INTRODUCTORY ESSAY TO OUR EXPLORATION OF MONSTROSITY Explanation of Color Scheme/Spatial Metaphors of Site Glossary of Terms

      The Oxford English Dictionary lists five definitions for monster:            1. Something extraordinary or unnatural; a prodigy, a marvel.            2. An animal or plant deviating in one or more of its parts from the normal type; spec.,            an animal afflicted with some congenital malformation; a misshapen birth, an abortion.            3. An imaginary animal (such as the centaur, sphinx, minotaur, or the heraldic griffin, wyvern, etc.)            having a form either partly brute and partly human, or compounded of elements from two or more            animal forms.            4. A person of inhuman and horrible cruelty or wickedness; a monstrous example of (wickedness,            or some particular vice).            5. An animal of huge size; hence, anything of vast and unwieldy proportions.

     The word 'monster' in America today can mean all of these things, though in the common vernacular it is generally used as 3 and 5 above: 'Monsters' are creatures we become on Halloween; we drive 'monster' trucks and look for jobs on 'Monster.com.' 'Monster' implies largeness, a quality almost universally admired in American culture. But what does the existence of monsters (as 'imaginary' animals) in a culture signify?

     A culture's monsters emblematically embody its most acute anxieties. Cultures create and ascribe meaning to monsters, endowing them with characteristics derived from their most deep-seated fears and taboos. The body of the monster, then, becomes the site of these cultural proscriptions, representing the taboos of the societies that spawn them: "the monster's body quite literally incorporates fear, desire, anxiety, and fantasy . . . , giving them life and an uncanny independence" (Cohen 4). A monster cannot be contained. A monster disobeys its master, overspills its margins, consumes its benefactors. We make scapegoats of our monsters, attributing to them our own misdeeds and faults while using them as vehicles for intergenerational transfers of taboos and morals.

      The monster becomes a way of explaining the seemingly inexplicable. The humanoid form most monsters assume is our own--familiar yet unfamiliar--and transgressions performed by the monster reinforce its status as 'other:' "In its function as dialectical Other or third-term supplement, the monster is an incorporation of the Outside, the Beyond--of all those loci that are rhetorically placed as distant but originate Within" (Cohen 7). A monster dwells on the fringes of what is culturally acceptable (Grendel). Banished to the physical and social hinterlands, he is also border guard (Sasquatch). Whoever crosses into the monster's realm has also transgressed, broken the taboo, courted contamination. The transgressor must then encounter the monster on its own terms.

      In Totem and Taboo , Sigmund Freud writes that taboo, originally a Polynesian word, means something that is simultaneously sacred and profane (821). Taboo does not solicit silence nor encourage ignorance, but demands rather an awareness and deliberate avoidance of the sacred/profane object or action. Taboo is characterized by a "dread of physical contact . . . . [and a conviction] that violation will be followed by unbearable disaster," which is not necessarily "external" or physical (828). The violator of a taboo likewise becomes taboo and must be avoided. Freud writes that the transgressor "has the dangerous property of tempting others to follow his example . . . . He is therefore really contagious [emphasis mine], in so far as every example incites to imitation and, therefore, he himself must be avoided" (832).       Acknowledging that any system of categorization is somewhat arbitrary, subject as it must be to the caprices and whims of its creators, we propose four categorical rubrics of origination for our discussion of monstrosity, with the premise that each monster symbolizes one or more cultural taboos: Reanimated Monsters (once-dead monsters revived); Ecological Monsters (monsters with environmental origins); Human Monsters (genetic freaks and psychotics); and Technological Monsters (monsters coming into being through the (mis)application of technical knowledge). Such a taxonomy allows for the cross categorization of monsters with multiple narratives of origin (thus the vampire might be viewed as both a human and a reanimated monster).  A table of taboos and monsters is included within this site, encouraging comparisons and debates about the meanings of the monsters and their relations to one another. Furthermore, each over- view contains a "Monster Blender" which visually depicts the melding of related creatures, reinforcing the similarities of the monsters and ourselves. Perhaps the horror derived from cinematic and literary monsters stems from the latent monstrosity that lurks within each and everyone of us.

Click here for the Childhood Monsters Essay

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The Imaginary of Animals (Routledge Human-Animal Studies)

Description.

This book explores the phenomenon of animal imagination and its profound power over the human imagination. It examines the structural and ethical role that the human imagination must play to provide an interface between humans' subjectivity and the real cognitive capacities of animals.

The book offers a systematic study of the increasing importance of the metaphors, the virtual, and figures in contemporary animal studies. It explores human-animal and real-imaginary dichotomies, revealing them to be the source of oppressive cultural structures. Through an analysis of creative, playful and theatric enactments and mimicry of animal behaviors and communication, the book establishes that human imagination is based on animal imagination. This helps redefine our traditional knowledge about animals and presents new practices and ethical concerns in regard to the animals. The book strongly contends that allowing imagination to play a role in our relation to animals will lead to the development of a more empathetic approach towards them.

Drawing on works in phenomenology, contemporary animal philosophy, as well as ethological evidence and biosemiotics, this book is the first to rethink the traditional philosophical concepts of imagination, images, the imaginary, and reality in the light of a zoocentric perspective. It will appeal to philosophers, scholars and students in the field of animal studies, as well as anyone interested in human and non-human imaginations.

About the Author

Annabelle Dufourcq is Associate Professor in Philosophy at Radboud University. She researches and teaches in the areas of contemporary continental philosophy and animal studies. She is the author or editor of several books on the relation between the real and the imaginary from a phenomenological perspective.

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imaginary animal essay

Friday essay: from political bees to talking pigs – how ancient thinkers saw the human-animal  divide

imaginary animal essay

Professor, Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of Sydney

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Julia Kindt received funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) and is a member of the Sydney Environment Institute.

University of Sydney provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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What makes us human? What (if anything) sets us apart from all other creatures? Ever since Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, the answer to these questions has pointed us back to our own animal nature.

Yet the idea that, in one way or another, our humanity is entangled with the non-human has a much longer and more venerable history. In the West, it goes all the way back to Classical antiquity – to Greek and Roman views about humans and animals.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322) first argued the human stands out from all other animals through the presence of logos (“speech” but also “reason”). Numerous Greek and Roman thinkers engaged in similar attempts to name what, exactly, sets humans apart.

Who or what is man? The arguments these philosophers came up with verged from the obscure to the outright bizarre: The human alone has the capacity to have sex at all seasons and well into old age; the human alone can sit comfortably on his hip bones; the human alone has hands that can build altars to the gods and craft divine statues. No observation seemed too far-fetched or outlandish.

A painting of a bearded man, Aristotle.

And yet, above all, the argument that animals lack logos continued to resonate. In classical antiquity it became powerful enough to coin the very word for animals in ancient Greek: ta aloga – “those without logos”.

This position was taken up by the philosophical school of the Stoics and from there came to influence Christianity, with its view of man made in the image of God.

The idea of an insurmountable gap between humans and other animals soon became the dominant paradigm, informing, for instance, the 18th century naturalist Carl Linnaeus’s influential classification of the human as homo sapiens (literally: the “wise”, or “rational man”).

The practical implications of this idea cannot be underestimated. What has been termed “ the moral status of animals ” – the question of whether they should be included in considerations of justice – has traditionally been linked to the question of whether they have logos. Because animals differ from humans in lacking both speech and reason (so this line of argument goes) they cannot themselves formulate moral positions. Therefore, they do not warrant inclusion in our moral considerations, or at least not in the same way as humans.

Increasingly, of course, as many contemporary philosophers have pointed out, this idea seems too simple.

New research in the behavioural sciences illustrates the at times astonishing capacities of certain animals: crows and otters using tools to crack open nuts or shells to make their contents available for consumption; octopuses lifting the lids to their tanks and successfully escaping to the ocean through pipes; bees optimising their flight path on repeated trips to a food source.

A pink octopus in a tank.

But there is, in fact, a considerable body of evidence from the ancient Greek and Roman worlds showcasing the complex behaviours of different kinds of animals.

Ancient authors like Pliny , Plutarch , Oppian , Aelian , Porphyry , Athenaeus and others have dedicated whole books or treatises to this topic, pushing back on the notion of animals as merely “dumb beasts”.

Their views anticipated the modern debate by attributing animals not only with forms of reason; they also highlighted their capacity to suffer, to feel pain and to feel empathy towards each other and, occasionally, even towards members of the human species.

Then there are the human-animal hybrid creatures of the Greek and Roman myths (more on this later) – the Sirens, the Sphinx, the Minotaur. All combine the body parts of human and animal. Individually and collectively they thus raise a fundamental yet potentially disturbing question: what if we are really, in part at least, animal?

Ancient animal-smarts

imaginary animal essay

In On the Nature of Animals (late second/early third century CE), Aelian, a Roman author writing in Greek, described fish that helped their unfortunate mates when caught at sea, setting their backs against the trapped creature and “pushing with all their might to try to stop him from being hauled in”.

He wrote, too, of dolphins that helped fisher-folk, pressing the fish in “on all sides” so they couldn’t escape. In return, they were rewarded for their labours by a share of the catch.

He celebrated the clever design of beehives, observing:

The first thing that they construct are the chambers of their kings, and they are spacious and above all the rest. Round them they put a barrier, as it were a wall or fence, thereby also enhancing their importance of the royal dwelling.

By parading animal-smarts in action these examples – of which there are hundreds - astonish, inform, and entertain at the same time – similar perhaps to the ubiquitous reels showing animals doing amazing things circulating in modern social media.

Modern ethological studies variously observe animal behaviours which reverberate with Aelian’s examples.

