Jay Griffiths is a writer and winner of the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize and the Orion Book Award. Her latest book, “How Animals Heal Us,” was published in 2025.
A fine and highly trained dog is at work on a beautiful day at Panama City Beach, Florida. It’s spring break 2022; the sun is shining and spirits are high. Then chaos erupts.
The dog’s human colleague, a stocky, white police officer, is uniformed, armed and visibly irate. He is yelling at a young woman of color in a bikini. She walks away but the cop storms after her with the dog as other people gather around and shout.
It’s unclear what prompted the mayhem, which is captured in part in a shaky video. A young Black male, who looks to me like a high schooler, appears to try to defuse the situation, but the officer is not calmable. He grabs the kid by the back of the neck, then throws him to the ground and pins him down.
Onlookers scream. “He didn’t do nothing!” The dog has had enough and attacks the person behaving aggressively — the dog’s own handler — biting the arm of the officer. When the clip is posted online, the dog is celebrated as the hero of the day for upholding justice and fairness.
The well-being of our societies depends on such qualities, which some assume to be uniquely human. But research has emerged showing that animals can be moral beings, too. In a world where power is misused, public morality has become slippery and dishonesty lurches sickeningly through public speech, animals can offer vital lessons for human ethics, political wisdom and social health.
Some animals display a sense of right and wrong, as that police K-9 demonstrated at Panama City Beach, and of fairness. A dog may shake a human’s hand with his paw — repeatedly, without treats — because he enjoys doing so. But if a second dog is invited to join in and is given a treat, the unrewarded dog may show signs of stress and refuse to keep playing: It isn’t fair.
Similarly, in a famous experiment by researchers Frans de Waal and Sarah Brosnan, female capuchin monkeys trained to barter made their feelings about fair treatment clear. The researchers rewarded one capuchin with grapes (which the primates love) and another with cucumbers (which they care less for). When the second capuchin saw the other getting a grape, she refused to play along. Years later, the researchers videotaped the task in monkeys who had never done it before to see if the reaction might be stronger: The second capuchin reacted furiously, shaking the cage and hurling cucumber slices at the experimenter.
Fairness matters to dwarf mongooses, too. In the daytime, while they forage in groups, one must stand guard to watch out for predators. They take turns in this sentinel role. In the evening, when they all groom each other, those who spent more time on guard duty get more grooming: Fair’s fair. Dwarf mongooses also care about justice. If one has been mean during the day, perhaps shoving another away from food, the other mongooses take note and groom that one less.
Many animals mete out punishment for perceived wrongs, including some big cats, canids and primates. A troupe of baboons was reportedly near a mountain road in Saudi Arabia in 2000 when one was hit and killed by a car. The whole group gathered in grief and fury, watching every vehicle that went by for three days until the car that had killed their friend passed again on that stretch of road. They chucked rocks, forcing the car to stop, then shattered the windscreen. The driver, fearing for his life, had to flee. Tigers too have been known to enact revenge, specifically targeting those who have provoked them.
Canids know that honesty matters. Biologist and animal behaviorist Marc Bekoff notes in “The Emotional Lives of Animals” that while canids sometimes “lie” — for example, they might perform a “play bow” to indicate friendship, then attack — they may face consequences for dishonesty. Coyotes who lie are ostracized by the pack. Dogs who “cheat” may be shamed and avoided by others.
Honesty, justice, fairness and the moral behavior shown by the police dog are part of the ethics that make societies healthy. Even in small ways, ethics matter. The word “etiquette” means “little ethics.” This is not some dainty and spurious curlicue of arbitrary human behavior, but rather a demonstration of respect for others, important for social health. We humans are not the only animals to embrace it.
“Animals can offer vital lessons for human ethics, political wisdom and social health.”
