😇 A rather special moment on India's Independence Day! 🐕 Our work on “The Indian street dog crisis and multispecies coexistence in tropical urban futures” has made it to the cover of @NatCities (Link: nature.com/articles/s44284-0…) — and onto the journal’s website banner (nature.com/natcities/). But what pleases me most is how the #Thinkpaws team has invested in what the cover depicts. It is not an iconic skyline, a monumental building or a manicured urban landscape, but an ordinary Indian street, with people, dogs, food, traffic, homes, trees and all the negotiations that make a city alive. 1) We argue that Cities have never been exclusively human spaces. Across the Global South, humans and other life forms have shared streets, food systems, waste streams, infrastructure and cultural practices for centuries. Rapid urbanisation is now changing those relationships faster than our institutions, policies and perhaps even our ecological imagination can keep pace. 2) In this Perspective, I argue that the street-dog crisis in India cannot simply be understood through sterilisation, removal, feeding or compassion in isolation. Dogs are embedded within a much larger social–ecological system shaped by food subsidies, waste, infrastructure, human behaviour, animal movement and public health. Perhaps the more interesting question is therefore not simply: How do we manage animals in cities? But: What kinds of cities are we building for a future that will inevitably remain multispecies? Coexistence is not a fixed state. It is a relationship that requires constant steering. Very grateful to see that conversation represented on the cover of Nature Cities (nature.com/natcities/volumes…). Grateful to the @India_Alliance (DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance fellowship based at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (@NCBS_Bangalore) and the Department of Biology, University of Oxford (@OxfordBiology). #NatureCities #UrbanEcology #MultispeciesCities #HumanAnimalCoexistence #OneHealth #UrbanPlanning #FreeRangingDogs #UrbanBiodiversity

🚨Dog Gone?🚨In this 🐶 new @NatCities Perspective, I argue the crisis is not simply about dogs. Conversations on India's street-dog crisis revolve around managing dogs. The fundamental Q concerns coexistence futures we are trying to build? 🧐Link: nature.com/articles/s44284-0…