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This article is a conversation between Marie-Thérèse Talensby, a doctoral student with the Extinction Studies doctoral training programme at the University of Leeds, and Dr Juno Salazar Parreñas, Associate Professor of Science and Technology Studies and Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Cornell University. Talking over Skype in July 2023, Dr Parreñas reflects on her current research, exploring the death of a tropical polar bear in Singapore Zoo, her work on Orangutan conservation, and the violence inherent in many methods of animal conservation. In doing so, she highlights the entanglements of human and more-than-human lives in what is being described by scientists and conservation organisations as the sixth mass extinction event. Weaving throughout the conversation are more personal reflections on loss and grief, vicarious trauma, and the transformative potential in moments of decolonisation. This article offers a rich reflection on the experience and impact of researching death and loss, encompassing themes of positionality, boundaries, and the broader socio-cultural context of fieldwork encounters, topics highly relevant to Mortality readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many today, extraction is a damning feature of all ethnography. Yet anthropologically minded ethnographers should not think of themselves as multinational mining corporations. The self‐estimation of any ethnographer, especially an anthropologically minded ethnographer, should be much lower and smaller, as low and small as tiny moles that make new connections by digging channels in the dark. Moles might not be the perfect analogy. They do, however, demonstrate to anthropologically minded ethnographers two important characteristics: they are fuzzy, and they spend an enormous amount of time digging. Ethnographers should be like moles, maintaining a sensitivity to where they tread and where they might dig, feeling compelled to dig deeper instead of staying on the open surface, and being open to a synesthesia of fuzziness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]