, with art as one of its principal points of convergence.