A little while ago, I went for a walk and spotted a frog in the middle of the pavement. I stopped and squealed \u2013 partly because I live in London and the closest I\u2019ve ever come to wildlife is living in mould-infested flats, but also because I was worried he\u2019d get squashed.<\/p>\n
Before I could figure out how to ensure the safety of my new slimy friend \u2013 who I quickly named Kermit \u2013 two men walked around the corner. I ushered them to walk to one side as I pointed at Kermit. One of them laughed, and, in a French accent (which didn\u2019t alarm me until afterwards when I realised his potential appetite for frogs) said: \u201cOh, don\u2019t worry. She\u2019ll find her way back to safety.\u201d<\/p>\n
As I walked away, I realised he\u2019d referred to Kermit as a \u201cshe\u201d, when I\u2019d assumed he was a \u201che\u201d. I wondered if my tendency to think of animals as male had anything to do with the English language, so I asked a French person.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I saw a dog walk past,\u201d Jesse said, \u201cI would be more likely to say \u2018he\u2019 was cute. A frog, for me, is a she: une grenouille, the same way a spider is une araign\u00e9e.\u201d<\/p>\n
French dog lovers might not instinctively think of Lupin as female. Facebook Twitter Pinterest
\nFrench dog lovers might not instinctively think of Lupin as female. Photograph: David Marsh
\nAs well as the English speaker\u2019s freedom to determine the sex of a new animal, we have another unquestioned animal norm: talking to and about animals as if they\u2019re human. We might call a parrot mouthy, a dolphin happy or a shark evil; this unconscious anthropomorphic habit is ingrained in our language.<\/p>\n
I spoke to George McGavin, an academic and TV presenter on shows including the BBC\u2019s Monkey Planet. For such an animal-obsessive, even he struggles with his own anthropomorphic tendencies. As soon as we began talking he was ruminating aloud over calling an orangutan cute, and how unprofessional it was.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s hard not to fall into the trap of saying an animal is sad or happy. We don\u2019t know for sure \u2013 we bring into it how we would feel. We say elephants are sad when grieving their parents because this is how we would feel in that situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to bring our own experience into the narrative we tell ourselves about animals, and assume they feel emotions.\u201d<\/p>\n
At this point in the conversation it was difficult not to think of McGavin as slightly cold, even if he was making complete sense. But then he said: \u201cI try not to be anthropomorphic at work, but I am at home with my cat,\u201d who he likes to think of as a cuddle-loving, intelligent creature who\u2019s not just in it for the food.<\/p>\n
If McGavin had begun with this confession, I\u2019d have thought nothing of it. But after everything he\u2019d said, I realised how we swing between rational thinking and the automatic, ingrained ways we talk about our furry friends. Lila Gleitman, a US professor of psychology and linguistics, admits: \u201cThough I always think of dogs as males and cats as females, I also know that can\u2019t really be so.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just in it for the food? Facebook Twitter Pinterest
\nJust in it for the food? Photograph: Alamy
\nIn the zoology world, anthropomorphising is met with disdain. In an interview, David Attenborough denied being an animal lover for this reason. But the rest of us can be forgiven for attributing human tendencies to animals, for using words idiosyncratic to our world to tell their stories. Language is there to help us make sense of the world, after all.<\/p>\n
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis says humans are \u201cvery much at the mercy\u201d of language, and speakers of different languages think and see the world differently. Because animals don\u2019t have a language, we extend ours to them \u2013 helping us understand them better and fit into the world as we see it.<\/p>\n
Some of the very first words we learn are animal noises: among the alphabet and numbers were woofs, moos and meows. Alongside \u201cmum\u201d and \u201cpotty\u201d we learned \u201ccat\u201d and \u201cdog\u201d. Surely we can be excused for permeating the animal world with our own language, for filling its relative silence with our explanations. You never know: perhaps the animal kingdom has its own narrative about us.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jessica Brown
\nFriday 13 March 2015 08.00 GMT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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