Pairs of rabbit fish have been shown to cooperate, with one partner standing on guard protecting the other one while feeding. Honeybees indeed build bigger cells for their queen that are set apart at the bottom of the hive separated by thicker walls. And bottlenose dolphins have been found to cooperate with humans in their efforts to capture fish.

Dolphins swimming over seagrass.

While not all of the ancient anecdotal evidence is confirmed by modern research, the overall thrust is clear: it deserves to be taken seriously and is part of the ancient conversation of what makes us human.

The power of storytelling

Some Greek and Roman thinkers resorted to the medium of storytelling to articulate views that are essentially philosophical in nature. The Greek philosopher Plutarch’s treatise Beasts are Rational draws on the famous story from Homer’s Odyssey in which some of Odysseus’ comrades are turned into pigs by the sorceress Circe.

Read more: Guide to the Classics: Homer's Odyssey

Odysseus is eventually able to convince the sorceress to turn them back into human beings. In Plutarch’s rendering of the story he returns to Circe’s island to check whether there are any other Greeks turned animal – and finds a pig named Gryllus (“Grunter”).

A painting of men with animal heads.

Things take a turn for the unexpected when Grunter declines Odysseus’ offer of help. The reason? He prefers his animal to his human existence.

Grunter sets out to make an impassioned, highly rational case, arguing all animals in one form or another, have reason. Individual species differ from each other merely in the extent of and kind of reason. And, yes, this includes even those animals that have come to serve as the epitome of dumbness: sheep and the ass.

“Please note,” he adds, “that cases of dullness and stupidity in some animals are demonstrated by the cleverness and sharpness of others – as when you compare an ass and a sheep with a fox or a wolf or a bee.”

Grunter is not afraid to push things even further: Don’t individual humans, too, differ from each other in cleverness and wit? Long before the arrival of evolutionary theory, the pig here points towards a gradual view of how certain features, skills, and capacities map onto a continuum of all living creatures (the human included). The implied conclusion: there is no insurmountable gap between the human and other animals.

Grunter’s views are supported by others such as the speaking rooster of Lucian’s The Dream or the Cock (second century CE). Claiming to be the latest in a long line of previous incarnations that include (brace yourself) – the philosopher Pythagoras, the Cynic philosopher Crates, the Trojan hero Euphorbus, the Greek courtesan Aspasia, and several animals – this rooster-philosopher, too, prefers his animal to his human existence.

Animals, the rooster argues, are content with the basics; humans, by contrast, over-complicate things because they can’t get enough and greedily strive for ever more.

Read more: Guide to the classics: Darwin's The Descent of Man 150 years on — sex, race and our 'lowly' ape ancestry

Myths and hybrid monsters

Myth is arguably the most influential genre of ancient storytelling. A set of malleable tales of great age and importance, myth constitutes a world apart, a medium just far enough removed from the intricacies (and banalities) of everyday life to allow for the exploration of fundamental questions concerning the human condition. And Greek myths often explore human entanglements with non-human animals in ways that reference the philosophical debate.

The mythical figure of the Minotaur for example – a hybrid creature sporting the head of a bull and the body of a human male – does not seem to adhere to the norms and conventions applying to either of his composite identities.

A painting of a minotaur.

His insatiable appetite for young humans sets him apart from accepted behaviour for both humans and cattle alike, identifying him as monstrous.

But what are monsters for?

This question also applies to another famous hybrid beast of the ancient world: the Theban sphinx. Perched high outside the gates of the city of Thebes, in the region of Boeotia in central Greece, this creature (half woman, half lion, often endowed with an extra set of wings) challenges all wishing to enter with the following riddle:

What is that which has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed?

Many try and fail to name the right answer, paying for it with their lives. Until Oedipus comes along. He gives the correct answer and thus busts the beast, which dutifully throws itself to death.

imaginary animal essay

The creature in the riddle is, of course, the human: man first crawls on four legs, then walks on two, until in old age when a walking stick may serve as a third “leg”. And yet despite his clever wit, Oedipus is ultimately unable to use reason to his and the city’s advantage (a situation explored in depth in Sophocles’ famous tragedy Oedipus the King ).

What is the point of the riddle of the Sphinx? This story poses the human as a question but also illustrates the limits of logos in gaining self-understanding. Oedipus can solve the beast’s riddle; yet the riddle of his own humanity remains unresolved until it is too late. Here, the monstrous figure holds up a mirror for the human to recognise himself.

Speaking animals

Logos (in the sense of speech) also features prominently in the intervention of another iconic creature from classical antiquity: Xanthus, Achilles’ speaking horse.

On the battlefields of Troy (featured in Homer’s Iliad) Xanthus reminds Achilles of his imminent death. In this way the horse seems to tease all those thinkers (ancient and modern) who have argued the human stands out from all other animals in his capacity to speak in complex sentences.

Read more: Guide to the classics: Homer's Iliad

A painting of a Greek god with two horses.

Xanthus’s voice resonates with that of numerous other speaking animals populating Greek and Roman literature, including the gnat of Pseudo-Virgil’s Culex , the speaking eel in Oppian’s didactic poem On Fishing , and the whole chorus of animals speaking to us in ancient fables.

Individually and as a group they raise a question: what if animals could speak to us in human language? What would they have to say to those humans prepared to listen?

As it turns out in these stories, often nothing too flattering. In classical antiquity, speaking animals often use their special position to question or examine the human condition.

Xanthus is a case in point. By reminding Achilles he is fated to die at Troy, the speaking horse reminds the Greek hero of an important aspect of the human condition: his own mortality and the fact that he, too, is ultimately subject to powers beyond human control.

The political bee

In Greek and Roman accounts of honeybee politics we find a peculiar human habit with a surprisingly long history: the attribution of political qualities to honeybees.

When we distinguish a “queen bee” from “workers” we are continuing a tradition that goes back to the ancient world (and possibly beyond). Aristotle names honeybees among the zoa politika (the “political animals”) – a category that includes wasps, ants, cranes, and, above all, the human.

imaginary animal essay

He and others then set out to explore the intricacies of honeybee society. The ancient Greeks and Romans traditionally considered honeybees to inhabit a monarchy. In line with the gender realities of the ancient world, they imagined this monarchy to be led by a king or male leader.

Does the bee monarch have a stinger? If not, how does he assert his power and leadership? And what does the presence of the obviously unproductive drones in the hive say about the distribution of labour in a community? These are the kind of questions that resonated among Greek and Roman thinkers.

Honeybee society thus provided a perfect microcosm to study a set of questions that concerned human politics and society. The Roman philosopher Seneca, for instance, asserted that the bee monarch leads by clementia (mercy or mildness) - a form of leadership he found woefully lacking in contemporary Roman society.

Meat and man

So far we have seen animals mostly playing a symbolic role in Graeco-Roman storytelling. There is also a very real way in which human and animal bodies come to merge: through the human consumption of meat.

The ancient Greeks and Romans were ardent meat-eaters. Indeed meat-eating became a status symbol closely linked to the articulation of masculine identities.

In classical Greece the male citizen received his equal share of meat after communal religious sacrifices carried out by the polis (“city-state”). Meat eating also features prominently in several anecdotes about successful ancient Greek athletes who toned their extraordinary bodies through the consumption of ridiculous amounts of meat.

One of them – a boxer named Theagenes – even claimed to have gobbled up an entire oxen in one sitting. Another one – Milo of Croton – apparently gained his extraordinary strength by carrying a heifer on his back as a young man until both he and the heifer had grown up.

Meanwhile at Rome, the elites sought to outdo each other by hosting ever more lavish dinner parties typically featuring one or several meat dishes. More often than not this involved attempts to serve a bigger or larger quantity of boar than their peers. Roman sumptuary laws eventually sought to control the worst excesses – albeit with limited success.

The shearwaters of Diomedea

The real also blends into the imaginary in the story of a special kind of bird. The Scopoli Shearwater ( Calonectris Diomedea ) is a species common to the Adriatic and other parts of the Mediterranean Sea. One of its outstanding features is that its cries resemble that of a wailing baby. These birds feed on small fish, crustaceans, squid, and zooplankton and are both migratory and pelagic.

The stories told about these birds by several ancient authors bring us to what is perhaps the most momentous way of exploring the human-animal boundary: the idea that in the realm of myth, at least, some humans, under certain conditions, could turn into animals and back again (metamorphosis).

A shearwater in the sea.

According to Aelian , some shearwaters residing on a rocky, otherwise uninhabited island in the Mediterranean Sea showed puzzling behaviour. They duly ignored all non-Greeks arriving on their island. Yet if Greek people reached their shores they welcomed them with stretched wings, even settling down on their laps as if for a joint meal.

What motivated this curious behaviour?

The backstory explains that the birds were once human. They were the comrades of Diomedes, king of Argos, one of the Greeks fighting at Troy, who is said to have died on the same island now inhabited by the birds. Apparently, upon his death, his friends grieved so heavily the goddess Aphrodite turned them into birds – their cries forever bemoaning the passing of their comrade.

On the face of it this story is merely another example of a myth explaining an outstanding feature in nature (the birds’ endearing human-like cry ). Yet there is more to the birds’ curious behaviour than meets the eye. In discriminating between Greeks and non-Greeks the birds seem to recall not only their former humanity but specifically their Greekness; they even seem to engage in the central Greek practice of extending friendship to guests ( xenia ) and the sharing of food.

In doing so they illustrate a central point of ancient (and many modern) tales of metamorphosis: even though the body may turn animal, the mind remains human. As the seat of logos it contains our humanity while the body adds little, if anything, of substance.

As such, rather than imagining what the world looks like from the point of view of a non-human creature, tales of metamorphosis ultimately come to reaffirm the view that the human stands apart from all other animals.