Chimpanzees in Arnhem’s Royal Burgers’ Zoo in the Netherlands had learned zookeepers’ rule that meals wouldn’t be served until all had assembled. But one day, as reported by Time magazine in 2007, two teenage chimps were more interested in staying out to play than coming in to eat. The others had to wait for hours, getting hungrier and angrier. When the two errant chimps finally showed up, zookeepers protected them from the others’ wrath in a separate enclosure overnight. But when they joined the group the next day, the others pummelled them, teaching them some manners. That night, those two were the first in for dinner.
Following Animals’ Lead
Many Indigenous philosophies consider that we humans are the “younger brothers of creation,” including animals, and that they have lessons to teach us. For millennia before we showed up on the scene, social animals — those living in societies and cooperating for survival — had been creating cultures imbued with ethics. As Bekoff writes, “The origins of virtue, egalitarianism and morality are more ancient than our own species.”
In the opinion of some Australian anthropologists, notes ethologist Temple Grandin, early humans watched wolves and were educated by them. Indigenous Australians put it more directly, saying, “dogs make us human.” Millions of years before us, wolf ethos included babysitting the pups, sharing food with those too injured, sick or old to hunt and including friends in their packs, beyond the genetic kin. Wolf ethics also included being both a good individual and a good pack member.
Human societies, while often quite different from one to the next, generally have a shared ethos similar to that of wolves: Look after the young; protect the tribe; consider the needs of the sick, injured or old; and value the cooperation of others who may not be kin (friends, in other words). It is biomimicry applied to the ethical world. Wolves were doing it first, and we aped them.
In ancient folktales and medicine stories, animals are often at the heart of an ethical pivot. Many deal with issues of societal healing after the hero has been treated unethically and morality needs to prevail once again. In the Grimm fairytale of the Goose-girl, the heroine has been cheated and lied about, but her horse, Falada, has moral authority in speaking the truth of her situation. In Puss in Boots, the miller’s youngest son has been wrongly disinherited, but Puss, avenging that wrong, creates a fortune for him far beyond expectation.
The medicine presented in these stories is often an ethical remedy for social ills. The wisdom of folktales aligns with the perception of Indigenous philosophy to tell us: Look to the animals for morality.
Animals Policing Humans
Many societies have overtly attributed to animals the job of policing human behavior. An Ancient Greek legend tells of a thief who attacked a poet and left him for dead. With his little remaining strength, the poet called out to cranes flying overhead, who became police-birds. They followed the thief, circling over him until he felt forced to confess.
Widespread Indigenous belief speaks of an animal archetype, often called the Master, Mistress or Owner of the Animals, who guards animals from hunters’ mistreatment and, by doing so, regulates human ethics. For the Ojibwe (or Anishinaabe, as they call themselves), the most populous group of First Nations in America, this figure is the Sky Bear, an archetype of a real bear, who is born in a Sky den and lives in Sky lodges. The bear approves of generosity and disapproves of selfishness and excess.
Among many other Native people of North America, the archetype is known as the Bear Master, who polices hunting: People must not take more than they need or disrespect the animals. Insulting or wasteful behavior also offends the Master of the Animals. These ethics are remarkably common: rewarding respect and generosity, punishing greed. They are also apparent in folktales of the animal helpers.
Across the Amazon, the Master of the Animals is also a guardian who protects his creatures from overhunting. The Master of Animals may appear to a hunter in his dreams, troubling his conscience. The worried dreamer may then talk to a shaman, who underlines and reemphasizes the warning. If the caution is disregarded, the Master of Animals may punish the hunter, making the animals scarce or withdrawing them.
When I was in the Amazon in 2000, I was struck by the parallels between this figure and the Greek god Pan, who guards his animals and whose presence makes people nervous, causing them to watch their step and behave well.
“The origins of virtue, egalitarianism and morality are more ancient than our own species.”
According to Chisasibi Cree belief, hunters must treat caribou well and never overhunt. Caribou were around the Chisasibi Cree lands regularly, being hunted with respect until, early in the 20th century, people went out armed with novel weaponry, repeating rifles and, said Elders, they lost control of themselves and killed more caribou than they could carry away.
