Lecture will discuss the practices of preparing human-canine pairs for black truffle hunting in Chile

On June 27, 2025, at 2 pm, LISA will host the lecture “Seeking ‘the best of both worlds’: how a black truffle hunting dog is made in Chile”,  promoted by the Anthropology and Biotechnodiversity Collective (CHAMA-USP), under the coordination of Guilherme Moura Fagundes.

In this presentation, Luísa Fanaro will discuss the practices of preparing human-canine pairs for hunting black truffles (Tuber melanosporum)  in Chile. Based on her ethnography, the author shows that this process depends on a dual dynamic of communication: between dogs and  truffles — an underground fungus — and between dogs and humans. If, on the one hand, it is necessary to “condition” or “manufacture” the  animals for this activity — through a process that involves choosing the parents, selecting the puppies and their subsequent training —, on the  other hand, dogs also participate in the formation of the humans with whom they live and work, teaching them to interpret signals,  gestures and sensory forms of perception. Through field data, Fanaro argues that it is through the canine sense of smell that what is hidden  underground can be revealed. It is the dogs that connect to the smell of truffles, allowing humans access to an invisible subterranean world.  This world only becomes accessible thanks to interspecific communication: a sensitive dialogue mediated, on the one hand, by the odors that  connect dogs and fungi and, on the other, by the joint construction of ways of understanding, translating and sharing this olfactory experience.