The Trojan Horse and other stories: book cover

In the myth of the Minotaur, the Greek hero Theseus eventually enters the labyrinth in which the Minotaur is confined, tracking him down, and slaying him. With the help of a thread given to him by Ariadne, he finds his way back out to tell the tale.

But trying to make sense of the Minotaur and other iconic creatures from the ancient world leads us down a rabbit hole into a place of blurred boundaries: where the human emerges as a contested figure somewhere in the space between mind and body, human and animal parts.

In the end, then, there is no hard and fast boundary separating us from all other creatures – notwithstanding all efforts to dress ourselves up as different. Rather, it is the negotiations between different facets of our identity which make us human

  • Ancient Greece
  • Animal rights
  • Greek mythology
  • Animal behavior
  • Friday essay
  • The Odyssey
  • meat eating

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Garland Magazine

The stories behind what we make, imaginary animals, auspicious companions.

5 March 2021

imaginary animal essay

Huh Sangwook, Buncheong Vase with Design in Underglaze Cobalt-blue and Silver Paint, 2020. Commissioned by Dochwi for the exhibition Imaginary Animals, Auspicious Companions (2020). ©Dochwidochwi

Moon Yujin finds a consolation of animality in contemporary South Korean ceramics,  especially in the playful work of Yon Hokyung

I picture beings that can accompany us at our side, making eye contact, helping put a smile on our faces and transferring positive energy—mystical animals that seemed to have been seen somewhere, existences that defend the order of nature and values that humans fail to maintain, animals that spark conversations with us, telling us that good things will happen and wishing us health and well-being, animals that tell us stories intertwined with the history of mankind, at times with dignity, and at other times with humor.

In this light, Imaginary Animals, Auspicious Companions was born with the notion of consolation. It is the mission of Dochwi (12-27, Keep in Touch, Seoul) to introduce to the public through organized curation the ceramic works of our time, many of which lay hidden like treasures, and to expand the opportunities to enjoy them, thereby deepening appreciation for them. In conjunction with this mission, Imaginary Animals, Auspicious Companions has been organized with the aim of offering everyone the opportunity to approach ceramics in a simple and comfortable manner.

Depictions of animals and pictorial representations executed on earthen surfaces have played a role in providing emotional comfort to humans, practically and symbolically, since the days when we lived in caves. From infancy, children today encounter images of animals in picture books, draw animals faces in the sand at the playground, and make sculptures of animals out of clay at school. When they become adults, they express their emotions using faces of imaginary characters in the form of emojis. However, the spiritual animals that were born thousands of years ago remain asleep in antique art, having lost almost all of their meaning in the present day. Imaginary Animals, Auspicious Companions seeks to bring these animals back to life through the efforts of contemporary artists, that is, awaken them out of the ground and to bring them back into our daily lives.

Consoling Companions

imaginary animal essay

Imaginary Animals, Auspicious Companions (12 – 27 Sept. 2020, Keep in Touch Seoul) Exhibition view. ©Dochwidochwi

The history of drawing on natural earthen surfaces goes hand-in-hand with the history of art. From prehistoric times, humans have painted images of animals using mineral pigments or carved them on rock walls, and the dirt walls of ancient tombs and houses have been adorned with representations of people, (urban or imaginary) landscapes, and animals. Earthenware was decorated with geometric patterns, mythical figures, and symbolic designs, and narrative scenes and icons demonstrating the power of cities and nations or religious teachings were carved into rocks and bricks or presented in mosaics. With the discovery of new materials, the development of methods for expression, and the evolution of aesthetics, drawings executed on earthen surfaces and drawings as a form of visual art separated and came to develop their own respective languages. However, the former still continues to exude vitality in the form of ceramics, the oldest composite product of nature and human knowledge.

Of the numerous existences and concepts that humans have expressed in natural earthen surfaces, animals are the most common subjects regardless of the period or region. From hunting targets to livestock providing labor and food, working animals supporting human life, and pets sharing emotional companionship with humans, animals, as evidenced by the varied roles they play in the lives of people, have long been the most important and therefore the closest beings in human life. It is no coincidence that the history of art begins with animal paintings. Today, it is a video of a cat next door yawning peacefully, a dog that understands the words of his owner, a koala eating eucalyptus leaves with sleepy eyes on the other side of the globe, or a waddling quokka with a smile on its face that offer consolation to humans exhausted from the rigors of daily life, anxiety, and the irrationalities of society.

Animals, therefore, served as a metaphor for the abilities, qualities, or lives that humans desired or expressed the frightening existence of an opposite nature that needed to be overcome.

Of course, animals were not always expressed as cute, friendly beings. In ancient times, animals were mainly depicted as powerful superior beings representing deities or symbols of some transcendental power governing the processes of nature necessary for human survival. In general, these symbolic animals were usually born with a nature related to the power or role of a deity or were beings created by combining the major characteristics, personalities and appearances of several animals. Animals were sometimes portrayed as being bad-natured, attractors of evil, or ominous omens. Animals, therefore, served as a metaphor for the abilities, qualities, or lives that humans desired or expressed the frightening existence of an opposite nature that needed to be overcome.

imaginary animal essay

Exhibition view. Yoon Jung x Chae Sangwoo, Imaginary Animal — Lion, 2020. Commissioned by Dochwi for the exhibition Imaginary Animals, Auspicious Companions (2020). ©Dochwidochwi

Such hybrids of gods and animals, humans and animals, or animals and other animals occupy a significant proportion of the realm of imaginary animals. Having grotesque appearances and possessing numinous powers, these animals, regardless of whether or not they actually exist in the natural world, are all beings that were devised and created in accordance with human perspectives and cultural needs. Therefore, it can be said that human desire is the base of mythical imagination. These desires could be communal ones, such as successful hunting, a year of abundance without drought or flood, prosperity for a family, safety, victory for a race or nation, or the acquisition of a personal benefit such as hearth, success, wealth, longevity, and well-being in the next life. At the moment it is believed that these desires will come true, they are transformed into hope and distributed in the form of myths and legends. In this light, the imaginary animals, half-human/half-animal creatures, legendary creatures, and half-deity/half-animal creatures that appear in ancient myths and legends in both the East and West are transmitters of hope. They nonchalantly traverse time and space and pass hope along to the human realm.

Imaginary Animals on Drawings and Ceramics

Imaginary Animals, Auspicious Companions is composed of works by artists of our time who employ drawing as a major element in their work, reinterpreting the iconography of traditional imaginary animals in their own style. The exhibition unfolds in two streams—one is the iconography of imaginary animals carrying auspicious meaning, and the other is the “ceramic drawings,” that is, methods of expression. Contemporary ceramic patterns have diversified according to personal narratives, environments, interests, and methods of expression, and artists design their own formative language instead of merely executing conventional surface decorations. The artists adjust the texture or color of the clay, and carve, scrape away, and place brushwork on the surfaces. Imaginary Animals, Auspicious Companions seeks to highlight the “drawings on ceramics” created by artists who ably manipulate the relationship between clay, slip, pigments, and glaze and express themselves by implanting narratives and symbols within the layers that comprise the works.

Yon Hokyung, Yoon Jung, Lee Jeongyong, Lee Changhwa, and Huh Sangwook are all ceramicists who have developed their own distinctive styles by selecting materials, techniques, and subject matter through individual artistic and creative will. Chae Sangwoo is a picturebook artist who was invited to participate in the exhibition with the hopes of adding a unique layer to the narrative and portrayal of imaginary animals through his unconventional style of illustration. At the exhibition, the artists present auspicious and guardian beings of which no two are the same and have been created through skilled crafting using classical methods of expression and technique, delicately, but at times boldly, incising, scraping away, and applying color to the surfaces.

Yon Hokyung incises witty drawings and letters on her buncheong vessels covered in white slip. These colored drawings that intuitively express deeply personal thoughts and emotions have established the artist’s distinctive style of buncheong ware together with her satirical vessel forms. In the exhibition, she presents buncheong objet d’art in a folk painting-style featuring animals that embody her personal wishes, such as a pair of cranes, tiger and magpie, and a carp that desires to become a dragon. Her animals, as if performing a self-mocking monologue, spew out the dream of the artist with expressionless faces.

Rather than pursuing pattern-based buncheong ware, the emerging ceramicist Yoon Jung explores ways to express the essence and texture of rough stoneware clay. She presents at the exhibition stoneware vessels that she produced together with the picturebook artist Chae Sangwoo. The collaborative works featuring layers of embedded bold animal drawings by Chae and the incised and scratched away patterns rendered by Yoon are definitely the icing on the cake for the exhibition.

Lee Jeongyong experiments with the expression of white porcelain in our time. In the exhibition, he presents works with gimyeogdo (painting of objects) compositions, arranging vessels with designs of bonghwang and a tiger and cub within a circular frame. Also exhibited are works depicting a flying dragon executed with simple, concentrated brush strokes. Lee adds further layers to the fundamentals of the archetypical white porcelain of the Joseon Dynasty, introducing delicate and elegant cobalt-blue pigments and, moreover, folk humor. In addition, he adds a tactile dimension to his work by applying a rough white slip to the surfaces of his refined porcelain and leaving traces of brushstrokes on the gently hued color planes.

imaginary animal essay

Exhibition view. Lee Jeongyong, White Porcelain Jar and Wall plate with Dragon Design in Underglaze Iron, White Porcelain Wall Plate with Bonghwang Design, 2020. Lee Changhwa, White Porcelain Plates with Animal Design in Underglaze Cobalt-blue, 2020. Commissioned by Dochwi for the exhibition Imaginary Animals, Auspicious Companions (2020). ©Dochwidochwi

Lee Changhwa has developed a unique style of white porcelain through a process of constant renewal. Following his usual method of work, voluntarily detaching himself from the outside world, he has created completely imaginary creatures that are indecipherable from the perspective of preexisting iconography. These mythological creatures drawn spontaneously from energies poured out in moments of immersion slowly reveal a mythical and dignified energy from the layer of deep, intense cobalt-blue underglaze.

