Sometimes I wonder if animals ever conceive of monsters. What menaces my dog in her nightmares? Is it only real creatures that she’s familiar with, or does she ever dream about stranger beasts – bigger, meaner dogs with barks like fireworks? Things that come out of the bathtub drains? Humans that only look like her humans, but smell horribly, impossibly wrong?
my rabbits have never, as far as i know, and i got them young, met any actual predators, save for one kitten smaller than them, and nonthreatening dogs they liked, but they still have that instinctual fear for predators. lots of rabbit owners will say theirs do the same – if theres something new in their area and its dark, theyll start thumping and acting panicked, running at any movement or noise they perceive, because they think the new shadow is some looming, unknown predator. my one rabbit, when she was still a baby, would sometimes thump and dart from nothing at all, while the other was unfazed (or simply startled from the others panic). i wonder what she thought was there
I’m very curious about the extent of different animals’ imaginations. The human imagination is incredibly rich and overactive and probably oranges to crabapples in comparison to most non-human animals’, but I wouldn’t be surprised even rabbits’ brains supply them with some form of imagined danger beyond pure instinctual reactions.
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Ignisfilimundi 