What is the earliest story you remember ever being told? Was it Little Red Riding Hood? Maybe Alice in Wonderland? Whether you loved Goldilocks and The Three Bears or hated The Three Little Pigs, animal fiction is not only one of our first introductions to stories, but one of the oldest forms of storytelling in human history. Anthropomorphic fiction is, as far as we can tell, as old as humankind, with animal deities and characters gracing cave walls as far back as 40,000 years ago. Nearly every culture's creation myth involves animals: the Serpent in Eden, the Raven in Native American cultures, the Sumerian story of Bird and Fish. So even if our stories didn't originally involve animals, we decided to integrate animals into the story of our origins.
And animal stories don't stop with childhood. Almost every teenager knows the animals in The Chronicles of Narnia and The Golden Compass, and many boys have fallen in love with reading after discovering the Redwall series or the classic Watership Down. Then there are the animal stories written for adults that we might never recommend for children: the social commentary Ishmael, the brutal graphic novel Maus, Kafka's absurdist short Metamorphosis.
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40,000 years on, anthropomorphic stories still stand the test of time. We're still reading them, we're still writing them, and above all, we're still enjoying them.
Some readers may think animal fiction always takes place in a forest or a farm. That's where animals live, right? But talking animal stories take place in realistic settings recognizable to us (Watership Down, Charlotte's Web), or in fantastical locales (Eragon, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe). These tales exist in historical context (Black Beauty), alternative history (His Majesty's Dragon), or in sci-fi settings like deep space (The Cat from Outer Space). They can even go into microcosmic spaces, like The Bees by Laline Paull. Time is just as flexible, with stories taking place in the past, present, future, or parallel universes.
What's your favorite genre? Thriller? Mystery? Sci-fi? No matter what your tastes, chances are there's an anthropomorphic story in your most beloved genre. Stories with central animal characters range from action adventure to thriller to mystery to space opera. But many classic animal stories share a common theme no matter their genre: empathy. The ability to identify and empathize with other creatures figures heavily in animal fantasy, which is perhaps why many authors choose this format to deal with class conflict (Animal Farm), race (Maus), or simply compassion and corporate morality (The Plague Dogs, Fuzzy Nation). Animal stories are never really, at their core, about animals. They're about us, the human animal.