Huh Sangwook conveys the vitality inherent in buncheong through his remarkable sensitivity in working forms and planes. His distinctive vivacious animal drawings have become more free-spirited by incorporating traditional imaginary animals as iconography. He has filled the surfaces of his vases, stools, and cups characterized by round, warm, relaxed silhouettes with drawings of dragons, white tigers, girin, haetae, moon rabbits, and inmyeonjo . His animals, each embracing a unique narrative, comfort us with a gentle smile on their faces.

imaginary animal essay

Special Edition Tiles Auspicious Animals, commissioned by Dochwi for the exhibition Imaginary Animals, Auspicious Companions (2020). ©Dochwidochwi

In this light, the spatial dimension of the exhibition has also appropriated the similarity between ceramics and murals and the concept of layering. Under the basic direction of presenting murals in a three-dimensional space, we tried to create layers of diverse materials and perspectives. First, all the works have been arranged horizontally and vertically so that they can be enjoyed from both inside and outside the exhibition space. Moreover, the display stands are comprised of stacked blocks made of mortar and plaster and finished with metal tops to serve as a metaphor for the material layers of murals. The ceramics with drawings are placed on these stands. In other words, murals are inserted into ceramics, and the ceramics becomes a decorative pattern that emerges on top of the three-dimensional mural.

Imaginary Animals, Auspicious Companions presents ceramics that anyone can enjoy. In 2020, all of us living in the no-contact era require consolation. It is hoped that the exhibition will offer a gentle smile and comfort to our dry and difficult lives through animal friends, and moreover an opportunity for artists and appreciators to revel, both together and individually. It is hoped that everyone will someday come to encounter ceramics that speak to them and enjoy elegant and beautiful moments in his/her own space, whether it be a tiny studio or a spacious house with a yard—to imagine and discover small yet illuminating existences that fill the time and space that we must endure alone.

A Skeptical Poet: Yon Hokyung

imaginary animal essay

Yon Hokyung, Buncheong Jar with Double Crane Design, 2020. Commissioned by Dochwi for the exhibition Imaginary Animals, Auspicious Companions (2020). ©Dochwidochwi

Long ropes of clay are layered one on top of another and pinched bit by bit to form a vessel. This meticulous refinement of the shape is a slow process that allows a time for thinking what kind of design to draw and what kind of form would be suitable for the pattern. Even while the hands are in motion shaping the thoughts and form, deep concentration is exercised. It is amidst this concentration that the distinctive attribute of Yon Hokyung’s work emerges: a sophisticated sarcastic humor.

imaginary animal essay

Exhibition view. “Yong (dragon)-to-be” Roof tile-shaped Object, 2020. Commissioned by Dochwi for the exhibition Imaginary Animals, Auspicious Companions (2020). ©Dochwidochwi

imaginary animal essay

Yon Hokyung, “Yong (dragon)-to-be” Vase (top), 2020. Commissioned by Dochwi for the exhibition Imaginary Animals, Auspicious Companions (2020). ©Dochwidochwi

Yon, who casually depicts her offbeat, everyday thoughts in this way, also has a talent for illustrating animals using simple yet spirited lines. From an eagle standing pompously with its head peeping out from a voluminous coat of feathers to a crane taking shelter from the rain under a leaf or a person trying to do a handstand, the artist observes her subject matter in accordance with the expressive method of folk paintings, grasps its unique characteristics, and depicts it as simply as possible while imagining the subject in diverse but somewhat eccentric circumstances. She seems to take a dry and detached approach to her subjects rather than empathizing or engaging with them. As a result, the drawings of Yon Hokyung invite viewers to imagine and create their own narratives. Instead of telling a story through her work, Yon encourages “creative writing” from the viewers.

imaginary animal essay

Yon Hokyung, “Yong (dragon)-to-be” Flask Vase, 2020. Commissioned by Dochwi for the exhibition Imaginary Animals, Auspicious Companions (2020). ©Dochwidochwi

In this way, the animal drawings of Yon Hokyung, which seem a bit clumsy but not absurd while they embody a strong character yet retain a sense friendliness, are a representation of her artistic world. Her artistic speech—deviating from the classic beauty of perfection but creating a playful and warm emotional embrace—is further concretized through the interaction of form and decorative designs and her in-depth understanding and continued experimentation with diverse expressions of color and texture. Also at the core of her work is an emotional distance. She expresses life as if giving it a “pinch,” and the delightful ceramics that result become objects with which viewers can recall their own memories and generate new inspiration and imagination.

imaginary animal essay

Exhibition view. Yon Hokyung, “Luck喜 (lucky)” Bowl, 2020. Commissioned by Dochwi for the exhibition Imaginary Animals, Auspicious Companions (2020). ©Dochwidochwi

This article is written in Korean by Moon Yujin and translated into English by Ahn Soyean.

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Imaginary Animal Writing Activity

July 26, 2021 by ami Leave a Comment

First graders have big ideas. Great ideas. But sometimes they struggle to get those ideas from their heads to their pens to their papers. Writing is hard work.

Make creative writing for Grade 1 easier with this Imaginary Animal Writing Activity.

imaginary animal essay

Your student will fill in the form and then publish their paragraph on their own paper.

Creative Writing for Grade 1 Lesson Preparation

Choose prewriting sheets.

To prepare for the lesson, choose one of the pre-writing sheets for your class.

You can choose from five different settings:

If you wanted, you could print a variety of pre-writing pages and let your students choose which setting they want.

imaginary animal essay

Gather Materials

You will want to choose a picture book about imaginary animals for this lesson. You should choose There’s a Wocket in My Pocket by Dr. Seuss, Dr. Seuss’ ABC , or another book with a variety of imaginary animals.

You will also need to gather some playdough, google eyes, and pipe cleaners. Sequins and feathers would be fun additions, but you don’t have to have them.

imaginary animal essay

Creative Writing for Grade 1 Lesson Plan

1. read and discuss a picture book.

At the start of this lesson, choose a picture book to read that includes fun, imaginary creatures.

Discuss the wild and wacky creatures named and pictured throughout the story. Which ones do your students remember? Which names are their favorites?

Continue the discussion by asking your students if they have ever been to the zoo (farm, pond, park, or beach)? What animals did they see?

If your students could invent animals, what would they be? What would they look like? Encourage students to combine two animals and make them into one animal. For instance, what if you combined a hippo and a bird? Would it be a Flying Hippo? A Flippo?

Ask your students engaging questions and generate as many ideas as possible.

2. Create Imaginary Animals with Playdough and Accessories

imaginary animal essay

Give your students playdough, googly eyes, and pipe cleaners. Let your students create imaginary animals.

If you want to be fancy, you can give students feathers and sequins (scales), too.

After students are done constructing their animals, if time permits, let them show and tell their creations to the class. **Instead of playdough you could use Sculpey Clay if you want to bake their final creations.

 3. Demonstrate How to Complete the Imaginary Animal Prewriting Form

imaginary animal essay

Model for your students how to complete the form from start to finish. Modeling is extremely important for young writers, and it is okay if your student swipes a few of your ideas.

Emphasize the sentence choice at the end. Will your student want to go back, or is that zoo too strange?

4. Instruct Your Student to Complete the Prewriting Page

Your student will use creative thinking to invent three imaginary animals, creatures, or objects and name them. Remind your student that they can spell the animal names ANY way they want because they are creating them. This will remove the spelling pressure that kids often feel.

Remind your students that they have a choice at the end. Encourage them to circle their final sentence answers so that they won’t get confused when they write their final copies.

You may want to explain to your students when to use a and when to use an . If their animals begin with a vowel, they will need an instead of a .

5. Students Will Compose Final Draft Paragraphs

Students will take their pre-writing pages and copy them on to the their own paper to compose their final drafts.

Final Draft Sample:

I went to the zoo. First, I saw a flying splizard. Next, I saw a purple birdle. Last, I saw an allipotamus. I can’t wait to go again!

Download Your Imaginary Animal Writing Forms

Click on the link below to snag your free writing forms.

imaginary animal essay

<< Imaginary Animals Writing Forms >>

More Creative Writing for Grade 1

Are you looking for additional creative writing lessons and activities for Grade 1? Try some of these writing activities:

Dialogue Dice Game

Try a dice writing game: I Want My Hat Back Writing Game

Build and Write Silly Alphabet Sentences

Check out this interactive writing activity from the Tip-Top Printables Shop .

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Essay on If Animals Could Talk

Students are often asked to write an essay on If Animals Could Talk in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on If Animals Could Talk

Introduction.

Imagine a world where animals could talk like humans! It would be fascinating and enlightening to understand their thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

Understanding Animals

If animals could talk, we could better understand their needs and emotions. We could learn about their likes, dislikes, fears, and joys.

Improved Relationships

Communication would enhance our relationship with animals. We could interact more effectively, leading to stronger bonds and better care for them.

Conservation Efforts

Hearing animals’ perspectives could boost conservation efforts. We could learn about their struggles and work towards solutions.

If animals could talk, it would revolutionize our relationship with them, leading to a more harmonious coexistence.

250 Words Essay on If Animals Could Talk

The hypothetical scenario.

Imagine a world where animals could talk. This radical idea is not just a whimsical fantasy but a thought-provoking concept that challenges our understanding of communication, empathy, and cohabitation.

Shattering the Communication Barrier

The ability to communicate with animals would shatter the barrier that separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. We would be able to comprehend their thoughts, feelings, and perceptions of the world, providing us with an unprecedented insight into their lives. This could foster a greater sense of empathy and respect towards animals, potentially leading to improved animal welfare standards.