The caribou disappeared for decades. But in the winter of 1982 into 1983, a few returned. The following winter, they came in large numbers to an area that the hunters could reach by road, and over the course of a month or so, a huge and frenzied hunt took place. People shot wildly, leaving many animals injured and once again killing more than they could take away. The Elders were upset, warning that if the animals weren’t respected, they wouldn’t return.
The following year, there were indeed almost no caribou. The Elders reminded the hunters of the last long absence of the caribou. Were these hunters of the 1980s going to be the ones to lose the respect of the caribou? Chastened, the young hunters took heed and, according to wildlife biologist Peter Miles, this had far more impact than any government regulation or legislation.
The powerful actions of animals may be recognized as a form of natural law governing morality. Perhaps modernity, in its increasing severance from the minds of wild, free animals, has also cut ties to something utterly precious and necessary — a public, shared and visible conscience.
Animal Models Of Healthy Politics
Healthy societies need healthy politics and animals can be good role models. Some may operate their own kinds of referendums, taking amenable account of each other’s wishes. Red deer will move off after a period of resting or feeding when 62% of the adults get to their feet. When African buffaloes make a collective decision to move, only the females’ votes count, expressed by standing, gazing in the direction they want to take, then lying down again. They watch each other, and when enough females want to move, they do.
In his book “Honeybee Democracy,” Thomas Seeley describes honeybees’ intricate decision-making processes for finding a new hive or leading fellow bees to feeding sites for nectar and pollen. The decisions depend on good research and on each bee communicating as truthfully as possible. Scout bees fly out to reconnoiter for a new site, and they dance to convey their findings. Other scouts check out the reports of good sites, returning to dance for the best. They listen to disagreement and recheck the sites. The new nest is chosen when all the scout bees are in agreement, dancing for the same site.
The bees offer a model for the consensus-building politics of citizens’ assemblies that help people reach cooperative decisions after careful deliberation. Healthy human societies could use some political medicine from honeybees. Tell the truth. Don’t suppress dissent. Listen to the experts. Always dance.
Fieldfares, gently speckled honey-colored birds, also demonstrate remarkable cooperation. They are much smaller than their enemy, the hooded crow, which snatches eggs from fieldfare nests. The first principle of political action is this: Find allies. So fieldfares gather together, fly above the hooded crow, and do a huge synchronized poop, bombing the bird, who has to exit the scene and clean its oily feathers.
When we think of political systems, we usually turn to human processes. But some animals model political practices that we could learn from to improve the health of our societies.
Rethinking Anthropomorphism
Fieldfare collective action? Baboon retribution? Dwarf mongoose sanctions? Dog fairness? Is there an issue of anthropomorphism here?
The term “anthropomorphism” is too often robed in a peculiar and partial rationalism that prefers “mechanomorphism,” treating animals as machines oiled by automatic response and fired by reflexive instinct.
An accusation of anthropomorphism is commonly used to pour scorn over all who regard animals with a fullness of intelligence — those of us who think with both logic and metaphor, who perceive with both measurements and intuitive sensitivity, who unlimit ourselves and embrace a possibility (never a certainty) of coming to knowledge through empathy, observation, self-forgetting and kinship.
Humans don’t know with certainty what is happening in other human minds, so we gently engage in the habit of twice-listening, where we hear someone and let their experience find resonance in ourselves. We listen to our gut. We watch our own responses. The juror in empathy steps into the skin of the alleged victim, knows that pallor and sweat, knows and believes her. Our kinship with other humans gives us license to guess and to feel our way into their minds.
“Perhaps modernity, in its increasing severance from the minds of wild, free animals, has also cut ties to something utterly precious and necessary — a public, shared and visible conscience.”
We are akin to other animals in shared common ancestry, in the continuum of evolution, and when we see animals (especially mammals) acting in a certain way in a certain situation, we can infer something of their minds. The accusation of anthropomorphism loathes the attribution of human traits or emotions to non-humans, but our characteristics and intentions are so very often held in common with other animals.
