Seeing Ourselves in Animals: An Unnatural History

The Object

As long as people have told stories, we have told stories about animals. Stories of slow turtles and fast rabbits, sly foxes and cunning monkeys, that are really stories about ourselves. But why? What can animals tell us about human nature? And what happens to our fellow creatures when we turn them—in art and literature and myth—into something they’re not? You can see Edwin Landseer’s startling painting of the 17th century fable “The Monkey and the Cat” in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art (just don’t show your cat): https://collections.artsmia.org/art/3077/the-cats-paw-sir-edwin-henry-landseer