Shaping our Moral Landscape

If animals could voice their thoughts, our moral landscape would be compelled to shift. The ethical implications of using animals for food, entertainment, or scientific research would become a matter of direct negotiation with them. This could lead to a profound re-evaluation of our practices, promoting a more equitable coexistence.

Transforming the Ecosystem

Our interaction with the ecosystem would also transform. Animals could alert us about environmental changes, contributing to our understanding of climate change and biodiversity loss. Their firsthand experiences could serve as early warning signs, enabling us to take timely action to protect our shared habitat.

In conclusion, if animals could talk, it would revolutionize our relationship with them and the environment. While this remains a hypothetical scenario, it encourages us to imagine a world where empathy and understanding transcend the boundaries of species, fostering a more harmonious coexistence.

500 Words Essay on If Animals Could Talk

The hypothetical realm of animal speech.

The concept of animals being able to talk is not a new one, but it has been primarily confined to the realm of fiction. If animals could talk, it would revolutionize our understanding of the natural world and reshape our relationships with non-human creatures.

Understanding Animal Consciousness

If animals could talk, it would offer a profound insight into their consciousness. As humans, we are limited to anthropocentric perspectives, often neglecting the unique experiences and perceptions of other species. The ability to communicate verbally with animals would open up a new channel to understand their cognitive capabilities, emotional states, and social structures. It would also challenge our existing assumptions about animal intelligence and consciousness, leading to a more nuanced understanding of the animal kingdom.

Altering Human-Animal Relationships

The ability of animals to converse would fundamentally alter human-animal relationships. Our interactions with pets would transition from one-sided conversations to reciprocal dialogues. We could learn about their needs, desires, and fears directly from them, fostering a deeper bond.

In the context of wildlife, our approach towards conservation could become more compassionate and effective. We could understand the impact of our actions on their habitats and lives from their perspective, potentially leading to more sustainable practices.

Implications for Ethics and Rights

If animals could articulate their experiences and emotions, it would have significant implications for animal rights and ethical considerations. Currently, many animals are subjected to inhumane treatment because they cannot express their suffering. If they could voice their discomfort or pain, it could lead to a paradigm shift in industries such as animal farming, testing, and entertainment.

Moreover, it could also lead to a reevaluation of the legal status of animals. If animals can communicate their thoughts and feelings, it might be argued that they should be granted certain rights, similar to humans.

The Challenges of a Talking Animal World

While the prospect of talking animals is fascinating, it also raises several challenges. Would all animals have the same linguistic capabilities? How would we manage the cacophony of millions of animals speaking at once?

Furthermore, the ability to talk may not necessarily mean that animals would think or perceive the world as humans do. Language is a complex construct, deeply intertwined with culture and cognition. Even if animals could talk, understanding their unique perspectives might still pose a challenge.

The hypothetical scenario of animals talking invites us to reconsider our relationship with the animal kingdom. It encourages us to empathize with their experiences and to acknowledge their potential for consciousness and emotion. Whether or not animals will ever be able to talk, this thought experiment serves as a reminder of our responsibility towards other sentient beings with whom we share our planet.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

  • Essay on Favourite Animal
  • Essay on Relationship Between Humans and Animals
  • Essay on Killing Wild Animals

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

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Imaginary animals

  • A Dr. Seuss book, such as The Cat in the Hat , Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now , or Horton Hears a Who .
  • Drawing paper
  • Washable markers or crayons
  • Play dough of various colors

What to do:

  • Read a Dr. Seuss book to the children to show them examples of all kinds of imaginary creatures.
  • Talk about Dr. Seuss' illustrations and the variety of imaginary characters in his books.
  • Give the children time to think about an imaginary animal they want to create.
  • Children draw their imaginary animal and give it a name, maybe even a silly name, that an adult can write on their drawing.
  • Each child can tell about his or her imaginary animal.
  • The next day, the children can make up a story about their imaginary animal to dictate to the adult. Over the next few days each story can be read to the group.
  • Another day the children can make play dough figures of their imaginary animals for an art project.

CAUTION: Young children can choke on small objects and toy parts. All items used for children under three years of age and any children who put toys in their mouths should be at least 1¼ inch in diameter and between 1 inch and 2¼ inches in length. Oval balls and toys should be at least 1¾ inch in diameter. Toys should meet federal small parts standards. Any toys or games labeled as unsuitable for children under three should not be used.

Other items that pose a safety risk and should not be accessible to children under three include, but are not limited to: button batteries, magnets, plastic bags, styrofoam objects, coins, balloons, latex gloves, and glitter.

Activities 13-3 partial

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Animal Farm — George Orwell’s Animal Farm And Its Main Themes

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George Orwell’s Animal Farm and Its Main Themes

  • Categories: Animal Farm George Orwell

About this sample

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Words: 1912 |

10 min read

Published: Feb 8, 2022

Words: 1912 | Pages: 4 | 10 min read

Works Cited

  • Orwell, G. (1945). Animal Farm. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
  • Adams, R. (2007). Critical Essays: Animal Farm and the Russian Revolution. Retrieved from https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/a/animal-farm/critical-essays/the-russian-revolution
  • Shelden, M. (1991). Orwell: The Authorized Biography. New York, NY: HarperCollins.
  • Woodcock, G. (1966). The Crystal Spirit: A Study of George Orwell. London, UK: Jonathan Cape.
  • Fitzpatrick, S. (2001). Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village After Collectivization. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
  • Figes, O. (2007). The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books.
  • Service, R. (2004). Stalin: A Biography. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
  • Lentin, A. (2012). Animal Farm: Past, Present, and Future. The English Review, 22(1), 20-23.
  • Adams, R. (2010). "All Animals Are Equal, But Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others": Contradiction and Allegory in Orwell's Animal Farm. South Atlantic Review, 75(3), 39-52.
  • Morgan, P. (2018). The Use of Personification in Animal Farm. OpenAI: AI in Education, 1(2), 1-9.

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The Imagery in “Animal Farm”

The farm in G. Orwell’s story “Animal Farm” is isolated and conserved from the outside world and belongs exclusively to its inhabitants. This is not just a farm; this farm is an allusion to the formation of the Soviet Union. In turn, the imagery of the story refers the reader to the real-life politicians of that time. Artistic images of the main personages have either clerical images or generalized prototypes (Nicholas II, Lenin, Stalin,)

A pig named Old Major becomes a prophet of the rebellion on a farm. Unlike other pigs, he wants animals to be free and equal. This dream makes him more of a positive character. Under this character, the author meant V. Lenin. Napoleon is one of the main personages in the story. In the beginning, he is a hero, leader of the insurrection and one of the founders of the animal philosophy of Animalism. After the revolution, he seizes individual power, uses fierce dogs, executes the animals which he accuses of dissent. Aggressive Napoleon, no doubt, is a copy of I. Stalin, during the reign of which a similar cult was created.

Worker-horse, nicknamed Boxer symbolizes the working class, who sees the only opportunity to improve his life through everyday work. The more complex the situation on the farm becomes, the stronger the horse harnesses into the work. A horse gives credence to a Comrade Napoleon, but every time he goes to the construction site, spending on it both his working and personal time.

The hens are forced to give their eggs for sale (so that Napoleon can replenish the corps of the hungry farm with the money he has received) and periodically die from internal riots, then from slander to themselves (several birds are executed). They are a symbolic image of the Soviet peasantry.

The dissident layer of the society is the old donkey Veniamin - often silent, but periodically revealing the animals’ eyes to the actions of the authorities (for example, when the van of the knackers takes away from the farm of the sick Boxer). It is this hero who understands the essence of what is happening at the farm best of all.

The clergy in the story of Orwell was embodied in the artistic image of the favorite of Mr. Jones - the hand-raven of Moses (another speaking name, indicating the biblical basis of the character). With this hero, the reader meets twice: before the rebellion of animals (the times of the Russian Empire and the flowering of Orthodoxy) and after the Fight under the windmill (partial revival of Orthodoxy after the end of the Great Patriotic War).

The ending of this story can be called prophetic: Orwell, without knowing it, predicted the gradual formation of the USSR on the path of capitalism. With this work, George Orwell emphasizes that in human nature there is something animal. However, there is also a human nature in it - what makes a person a Man even on the last verge of the highest despair and the most painful pain, when death seems to be a desired happiness in comparison with life. Man becomes a pig as a result of his own choice.

Cody Owens

Author: Cody Owens

Sarah

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Create an Imaginary Animal

This activity is associated with the family program, Camp Croods at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History .

Activity Description

Lion-Man figurine replica

Evidence of imagination in ancient human life can be seen in the Hall of Human Origins virtual tour. The Lion-Man figurine shows a half human and half lion artifact that was created about 35,000 years ago. Anthropologists think this provides evidence that ancient humans were using their imagination to create new and unique art never seen or thought of before! In "The Croods: A New Age," there were many unique imaginary animals that also mixed features from different types of animals. For this activity, you will create your own imaginative animal inspired by both the artifact and the animals from the movie.

What You Need

  • Your imagination!
  • Crayons or other coloring materials

1. Gather your supplies. For this activity, you will need paper, a pencil, crayons or other coloring materials, and your imagination.

2. Make a list of features or characteristics your animal will have. On a piece of paper, you will be making two different lists: one with animal features and one with different animals. Your first list will be of animal features. Think about the following questions to help create your list:

  • Think about the size you want your animal to be. 
  • How will your animal move? Will it fly, swim, jump, or run? 
  • Think about how or what it will eat. Will it be a fierce predator or will it mainly eat plants? 
  • How might your animal protect itself or keep itself safe? Will it have a protective body covering, like a shell, or will it be able to camouflage with its surroundings? Make your list of your desired features for your new animal, and circle the features that are the most important. 