Our emotions are fundamentally theirs, as are our ways of expressing them. Love is warm, close and cuddling. Anger is a hot, violent rush of blood. Fear is a chilling freeze. Humans share so much with other animals — humor, language, culture, friendship, spirituality, art, politics, mother-love and a sense of home.
After a while, it feels silly to claim as “human” characteristics that are so manifestly shared with other creatures. Among the human traits that do not appear to be shared are capitalism, genocide and ecocide, and perhaps the divine right of kings (though queen bees may have something to say on that).
Wise thinking uses what has been termed “critical anthropomorphism,” not directly translating animal behaviors into human terms, but using empathy to help make interpretations.
Critical anthropomorphism embraces as context an animal’s worldview — what that creature needs, feels, knows and wants — and blends that knowledge creatively with a human response. It subliminally attends to shared common ancestry and the inherent relatedness of living beings. Coined in the mid-1980s, the term critical anthropomorphism was useful to consider animals properly as living, subjective beings rather than as little more than robots with reflexes.
It’s very far from being an exact science, which is perhaps why some scientists, steeped in the Enlightenment’s necessity to divest itself of anything with a whiff of uncertainty, mysticism or Indigenous culture still go vinegar-mouthed at it. It’s an art. It’s a philosophy. As a working hypothesis, it is generous, and as an aid to understanding animals, it is legitimate. Critical anthropomorphism is not an enemy of the scientific process but a friendly adjunct.
Many animal observers are now arguing that those who attack anthropomorphism are suffering a nihilistic shutdown in their thinking, trapped into anthropodenialism. This term was coined by de Waal, who described it as “a blindness to the human-like characteristics of other animals or the animal-like characteristics of ourselves.” The onus now is on the sneerers to prove that animals don’t experience responses and emotions comparable to ours.
Animals As Social Medicine
Animals can offer social medicine by their mere physical presence. When people stroke a cat, their oxytocin levels rise. When they interact with their dogs, the levels of oxytocin in both the human and the dog can nearly double. This is good not just for the individual, but for society. American neuroscientist Paul Zak calls oxytocin the “moral molecule” because it motivates people to treat others with compassion. He refers to his work on oxytocin as pioneering the study of the chemical basis for human goodness.
The effects of pet-keeping may also be a social prophylactic for the simplest of reasons, as the company of pets is a remedy for loneliness. (Pet-keeping is, incidentally, an ancient human universal; Indigenous people from the Arctic to the Amazon have kept pets.) I have often found my loneliness assuaged by my cat. Research backs up their salutary effect: In a 2013 study of elderly dog owners living alone, 75% of the men and 67% of the women said their dog was their only friend.
This matters to a society’s political health because when people are lonely, they become vulnerable. Loneliness increases the risk of strokes by 56%; it is more dangerous than smoking; it is a strong contributory factor in heart disease and the lonely are more likely to have serious mental health problems.
By safeguarding so many of us against loneliness, animals help inoculate us against these ills, providing preventative medicine for our individual and collective well-being. They also give us a steady continuance of existence, a dependable self-sameness.
This world-hour is one of flux and havoc; a white-water, white-knuckle ride of hectic technological and political change; a weakening of social ties as a result of the precarity of jobs and housing. The future looks fearful and foreclosed as a buckling and breaking climate holds us all in jeopardy. It can make us feel seasick and disturbed, with no sure footing.
“Critical anthropomorphism embraces as context an animal’s worldview — what that creature needs, feels, knows and wants — and blends that knowledge creatively with a human response.”
In this state of chaos, we need animals desperately. They give us a sweet and fundamental gift in that they stay reliably the same. The dove that returned to Noah and settled for Picasso flies across your mind’s sky. A donkey is a donkey is a donkey, offering a stable stillness in a rupturing storm, the constancy of their being. Animals help us keep our paws on the ground as individuals.
We can better our collective health if we are willing to learn from animals modeling consistent ethics and a constancy of morality. It is a reassurance that when truth and wrong and right and lies are smudged to toxic sludge, some creatures may offer us a clear-eyed view of good behavior.
