The Anthrozoology program is designed to meet the academic needs of students with a wide range of career goals, from those who seek immediate employment to those who plan to pursue graduate or professional studies after graduation. The curriculum is flexible and can be customized to fit your individual interests and needs.

Anthrozoology
Program Details
In this first undergraduate program of its kind in the nation, you’ll explore the complex and often contradictory relationships between humans and other species. You’ll study the good—how animals make our lives richer, more meaningful, and healthier. You’ll also examine the bad—the levels to which humans exploit animals to serve their own needs.
- Major
- Minor

About the Program
When you complete this major, you will:
- Recognize the interconnectedness of human and animal well-being.
- Have in-depth knowledge and skills from the biological, social and psychological sciences to describe and explain the interactions between humans and animals.
- Acquire a high-level understanding of the role animals play in human society.
Featured Courses
Browse all coursesHistorical Perspective: Horses & Humans
This is an introductory course on the relationship between horses and humans in the outer physical world and the inner psychological world.
Equine Assisted Services
This course will explore a variety of methods for partnering with horses for therapy, learning, and horsemanship.
Animals in Popular Culture
Animals in Popular Culture looks at how the use and representation of animals in popular and mass-mediated culture—in genres like film and television, fiction, animation and comic books, art, and the Internet—shape and reveal cultural values.
The Carroll Difference
The Carroll Anthrozoology program is distinguished by its hands-on learning approach to understanding animal and human behavior.
Hands-on learning
Adopt an Animal
In the course of your anthrozoology course work, you will have direct interactions with animals that will enrich your understanding and perspective of the human-animal bond—a bond you may choose to continue. At the end of every academic year, the animals we work with become lovely companion animals.
The Perkins Call Canine Center
The state-of-the-art Perkins Call Canine Center serves as the home of the anthrozoology program. The Center includes a 2,600 sq. ft. canine training room, a 30-seat classroom, faculty offices, research rooms, a veterinary treatment room, wash rooms, and indoor and outdoor kennels.
Internships and research opportunities
You’ll benefit from internship and research opportunities with our partner organizations like Zoo Montana; Working Dogs for Conservation; Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks; and Yellowstone Boys and Girls Ranch. Through our work-study program you may get paid doing what you love—working with horses.
After Graduation
Upon completion of the Anthrozoology program, you’ll be qualified to pursue multiple career paths, including: animal behaviorist; work for a government agency with a connection to animals, such as the USDA, the US Fisheries and Wildlife Service, or other agencies; work at a zoo or aquarium with animals or in another capacity such as outreach, administration, or fundraising; and much more.
If you bought your pet a Christmas present … then you care deeply about anthrozoology. And I am so very proud that we are now offering that as a scholarly and academic degree, and we were first in the nation to do that.
Dr. Anne Perkins Founding anthrozoology professor, from her Tedx Talk