Create a table like this to help you organize your ideas.

Piece of paper with two handwritten columns: Features and characteristics, and Animals

3. Make a list of animals that have those specific features or characteristics. Reread through your list of animal features you just created. Think about animals that have some of these features, and then write down those animals.

Piece of paper with two handwritten columns: Features and characteristics (such as sharp teeth, tail, fins to swim) and Animals (such as alligator, cat, shark).

4. Choose two animals that best represent the features or characteristics your new animal will have. The artifact in the museum and the animals in the movie were created with two animals in mind. Sometimes those animals had things in common; sometimes they were very different animals. When the animals were imagined together as one new and unique animal, that animal shared features of both the different animals. Choose two animals that, if they came together as one animal, would best represent the features you want your new animal to have.

Piece of paper with two handwritten columns: Features and characteristics, and Animals, with certain words circled in each column, such as sharp teeth, tail, mosasaur, and dog.

5. Create your animal! Draw your new animal. Be sure to include all of the key features or characteristics from the original two animals in your new animal. What will you call your new animal, and what unique or special new features will it have as a result of being a combination of two different animals?

Take It a Step Further

  • Create a model or 3-dimensional representation of your new animal. 
  • Write a story starring your new animal.
  • Share your new animal with your family.
  • Share your new animals with us at the museum! Be sure to let us know all about the unique features of your new animal. You can send a picture of your new animal to [email protected]

Explore More 

  • Learn about different types of  figurines made by ancient human artists .
  • Join Dr. Briana Pobiner for a recorded virtual tour of the Hall of Human Origins ! Use the link provided and scroll down to view 3 videos for the virtual tour of this hall.
  • Want to explore the Hall of Human Origins on your own? Click the Time Portal to enter the exhibit and continue your exploration by dragging your cursor around and clicking on the arrows. Zoom in to make even closer observations. 
  • To learn more about ancient humans, the science behind how we learn about the lives of ancient humans, and about the Hall of Human Origins, you can visit this website: Human Origins: What Does It Mean to Be Human?  
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English Essay on “An Imaginary Pet” English Essay-Paragraph-Speech for Class 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 CBSE Students and competitive Examination.

An Imaginary Pet

I love dogs. Every year I plead with my mother to get me a pet dog as a birthday gift. Since both my parents work, my mother says there is no one to look after the dog during the day. Today, I am going to tell you about my imaginary pet dog.

Cindy is my six months old Golden Retriever. The first time I saw her, she was sleeping next to her mother with her head resting on a small soft ball. I clicked my fingers and she came running towards me. I picked her up and she licked my nose. At that moment, I knew Cindy was the pet I wanted.

In the last five months that she has been with us I have taught her to follow a few simple instructions. She can now sit, sleep, roll over and shake hands to my command.

My favourite pan of the day is when I take Cindy for a walk in the park, in the evenings. She runs alongside the children on their bicycles and makes the little ones squeal in delight. All my friends love Cindy and wish they had a dog like her.

Cindy is my best friend. I am hoping that one day my dream will come true and I will have a per dog just like her.

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Animal Essay

what happens in spring animals in spring Book

500 Words Essay on Animal

Animals carry a lot of importance in our lives. They offer humans with food and many other things. For instance, we consume meat, eggs, dairy products. Further, we use animals as a pet too. They are of great help to handicaps. Thus, through the animal essay, we will take a look at these creatures and their importance.

animal essay

Types of Animals

First of all, all kinds of living organisms which are eukaryotes and compose of numerous cells and can sexually reproduce are known as animals. All animals have a unique role to play in maintaining the balance of nature.

A lot of animal species exist in both, land and water. As a result, each of them has a purpose for their existence. The animals divide into specific groups in biology. Amphibians are those which can live on both, land and water.

Reptiles are cold-blooded animals which have scales on their body. Further, mammals are ones which give birth to their offspring in the womb and have mammary glands. Birds are animals whose forelimbs evolve into wings and their body is covered with feather.

They lay eggs to give birth. Fishes have fins and not limbs. They breathe through gills in water. Further, insects are mostly six-legged or more. Thus, these are the kinds of animals present on earth.

Importance of Animals

Animals play an essential role in human life and planet earth. Ever since an early time, humans have been using animals for their benefit. Earlier, they came in use for transportation purposes.

Further, they also come in use for food, hunting and protection. Humans use oxen for farming. Animals also come in use as companions to humans. For instance, dogs come in use to guide the physically challenged people as well as old people.

In research laboratories, animals come in use for drug testing. Rats and rabbits are mostly tested upon. These researches are useful in predicting any future diseases outbreaks. Thus, we can protect us from possible harm.

Astronomers also use animals to do their research. They also come in use for other purposes. Animals have use in various sports like racing, polo and more. In addition, they also have use in other fields.

They also come in use in recreational activities. For instance, there are circuses and then people also come door to door to display the tricks by animals to entertain children. Further, they also come in use for police forces like detection dogs.

Similarly, we also ride on them for a joyride. Horses, elephants, camels and more come in use for this purpose. Thus, they have a lot of importance in our lives.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Conclusion of Animal Essay

Thus, animals play an important role on our planet earth and in human lives. Therefore, it is our duty as humans to protect animals for a better future. Otherwise, the human race will not be able to survive without the help of the other animals.

FAQ on Animal Essay

Question 1: Why are animals are important?

Answer 1: All animals play an important role in the ecosystem. Some of them help to bring out the nutrients from the cycle whereas the others help in decomposition, carbon, and nitrogen cycle. In other words, all kinds of animals, insects, and even microorganisms play a role in the ecosystem.

Question 2: How can we protect animals?

Answer 2: We can protect animals by adopting them. Further, one can also volunteer if one does not have the means to help. Moreover, donating to wildlife reserves can help. Most importantly, we must start buying responsibly to avoid companies which harm animals to make their products.

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Toward an Imaginary Animal Studies

Profile image of Boria Sax

2015, HUMANIMALIA

This is a review by Richard Iveson of Imaginary Animals by Boria Sax

Related Papers

Humanimalia: a journal of human/animal interface studies 1:2 (Spring 2010), 46-85.

Richard Iveson

imaginary animal essay

Journal of Cultural Research 18:4 (Fall 2014), 384-405

Humanimalia: a journal of human/animal interface studies

'Life and Relation beyond Animalization' (2017) by Matthew Calarco stages a a careful and often generous critique of my 'Zoogenesis: Thinking Encounter with Animals' (2014). My sincere thanks go out to Professor Calarco for his commitment of time and effort, for the high quality of his exegesis, but most of all for pointing out various flaws of one sort or another, which I hope will stop me from unwittingly reiterating the same flaws in the future.

Zoogenesis: Thinking Encounter with Animals

Zoogenesis: Thinking Encounter with Animals offers radical new possibilities for encountering and thinking with other animals, and thus for the politics of animal liberation. Examining the machinations of power that legitimize the killing of nonhuman animals, Zoogenesis shows too how thoroughly entangled they are with the 'noncriminal' putting to death of human animals. Such legitimation consists in a theatrics of displacement that transforms singular, nonsubstitutable living beings into mute, subjugated bodies that may be slaughtered but never murdered. Nothing less than the economy of genocide, Iveson thereafter explores the possibility of interventions that function in the opposite direction to this 'animalizing' displacement - interventions that potentially make it unthinkable that living beings can be 'legitimately' slaughtered. Along the way, Zoogenesis tracks just such 'animal encounters' across various disciplinary boundaries - stumbling across their traces in a short story by Franz Kafka, in the bathroom of Jacques Derrida, in a politically galvanising slogan, in the deaths of centipedes both actual and fictional, in the newfound plasticity of the gene, and in the sharing of an inhuman knowledge that saves novelist William S. Burroughs from a life of deadly ignorance. Such encounters, argues Iveson, are zoo-genetic, with zoogenesis naming the emergence of a new living being that interrupts habitual instrumentalisation and exploitation. With this creative event, a new conception of the political emerges which, as the necessary supplement of an ethical demand, offers potentially radical new ways of being with other animals. Reviews: "Encounters between human living, and other living entities, and between fictive and imaginary, Aristotelian and Cartesian animals are here staged with respect to competing notions of life and value, of writing and of literature. ...Richard Iveson reads a variety of sources with insight and discrimination, contributing highly effectively to this recently emergent and rapidly expanding new life form: zoogenesis" - Joanna Hodge, Professor of Philosophy at Manchester Metropolitan University, and author of Derrida on Time (2007). "one of the most thorough and exhaustive treatments of philosophy's recent encounters with animality ... With both impressive scope and penetrating critique, Zoogenesis allows us to think through a comprehensive rearticulation of 'the human' in a radically subversive manner" - John Ó Maoilearca, Professor of Film Studies at Kingston University, London, and author of Postural Mutations: Laruelle and Nonhuman Philosophy (2015).

Justina Kolberg

The industrialized mistreatment of nonhuman animals has acquired unprecedented dimensions globally, taking the lives of trillions of singular beings every year. Regardless of nonhuman animals having a significant place in human culture, literature, art and religion, the most intimate contact most humans have with other animals is consuming their flesh. In a philosophico-psychological discussion, I will argue that the current world order is facilitated by two ideologies: metaphysical anthropocentrism and carnism. Metaphysical anthropocentrism is grounded in the presumption that ‘the human’ can be categorically separated from ‘the animal’ (Heidegger, 1962). The ideology of carnism acts as a complementary approach, explaining the human-projected distinction between different species of nonhuman animals. Carnism thereby allows humans to perceive some animals as singular entities, while disregarding the existence of others. I will demonstrate that both of these ideologies are fundamentally flawed. Using Jacques Derrida’s(1993, 2002) philosophy, I will reconceptualize the notion of ​language, ​ thereby including animals in an originary zoo-genetic process. This will allow nonhuman animals to be ​encountered as singular, nonsubstitutable beings. Recognising their existence simultaneously means recognising their finitude - their ​having of a death. The giving of a death and finitude to animals, however, has major implications on the contemporary ideological paradigms. The recognition of animal singularity and death necessarily demands a radical change in the way we treat other animals.

