Can animals have history? After all, the sense of history is assumed to be a part of what makes us uniquely human. Yet, the story of the lions of Gir, now over 500 in number with a range four times what it was a decade ago, gives cause for a cautious rethink.

On the brink of extinction around 1900 in their last forest home in Asia, they recovered under selective protection by princes, the Empire and in independent India. Since hunting ended in the 1950s, there has been a major change in lion behaviour. Far more than in the past and possibly unlike any other big cat population in the wild they often allow humans to come very close on foot. There are conflicts and there have been two instances of "lion plague" but these need to be set against a wider canvas of a remarkable human-animal interaction.

The remaking of carnivore-human interactions has entailed adaptation and change on the part of both. How should these be viewed historically? Peter Boomgaard in writing of tigers in the Malay world (where they were mostly wiped out) spoke of the tigers as "political animals" whose behaviour and habits were deeply conditioned by specific histories they shared with humans. But do the Gir lions merge as actors or actants in a history? Are they products of the historical process or makers of it even if in a very specific sense?

These questions require reflection even if there is no easy answer. They also make us rethink not only what it means to be animal but also what constitutes the human in the world of today.