There are some works on the history of animals, yes, though it is usually labeled as something like the history of "human and non-human interactions." My feeling is that a lot of the theoretical/methodological approaches here are from the sociology of knowledge (Latour's emphasis on non-human agents, for example, is often explicitly invoked) and environmental history (which has a lot about human/environmental interactions). There is also a strain in the history of biology which is about human/non-human experimental systems that seems like it comes into the picture (again, very Latourian, but with some Hans-Jörg Rheinberger thrown in as well).

I am not especially versed in this literature other than knowing it exists. There is a book on the history of horses in cities, for example, and a colleague of mine works on the history of marine biology as facilitated through the creation of aquariums (which require pretty complicated setups). There are historical works on zoological gardens and kept animals, and another friend of mine has done work on the use of animals in scientific demonstrations and natural history museums. In grad school I worked with someone who was doing work on dog/human interactions, but I'm not sure if she published on it in English. There is work in the history of evolutionary biology, for example, that looks at the ways in which animals, esp. primates, are used as proxies for understanding human evolutionary history, which ties into some of these issues (e.g. Jane Goodall's work).

As for your specifics, I don't know. But I would maybe peruse some of this literature as a way of wading into these questions...

A historian of Japan at Brigham Young, Aaron Skabelund, delves into this issue of animal history and has a clear description of his methods. Skabelund's essay "Can the Subaltern Bark? Imperialism, Civilization, and Canine Cultures in Nineteenth-Century Japan," in the anthology JAPANimals: History and Culture in Japan’s Animal Life twists Spivak's famous phrase to try and figure out where animals fit within history. He has also given lectures on the subject at Stanford and his monograph Empire of Dogs: Canines, Japan, and the Making of the Modern Imperial World develops these methods in a book-length format. Aside from his methodology (and penchant for snappy titles one of his other essays is "Fascism's Furry Friends: Dogs, National Identity, and Racial Purity in 1930s Japan"), Skabelund might also be of interest because he examines the colonial dynamics that underlay Japanese human-canine relationships. Although I am not versed in the likes of Sandow's and Bauman's specifics, it is notable that they are examining and measuring the fauna that is native to the space of a colonial other.

Anyway, it is worth a look for the very least because Skabelund is a rather entertaining writer.