In an age of YouTube piglets and puppies, when animals are images and those images are everywhere, the interior lives of animals have scant authority. The triumph of the animal welfare lobby has been to widen, in the public imagination, our definition of what types of bodies can suffer. But who can guess what goes on inside animals’ heads? Only poets are petitioned on that subject. Meanwhile, animals cast inscrutable glances to the camera, engaged in the pratfalls, serendipitous encounters, and twee feats that so fascinate a digital audience. What animals know is not for us to wonder. Watch now, what the animals do.
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