Above photo: J. J. Grandville, "A Dog Walking His Man, 1868.

Perhaps because we still think of animals in terms of the iconic images of Aesop, the half-legendary Greek storyteller from the seventh-century BCE, there is a temptation to regard human relationships with animals as almost outside of time. We...

Several myths of the origin of humankind have a touch of humor. The Pueblo Indians tell that Coyote once helped a great magician make people of clay, and bring them to life by baking them in a furnace. He left some undercooked, while others burned, and so most human beings...

In Homer's The Illiad, the Trojan warriors were driving the Greek invaders back to their ships, when an eagle with a serpent in its claws appeared in the sky. The serpent bit the eagle, which released it, and the snake fell, still writhing, among the Trojans, who feared the event...

The most fantastic monster in all of Western history just might be the demon in the center of Hell, from Hieronymus Bosch's triptych "The Garden of Earthly Delights," painted around the start of the sixteenth century. It has a human face with an inscrutable expression; its torso is a broken...