Sax - The mythical zoo: animals in myth, legend, and literature

This edition first published in hardcover in the United States and the United Kingdom in 2013
by Overlook Duckworth, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.

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Copyright 2013 by Boria Sax

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

ISBN: 978-1-4683-1646-9

With more than
75 black-and-white illustrations

F rom Aesops Fables to Mickey Mouse, animals have played a pivotal role in human culture. Even today, animals wield symbolic powers as varied as the cultures that embrace them. Sacred cows, wily serpents, fearsome lions, elegant swans, busy bees, and sly foxesall are caricatures of the creatures themselves, yet they reflect not only how different cultures see the animals around them but also how those cultures put their animals to use.

In this fun and thought-provoking book, historian and animal enthusiast Boria Sax argues for a classification of animals that goes beyond the biological to encompass a more meaningful distinction: tradition. From ants and elephants to tigers and tortoises, The Mythical Zoo weaves together a cross-cultural tapestry encompassing mythology, history, art, science, philosophy, and literature. The result is a beautifully illustrated, masterfully composed love letter to the animal kingdom.

City of Ravens

To Humankind

So endlessly vulnerable, foolish, guilty, fragile

Yet as wondrous as the other creatures in this book.

Now as at all times I can see in the minds eye,

In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones

Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky

With their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,

And all their helms of silver hovering side by side,

And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,

Being by Calvarys turbulence unsatisfied,

The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

W. B. Y EATS , The Magi

OTH ANIMALS AND THEIR SYMBOLISM ARE OVERWHELMING IN THEIR variety, and this book could theoretically become as endless as the subject itself. In a similar way, the sources of this book are so many and varied that it would be very cumbersome, and perhaps impossible, to list them all. In a few retellings of stories, I have taken the liberty of inventing bits of dialogue to make the story more vivid. In doing this, I have never changed the plot, and this mild license is certainly in the tradition of the legendary Aesop, whose stories exist in several variants but not in any definitive edition.

In a project such as this one, finding material is not a problem, but deciding what to leave out can be a very big one indeed. My policy has been to emphasize depth rather than breadth. I wished to convey the underlying ideas behind the treatment of animals in myth, legend, and related aspects of human culture, rather than simply give bits of disconnected information.

For the help Ive received in putting together this volume, there are many to acknowledge. I wish to thank my wife Linda Sax, who meticulously read over the manuscript, made corrections, and offered many splendid suggestions. In addition to a fine command of written English, she brought a special perspective as a living history teacher at Historical Hudson Valley. My agent, Dianne Littwin, was extremely helpful in making arrangements, and I also wish to thank her for her faith in the work. I want to thank Peter Mayer and the team at the Overlook Press for their interest, initiative, and helpfulness.

B ORIA S AX , June 2013

Moonmoth and grasshopper that flee our page

And still wing on, untarnished of the name

We pinion to your bodies to assuage

Our envy of your freedomwe must maim

Because we are usurpers, and chagrined

And take the wing and scar it in the hand.

Names we have, even, to clap on the wind;

But we must die, as you, to understand.

H ART C RANE , A Name for All,

OR CENTURIES, JUST ABOUT EVERYBODY HAD ASSUMED THAT BATS WERE mice with wings. When Linnaeus refined the Aristotelian classification of animals in the eighteenth century, he challenged this common sense, in the name of an eternal order decreed by God. After carefully examining their anatomy, Charles Linnaeus proclaimed that bats were actually primates, like monkeys and human beings. Decades later, he reconsidered and placed bats in their own category, the chiroptera, where they have stayed ever since. A bit less than a century later, Darwins Theory of Evolution provided taxonomists with a new paradigmthat of biological inheritance.

But to define an animal strictly in terms of evolution is too narrow, technical, reductionist, or restrictive for many purposes. Scientists generally regard animals as belonging to different species when they do not habitually mate with one another. Although dogs, wolves, jackals, and coyotes are capable of mating together, they generally do not do so in the wild, so each of these is considered a distinct type. This biological definition loses much of its meaning under conditions of domestication, whether on a farm or in a zoo, where animals do not necessarily choose the partners with which they breed. A horse and an ass can mate, and they are often induced to do so in order to produce a mule, which retains useful qualities of each.

The definition becomes almost entirely meaningless when dealing with animals produced by genetic engineering, for which one cannot really speak of species at all. Scientists have produced a cross between a sheep and a goat, known as a geep. They have placed human genetic material in pigs, in order to produce organs that will not be rejected when transplanted into human beings. They also have produced laboratory rats with transparent skin, so that their organs can easily be observed during experiments. Some of these creatures are like the monsters of folklore, and it may be that in the future we will see crosses between human beings and apes or dogs.

With gene splicing, it is now possible to cross not only the divisions of species, but even those between plants and animals. Scientists have inserted genes from flounders into the genetic code of tomatoes in order to increase their resistance to frost, and they have introduced genes from chickens into tomatoes to make the plants more resistant to disease. By inserting genes from a jellyfish into tobacco, they have produced plants that glow in the dark. Genetic theory views all living things, from ferns to human beings, less as either individuals or representatives of species than as repositories of hereditary information, to be endlessly recycled in new combinations.