Why Fables Use Animals

Aesop's The Lion and the Boar.

Source: J van Kessel/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

Fables, cartoons, and viral videos often favor animal over human protagonists. Here’s why.

A fable is a short tale that features animals or other non-human entities (the sun, the wind, trees…), and concludes with an explicit moral lesson, often expressed in the form of a pithy maxim or saying.

Animals that feature in fables are anthropomorphized, that is, attributed human qualities, especially speech and reason, and sometimes a vice or two. But other than that, the fable is fairly realist or true to life, with much more humble characters and commonplace events than the legend and certainly the myth.

According to his student Plato, Socrates spent the days leading up to his execution putting Aesop’s Fables into verse—which is all the more surprising when one considers that Socrates never wrote anything down. Other famous collections of fables include the Buddhist Jataka Tales and the Hindu Panchatantra, and there is likely to have been some crossover between the fabulary of Greece and that of India. For instance, there are both Greek and Indian declensions of The Tortoise and the Birds, not to mention a number of African variants. Fables travel well, in both space and time: because they feature animals, they are timeless and universal. George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945) might be considered a modern and extended adaptation of the fable form.

Here is Aesop’s version of The Tortoise and the Birds, entitled The Tortoise and the Eagle:

A tortoise, unhappy with his lowly station, begged an eagle to teach him to fly. At last, the eagle put his reservations to one side and consented. He picked the tortoise up in his talons, carried him up to a great height, and released his grip. But instead of flying or gliding, the tortoise fell headlong to the ground and was dashed to pieces on a rock. Moral: After vanity comes a downfall.

Similar to the fable in extrapolating from the particular to the general to extract a moral lesson is the parable, the difference between the two forms being that the parable relies on human rather than animal actors—although many fables, particularly in India, also feature humans: a brahmin, a prince, a storyteller, a merchant, an unfaithful or ungrateful wife…

The parable is especially associated with the 37 or so related by Jesus in the Gospels of Luke, Matthew, and Mark. Curiously, the Gospel of John, although it contains allegories, is not held to contain any parables. In Matthew 13, the disciples ask Jesus why he speaks in parables to the multitudes. Jesus replies, “Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.”

Why Fables Feature Animals

So, why does the fable favour animal over human protagonists?

Consider this short fable by Aesop, The Fox and the Mask:

A fox broke into the house of an actor and noticed a mask in the midst of a pile of stage accessories. The fox dragged out the mask and nuzzled and swatted it for a few moments, before saying, “What a handsome face, pity he has no brains.”

What are the advantages here and elsewhere of preferring animal over man?

The use of animals creates new and striking possibilities. This stokes the imagination, making the tale seem more original and entertaining, even charming, without which it might fall flat as moralizing or patronizing.

The use of animals also enables the fabulist to isolate the vice and to caricature it, while at the same time providing a fresh perspective on it.

On a deeper level, it creates a continuum between human and animal, revealing us as a part of nature and at one with it, while also highlighting that which sets us apart from the rest of creation, namely, speech and reason (Greek, logos) and the ethical faculty (Greek, sophrosyne).

Talking animals appeal most to children, possibly because blurring the lines between human and animal is a form of pre-logical, magical thinking.

Finally, the use of animals can serve as a cover, a means of escaping censorship, or of generalizing or universalizing. For instance, Jean de la Fontaine (d. 1695) used the fable form to satirize French society, and Orwell to satirize communism and other forms of totalitarianism.

Animals delight us still today, every day, if only in cartoons and viral videos, because, as the fabulist might say, “So it is with men, too.”

Anthropomorphism Essential Reads

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The Danger of Dishonest Anthropomorphism in Chatbot Design

Read more in The Meaning of Myth.