Julie McCown

This essay argues that the physicality and materiality of the animal puppets in Ladislas Starewitch’s 1937 stop motion film The Tale of the Fox enable a nuanced, complex consideration of representations of real animal bodies that I define as “sutured hybridity.” Within The Tale of the Fox’s narrative, production, and distribution, a series of four sutures (medieval past/technologically mediated future, animal/human, alive/dead, and humanist/posthumanist discourse) arise in the animal puppets, who exist as sutured hybrid beings that occupy an intermediary zone where binaries converge. Each suture builds on the previous one, creating a multi-faceted state of sutured hybridity that reveals how human-animal interactions primarily revolve around animal subjugation and agency. I also contrast The Tale of the Fox with Wes Anderson’s 2009 stop motion film Fantastic Mr. Fox which reinforces the complexity and contradictions of The Tale of the Fox’s depiction of animal bodies and the animal puppets’ status as sutured hybrid beings that allow us to confront our moral and ethical responsibility to real animal bodies in a way not possible with previous critical interpretations of animal representation.

Humanimalia: a journal of human/animal interface studies 4:2 (Spring 2013), 20-40

The Edinburgh Companion to Animal Studies

Carla Freccero

Q ueer theory names a web of interdisciplinary theoretical practices attaching themselves to sex, sexuality and identity. While it would be impossible to charac-terise all of queer theory under a single rubric-the theoretical and political stakes and affi liations, approaches and topics are diverse, wide-ranging and often in confl ict with one another-its attention to and deconstruction of a range of normative assumptions and practices have infl uenced and been infl uenced by animal studies (itself a diverse and diffi cult to classify, loosely defi ned fi eld of inquiry). For if queer theory's theoretical achievement was to disentangle the threads that bind biological sex, gender and sexuality and to view as normative, rather than normal, the heterosexual matrices of human identity, then it also becomes possible, through similar modes of critique, to open up the category of the human. 1 If a certain arrangement of the human defi nes the human, then the exposure of that arrangement as normative (that is, ideological) also permits a prying apart of other bedrock assumptions, including the human/ani-mal divide. 2 Further, many other critical theoretical engagements, both related to and informing queer theory-including feminism, deconstruction, anti-humanism, critical race theory and disability studies-have made possible a deconstruction of the liberal humanist subject and have opened paths for considering beings and subjectivities not exclusively bounded by the privileges of the human as it has been philosophically and historically understood in the Western tradition. Thus, for example, Judith Butler in Precarious Life makes the point that the constitution of the liberal humanist subject has entailed political and ethical consequences for what counts as a viable 'life': 'Some lives are grievable, and others are not; the differential allocation of grievability that decides what kind of subject is and must be grieved, and which kind of subject must not, operates to produce and maintain certain exclusionary conceptions of who is nor-matively human: what counts as a livable life and a grievable death?' 3 Such a situation, Butler notes, 'derealizes' those not considered human and exonerates acts of violence against them or their complete erasure from recognition altogether. 4 Butler, following Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas and along with other critics of normative concepts of the human, argues that mortality, agency, interdepen-dency and vulnerability-and thus embodiment-constitute the conditions for shared being, rather than the abstracted notion of 'the human' and 'the subject'. 5 Although she does not address species boundaries, and at times seems to stress the human subject exclusively, Butler's thinking about embodiment, vulnerability and grievability has exerted signifi cant infl uence on animal studies scholars who have extended her arguments to demonstrate how the mechanisms of exclusion she analyses apply profoundly to the question of which lives matter, irrespective of their species status. 6 It is easy 5628_Turner.indd 430 5628_Turner.indd 430

Texts, Animals, Environments: Zoopoetics and Ecopoetics

Frederike Middelhoff , Sebastian Schönbeck , Stephanie Posthumus , Sarah Bezan , Matthias Preuss , Jessica Güsken , Marie Cazaban-Mazerolles , Susan McHugh

"Texts, Animals, Environments. Zoopoetics and Ecopoetics" probes the multiple links between ecocriticism and animal studies, assessing the relations between animals, environments and poetics. While ecocriticism usually relies on a relational approach to explore phenomena related to the environment or ecology more broadly, animal studies tends to examine individual or species-specific aspects. As a consequence, ecocriticism concentrates on ecopoetical, animal studies on zoopoetical elements and modes of representation in literature (and the arts more generally). Bringing key concepts of ecocriticism and animal studies into dialogue, the volume explores new ways of thinking about and reading texts, animals, and environments – not as separate entities but as part of the same collective.

Southern Cross University Law Review

Anne Schillmoller

In The Order of Things, Michel Foucault observed that liberal humanism was &#39;sovereign and untroubled&#39;. The sovereign subject is one that &#39;runs in empty sameness throughout the course of history&#39;. As an attempt to problematise this assertion, this paper has emerged as an artifact of a troubled journey and a &#39;journey of trouble&#39;. As both a voyage of discovery and a nomadic wandering through error, the traveller&#39;s passage through the sovereign terrain of humanism has been beset with detours, digressions and dead-ends. As she traversed territories and excavated strata, the traveller encountered opportunities and obstacles, all of which gave rise to unanticipated lines of flight upon a rhizomatic landscape. The traveller took comfort in the notion of rhizome, a concept used by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in connection with theory and research that allows for multiple, non-hierarchical entry and exit points in data representation and interpretation. The m...

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DeWanda Wise as Jessica and Pyper Braun as Alice in Imaginary sit at a table outside

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Imaginary is a mess of a horror movie, and not in the fun way

There are real teddy bears scarier than Blumhouse’s latest movie

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It’s hard to know where to start in describing how bad Imaginary is. The new horror movie from Blumhouse and director Jeff Wadlow ( Kick-Ass 2 ) starts with the simple but promising premise of a haunted stuffed animal and a malicious imaginary friend, but its bland characters, muddy storytelling, and lack of scares leave behind a movie more lifeless than a teddy bear with no stuffing.

Imaginary ’s mess of a story begins with a woman named Jessica ( She’s Gotta Have It and Jurassic World Dominion ’s DeWanda Wise) and her new husband, Max (Tom Payne), waking up after one of Jessica’s recurring nightmares. She’s being chased through a long hallway by a giant spider, who also happens to be the main villain in the children’s books she writes. The couple quickly decide that it’s time for them and Max’s two kids from a previous marriage, teenage Taylor (Taegen Burns) and much younger Alice (Pyper Braun), to move into Jessica’s childhood home, in hopes that the familiar setting will cure her of her nightmares. Max’s kids aren’t too happy about the move, though it isn’t quite clear how far they’re going or what their specific objection is.

It isn’t really clear whether we’re supposed to believe Jessica wants to get along with her new stepdaughters, or if her rudeness to them is an accidental problem of the script and the performance. Either way, after a few days in the house, Jessica ignores Alice by sneaking out of the house during a game of hide-and-seek in order to take a work call, leaving Alice to explore the basement and find Chauncey the creepy teddy bear.

DeWanda Wise in Imaginary stands in a shadowy room wearing a yellow dress with stains on it

Chauncey quickly becomes Alice’s new imaginary friend, who she talks to constantly and takes with her everywhere. This part of the plot strongly evokes M3GAN , without ever getting near that movie’s knowing sense of fun. All this setup happens by about 10 minutes into the movie, and it’s also where the coherent details of the plot end.

[ Ed. note: The rest of this story contains significant spoilers for Imaginary . The good news is, reading about them is much more fun than sitting through all 104 minutes of the movie.]

Chauncey’s arrival should also usher creepiness into Imaginary , but the movie gets so diverted by trying to piece together a story out of its myriad meaningless plot threads that it doesn’t have much time to dedicate to actual horror. In one scene, for instance, the children’s biological mother shows up at Jessica’s house without warning, attacks Jessica, reveals that she seems to psychically know there’s something evil in the house, gets arrested, then disappears for the entire rest of the movie. This scene is never brought up again.

Shortly after that, Max just leaves his children with their new, clearly not up-to-the-task stepmom so he can go on a seemingly indefinite tour with his band. There’s also a creepy neighbor who just happens to have a fully illustrated academic textbook on imaginary friends that seems tailor-made for a lazy exposition scene. The movie even throws in two separate child-abuse plotlines that it eventually just shrugs off when they aren’t useful anymore.

It’s tempting to try to read into this labyrinth of digressions to try to find some kind of meaning or intention, but Imaginary never makes that feel worthwhile. There isn’t a single character in the movie who feels worth rooting for, and the performances are entirely devoid of charisma. The script, written by Wadlow, Jason Oremland, and Greg Erb, is full of wooden dialogue that’s stiff and often feels almost completely nonsensical. Characters sometimes introduce new information like it’s a fact the audience has known forever.

At other times, they treat seemingly obvious plot points like major, unguessable reveals — like when we find out that Chauncey once belonged to Jessica. None of these plot threads ever amount to much, and most of them are just left dangling by the end of the movie. If the filmmakers don’t care about them, why should we?

