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Protecting animal cultures as World Heritage

Nature Sustainability volume 8, pages 1108–1110 (2025)Cite this article

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It is becoming increasingly clear that animal cultures have intrinsic, irreplaceable value, and yet they are not adequately protected by preserving habitat. The time has come for UNESCO to explicitly protect non-human cultural heritage alongside human heritage.

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Fig. 1: Four examples of animal culture.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK

    Katariina Hynninen

  2. School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

    Danai Papageorgiou

  3. Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Danai Papageorgiou

  4. The Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK

    Jonathan Birch

Authors
  1. Katariina Hynninen
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  2. Danai Papageorgiou
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  3. Jonathan Birch
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Correspondence to Jonathan Birch.

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Nature Sustainability thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Hynninen, K., Papageorgiou, D. & Birch, J. Protecting animal cultures as World Heritage. Nat Sustain 8, 1108–1110 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01641-6

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