ABSTRACT
People in different societies relate with animals in often quite dissimilar ways. The diversity of natural species and the richness of human imagery have contributed to contrasting perspectives, in different cultural worlds and different eras. Initially, during the symbiosis, prior to the baby's starting to demarcate a boundary between his or her self and mother, mother and infant are actively involved in resonant, mirroring, back-and-forth action and response, mutually accommodating to match each other. The infant's interest in delineating the boundaries and characteristics of self and mother generalizes to a similar interest in exploring and delineating boundaries and characteristics of other human and animate beings. Active initiative contributes both to external actions and to a child's being active as a creator and manipulator of images and ideas in the inner world of illusion and fantasy. Human qualities are often imaginatively attributed to animals or to inanimate objects in fantasies, in dreams, and in a culture's mythology.