A young girl played by Pyper Braun sits at the top of the stairs next to a teddy bear while an ominous shadowy figure lurk behind her in Imaginary

But as with any horror movie, most of this disaster could be overlooked if only the story was scary. Instead, that’s where its failures become most apparent. Imaginary doesn’t bring a single original idea to the horror genre. It’s entirely paint-by-numbers filmmaking that never even manages to create tension, let alone fear. Characters look under beds while the cloying score brings in a swell of strings to beg us to feel something. Chauncey moves on his own a time or two, and even transforms into a monstrous bear, but the scenes are lit so badly that the effect just looks cheap and underbaked rather than remotely terrifying. Watching sequences this rote is soul-crushing for a horror fan, and they make the moments where the movie slows down for its next attempt at a scare feel like they drag on for ages.

The one briefly interesting sequence comes in the final third of the movie, when Alice has been tricked into visiting the world of the imaginary friends, and Jessica and Taylor have to rescue her. This world floats in darkness, and its only solid ground is a checkerboard floor in an endless hallway of doors. Sections of the world form staircases to nowhere, dead ends that drop into an abyss, and doors that seem to float upside down.

None of these visuals are wholly original — they take aim at the middle ground between Twin Peaks ’ Red Room and a Scooby-Doo chase scene , without any of the fun that combination implies. But even without originality, it’s far and away the best visual of the movie. Sadly, for most of their time in this world, the characters just charge blindly into doors and end up in the same boring rooms we’ve seen in the rest of the movie, each one shot essentially the same as it was in the real world, just a little bit darker.

Imaginary didn’t have a high bar to clear. In a year that’s been lacking interesting horror movies so far, with the other Blumhouse entry Night Swim as the only real bright spot, all this movie ever really needed to be was some silly fun with a few good scares. Instead, it gets lost in a maze of awful storytelling and frustrating characters, all without offering anything more than the stock-standard horror tropes that have been done better in a million other movies.

Imaginary is in theaters on March 8.

All the Scream 7 news so far, including its new director

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  1. (PDF) Toward an Imaginary Animal Studies

    Tracing the history of imaginary animals from Paleolithic art to their roles in stories such as Harry Potter and even the advent of robotic pets, he reveals that these extraordinary figures help us psychologically—as monsters, they give form to our amorphous fears, while as creatures of wonder, they embody our hopes.

  2. Imaginary Animals: The Monstrous, the Wondrous, and the Human

    Legends tell us that imaginary animals belong to a primordial time, before everything in the world had names, categories, and conceptual frameworks. In this book, Boria Sax digs into the stories of these fabulous beasts. He shows how, despite their liminal role, imaginary animals like griffins, dog-men, yetis, and more are socially constructed ...

  3. Imaginary Animals: The Monstrous, the Wondrous and the Human

    Imaginary Animals: The Monstrous, the Wondrous and the Human. Medieval authors placed fantastic creatures in the borders of manuscripts, since they mark the boundaries of our understanding. Tales throughout the world generally place fabulous beasts in marginal locations - deserts, deep woods, remote islands, glaciers, ocean depths, mountain ...

  4. Review of The Imaginary of Animals by Annabelle Dufourcq

    The Imaginary of Animals. London and New York: Routledge, 2022. 271 pages. ISBN: 978--367-77297- (hardcover). U.S. $160.00 Reviewed by Chandler D. Rogers, Gonzaga University Behind or perhaps beneath the persistence of animals in human dreams, phantasies, myths, images, and symbols is what Annabelle Dufourcq calls the imaginary of animals ...

  5. Monster Introductory Essay

    1. Something extraordinary or unnatural; a prodigy, a marvel. 2. An animal or plant deviating in one or more of its parts from the normal type; spec., an animal afflicted with some congenital malformation; a misshapen birth, an abortion. 3. An imaginary animal (such as the centaur, sphinx, minotaur, or the heraldic griffin, wyvern, etc.)

  6. The Imaginary of Animals

    Robert W. Bagley. During the Chinese Bronze Age - the period from about 1500 to 200 BC - art was dominated by imaginary animals. By the end of the period the most prominent of these animals was ...

  7. Animals

    Nonhuman animal protagonists of folklore texts in the European space have tended to be perceived primarily as performing a symbolic and metaphoric function. But behind the symbols and the metaphors hide real flesh-and-blood nonhuman animals, and flesh-and-blood humans interacting with them, mostly from a position of power. The emerging discipline of zoofolkloristics considers nonhuman animals ...

  8. The Imaginary of Animals (Routledge Human-Animal Studies)

    This book explores the phenomenon of animal imagination and its profound power over the human imagination. It examines the structural and ethical role that the human imagination must play to provide an interface between humans' subjectivity and the real cognitive capacities of animals. The book offers a systematic study of the increasing importance of the metaphors, the virtual, and figures in ...

  9. Friday essay: from political bees to talking pigs

    In the West, it goes all the way back to Classical antiquity - to Greek and Roman views about humans and animals. The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322) first argued the human stands out from ...

  10. Imaginary Animals, Auspicious Companions

    Imaginary animals also appear in Islamic legends. A buraq, which is described as a mule with the head of a human, ears of a donkey, body of a horse, a peacock's tail and wings on its sides, alludes to the angelic being that carried the Prophet Muhammad to heaven. 3. Buraq, meaning emitting light, is said to symbolize the love of God.Jorge Luis Borges, El libro de los seres imaginarios, trans ...

  11. Imaginary Animal Writing Activity

    1. Read and Discuss a Picture Book At the start of this lesson, choose a picture book to read that includes fun, imaginary creatures. Discuss the wild and wacky creatures named and pictured throughout the story. Which ones do your students remember? Which names are their favorites?

  12. 100 Greatest Mythological and Legendary Creatures

    A mythological creature, also referred to as a legendary creature or mythical creature, is a fictional, supernatural and imaginary animal or hybrid being (meaning it can sometimes be part human). The existence of legendary creatures or mythological creatures referred to in ancient traditional circles has not been proven.

  13. Essay on If Animals Could Talk

    February 18, 2024 Students are often asked to write an essay on If Animals Could Talk in their schools and colleges. And if you're also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic. Let's take a look… 100 Words Essay on If Animals Could Talk Introduction

  14. (PDF) The Imaginary of Animals

    The Imaginary of Animals Annabelle Dufourcq 2021 This book explores the phenomenon of animal imagination and its profound power over the human imagination. It examines the structural and ethical role that the human imagination must play to provide an interface between humans' subjectivity and the real cognitive capacities of animals.

  15. Essay: What if…. Animals could talk.

    May 15, 2023. If animals could talk, it would change the way we interact with them and the world around us. It is a fascinating concept that has captured the imagination of people for centuries ...

  16. Imaginary animals

    Children draw their imaginary animal and give it a name, maybe even a silly name, that an adult can write on their drawing. Each child can tell about his or her imaginary animal. The next day, the children can make up a story about their imaginary animal to dictate to the adult. Over the next few days each story can be read to the group.

  17. George Orwell's Animal Farm and Its Main Themes

    Animal Farm takes place at an imaginary farm in England between the years of 1917 and 1945. The Animal Farm was once run by humans, but after Mr. Jones (the farmer), forgot to feed the animals for several days in a row, the animals decided to revolt. ... Animal Farm Movie And Book Comparison Essay. Animal Farm, both as a book and a movie ...

  18. The Imagery in "Animal Farm" Essay Example

    The Imagery in "Animal Farm". The farm in G. Orwell's story "Animal Farm" is isolated and conserved from the outside world and belongs exclusively to its inhabitants. This is not just a farm; this farm is an allusion to the formation of the Soviet Union. In turn, the imagery of the story refers the reader to the real-life politicians ...

  19. Create an Imaginary Animal

    Directions. 1. Gather your supplies. For this activity, you will need paper, a pencil, crayons or other coloring materials, and your imagination. 2. Make a list of features or characteristics your animal will have. On a piece of paper, you will be making two different lists: one with animal features and one with different animals.

  20. English Essay on "An Imaginary Pet" English Essay-Paragraph-Speech for

    I love dogs. Every year I plead with my mother to get me a pet dog as a birthday gift. Since both my parents work, my mother says there is no one to look after the dog during the day. Today, I am going to tell you about my imaginary pet dog. Cindy is my six months old Golden Retriever.

  21. Animating Imaginary Animals: Jan Švankmajer, Surrealism, and Dark

    This essay views Painlevé's important work through a different optic. While acknowledging their historical context, I bring a more contemporary set of considerations to the films, one informed by animal studies and approach es to the nonhuman in film studies, in order to explore how the films either pose or disrupt an anthropocentric ...

  22. Animal Imaginary Writing Teaching Resources

    IMAGINARY ANIMALS Information Writing FREEBIE Created by Mrs Learning Bee These imaginary animal powerpoint slides will make a great addition to your informational text or imaginative text units. Students can classify imaginary animals, as well as write about their habitats, diet, appearance and other interesting facts. Each animal has two slides.

  23. Animal Essay for Students and Children

    500 Words Essay on Animal Animals carry a lot of importance in our lives. They offer humans with food and many other things. For instance, we consume meat, eggs, dairy products. Further, we use animals as a pet too. They are of great help to handicaps. Thus, through the animal essay, we will take a look at these creatures and their importance.

  24. Toward an Imaginary Animal Studies

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  25. My imaginary animal sample

    By: Emma Watson MY IMAGINARY ANIMAL Fill in the blanks. Choose the right word: HORSE, MOUSE, CAT, LION, TIGER, GIRAFFE, CAMEL, SWAN. Now it's your turn. Draw your imaginary animal and write its description. Try to be creative and follow the steps for any drawing activity we do: - Draw your picture with your pencil.

  26. Imaginary is a boring disaster of a horror movie

    The new horror movie from Blumhouse and director Jeff Wadlow (Kick-Ass 2) starts with the simple but promising premise of a haunted stuffed animal and a malicious imaginary friend, but its bland ...