Here's a Cute Little Fellow

In general I try not to be taken in by anthropomorphism . We do tend to give animals human characteristics in our minds - we tend to assume that animals that look like us feel things as we do too: but it ain't necessarily so. We are also suckers for animals that have any of the characteristics of human babies - so a campaign to Save the Giant Panda (flattish face, appears to have arms and legs, eyes that look huge, general air of vulnerability) will always do better than Save the Boa Constrictor.

These feelings are reflected in the commentaries of some of the less-well-made nature programmes on television. "The mother's agony is too much to bear" said one recently of a doe whose fawn had been eaten. Hmm - the mother looked a bit bewildered for a bit and then carried on as normal. I'm going to anthropomorphise for a bit now. Judging from the doe's behaviour I think her thought sequences went thus, at intervals of only a few minutes:

Oh no! That lion has eaten my fawn! Horror!

Where's my fawn gone?

I've lost something but I can't remember what it is.

I feel vaguely uneasy but I don't know why.

Oh good, there's some grass. Lunchtime.

But there are some animals whose lives are so tough that we can't help but imagine what it would be like for us to be in that situation. Wildebeest, whose lives seem to consist entirely of roaming the African plains waiting to be eaten by big cats, with the occasional interlude of crossing rivers and being eaten by crocodiles. Emperor penguins, which spend days trekking across Antarctic ice and then months sitting motionless with an egg on their feet in temperatures too cold to think about.

And then there's the marabou stork.

He might be whistling a happy little tune to himself. "I'm so lucky! My life is great!" he might be thinking. But he won't be, because that's anthropomorphism too - let's face it, we have no idea what birds think.

To us, though, he looks bloody miserable. Why? Because he's all hunched up like we are when we're sad. He has a bald head and neck and we don't like that in birds: it takes them away from "cute little bird" and into "sneaky little reptile" territory. We like the baldness even less when we find out it's because he eats a lot of carrion: it's so the head and neck feathers don't get covered in blood which might lead to infection.

We need to get it clear in our heads, when looking after any animals, which are the animal's actual needs and when we're just imposing our own emotions on them. Because that's not fair to the animals.