ABSTRACT
Historically, animals have been deified, and they continue to be symbolic in many ways as sports totems, as allegorical characters, and as deliverers of alternative points of view on the human experience, e.g., the narrator in War Horse. Animals do not have a specific presence at the core of cross-cultural psychology, but anthropologists in the specific area of anthrozoology have filled this gap, revealed by recent work on the human–animal connection. Likewise, comparative psychologists have pursued the question of whether animals themselves, individually or collectively, form cultures and, along with philosophers, have probed the degree to which they are to be included in human moral systems. Actual involvement with animals, while it could be extraordinarily revealing of layers of culture, needs to be crafted with some care. Official policy demands that any activity involving animals be passed through an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, similar to a human participants review committee.
