Second Selves

The animal can be real, like a dog, or imaginary, like a unicorn. It can be a pet, a totem, or just a heron spotted in the sky. But animals provide us with "second selves," which can explore places we cannot enter, see what our sense cannot grasp, and have adventures that are denied to human beings.

Consider what it is like to be a bat, and navigate by echolocation, i.e., by sonar. I imagine that it must be like entering a sort of spirit world, where things have precise locations but lack solidity. What is it like to be a dog, with a sense of smell 500 times as strong as a human being? I imagine that the scents must be rather like intense intuitions, precise and yet intangible. What is it like to be a shark, and hunt prey by their electromagnetic fields? That might be the hardest question so far, but I imagine their world must seem very rhythmic. Maybe it is a sort of musical world, where everything is best expressed in notes.

I study anthrozoology, or human animal relations, and I write scholarly articles about these matters, but my language is far more "academic" than what you have just read. People, in many areas, are focusing more on the way animals show us how to be "human," by providing models, contrasts, and exemplary stories. They also help us to consider, for example, what it means to be an American, a New Yorker, a man, a woman, or almost anything else. Animals are usually present in symbols of identity, from the American eagle and the Thanksgiving turkey to the logos of products and the names of sports teams. The Tower of London help people define what is British, and may be an important myth of the twentieth century. And do we in America have anything to compare?

How about the stories of Bigfoot?