ABSTRACT
The focus of this chapter is talking animals. It looks at some contact points between science and popular culture, where popular culture has appropriated scientific studies of animal language to construct fictional narratives of interspecies communication, and sites where intersubjective cross-species connections meet cute aesthetics. When it comes to thinking about talking animals the issue of ‘cuteness’ is foregrounded and has tended to be critiqued as a means by which animals other than humans are infantalised and trivialised. This chapter considers what can be recovered from anthropomorphism where it falls into the chasm bordered on one side by the sentimental mode and on the other by cute aesthetics – two aspects that dominate popular culture in an era of neoliberalism.
