ABSTRACT
It has often been claimed that the task of philosophy is to ask the kinds of questions an innocent child asks, and in doing so, to give answers that accommodate the complexities of adulthood. When it comes to human animal communication, this is a monumental task. We know a lot about how we think children think about animals: while Hugh Lofting’s Dr. Doolittle stands as the zenith of human animal communication, hundreds of other texts and fi lms portray children-animal communication as not only inherently possible, but easy and natural. Whether it’s the stark reality of something like Black Beauty’s autobiography, or the carefully draw Disney character who not only talks but plots and schemes, children know animals to be speaking beings. They often don’t recognize that the rest of us think of this phenomenon as an anthropomorphized fantasy. Indeed, it is a right of passage into adulthood to accept the “reality” that only humans have language.
