In the 1970s a former Soviet naval officer named Igor Charkovsky popularised a concept which came to be known as dolphin-assisted birth. Likely inspired by New Age theories, he urged expectant mothers to dip in the ice-cold water of the Black Sea, commune with dolphins, and give birth underwater. In the “very near future,” he claimed, “a newborn child would be able to live in the ocean with a pod of dolphins and feed on dolphin milk”.
The oddest thing about Charkovsky was not so much his theory, but its remarkable resilience within both Soviet and western culture, as Justin Gregg sets out in his illuminating and lively new book. Gregg’s work is both a dissection and an ode to the irresistible allure of anthropomorphism, our tendency to apply human characteristics to non-humans, whether animals, objects, AI, or God. An expert on animal cognition who also teaches improv, Gregg deftly guides us through our alternately charming, destructive and wrong-headed fantasies about everything from marine mammals to our iPhones.
A guiding spirit of this book is 17th-century philosopher Francis Bacon: “Human understanding,” he wrote, “is like a false mirror which receives light irregularly, then distorts and discolours the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.” And how distorted and discoloured is this mirror, less faithful reflection of a dolphin, dog or computer, than a warped looking-glass at a carnival.
Gregg introduces us to dog owners who insert “neuticles”, prosthetic testicular implants, into their neutered pet to relieve them of the shame of castration. This is a purely Freudian drama; the UK’s Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons’ line is that silicone implants offer no benefit to a dog whatsoever. I scoffed at these passages, until Gregg moved on to our assumptions about cats, where I have more skin in the game. So enmeshed is my own cat within my family’s psychodrama that Gregg’s gentle questioning of the realities of feline cognition left me unmoored. We are all, one way or another, clinging to the anthropomorphism game, imagining our pets’ inner thoughts, naming our cars, gendering God; if Charkovsky was deranged, it was only a question of degree.
Anthropomorphism has long been a dirty word among those who study animal behaviour, but Gregg sees it as a positive force if used reflectively. The late primatologist Jane Goodall, for instance, urged its judicious use. “Just because you feel that an animal has a humanlike characteristic you cannot assume that is the case,” she argued. “Intuition alone is not enough – but it is a wonderful basis for further questioning, testing, and ultimately proving yourself right or wrong.”
Some of Gregg’s case studies point in the other direction, showing how our projections cause catastrophe. In 1977, Nippon Animation released Rascal Racoon, an anime TV series that depicted a young boy’s idealised relationship with a raccoon in the American midwest. The series prompted the Japanese to import thousands of raccoons as pets, not knowing that adults can bite and, when bored, will easily tear up a small flat. Nearly 50 years on, there are few raccoon pets left, but many living in the countryside, feasting freely on native species like salamanders and crayfish.
I valued this book most when it touched on Gregg’s area of expertise, non-human cognition. His stories repeatedly surprised and enlightened me, overturning my assumptions about other species, particularly reptiles. He cites research into crocodilians which demonstrates their capacity for play and social relationships; through subtle shifts in perspective and focus one could reimagine these staple villains of wildlife documentaries as playful, albeit from the safety of dry land.
When in doubt as to whether a non-human animal possesses consciousness, Gregg urges a kind of Pascalian logic: better to assume a spider can feel suffering rather than deny it and risk harm. He draws a firm firm line between animals and the large language models that power tools like ChatGPT – the latter cannot be said to possess anything resembling consciousness, which is biologically rooted. (Given this position, I might gently question his repeated use of “hard wired” in relation to the human brain; as Siri Hustvedt has noted, such metaphors do not help us understand how our minds are different from machines.)
It’s a strange irony that, as we discover more about the workings of other minds, our tendency to cast our dreams on to them does not diminish. For Gregg, anthropomorphism is a function of separation (it makes little sense, he argues, to invoke anthropomorphism in relation to some indigenous cultures where wild animals and humans are regarded as being of the same blood). If separation can be measured by the diminishment of wild species, or the hours we spend online and alone, then truly ours is the age of anthropomorphism. Charkovsky has not yet had his day in the sun.