This publication considers the social significance of animals in pastoral societies. Social significance is here defined as “a process of conversation in which animals give meaning to groups of people and individual humans through particular characteristics and practices based on these animals”. The book comprises a series of papers that explore these questions in twelve pastoral societies on three continents. In addition to this “anthropocentric” viewpoint, some attention is also given to the significance of human decisions in maintaining particular genetically unique types of animals. The papers are divided into four clusters; the significance of the conceptual distinction between wild and domesticated animals; the importance of the socio-cultural factors for the subsistence dimension of human-animal relations in pastoralism; animal symbolism in its gendered, religious and political dimensions; and the global significance of local animal species for humanity. The latter of these clusters includes a chapter on the origin and diversity of Yakutian cattle as revealed by DNA-marker analysis and another on the links between biodiversity and “sociodiversity” using the example of a post-Soviet Siberian village. The book focuses largely on the northern parts of Eurasia, but also includes chapters on the Samburu pastoralists of northern Kenya and the Mbororo of Cameroon.