Comedy with Animals

Most people love their dogs.  Also, fortunately, we humans do often display a sense of fun and humor, despite our difficulties.  So I guess it is no surprise that dog owners sometimes dress up their dogs with hats and other costumes, finding the result comic and fun.  I know there is now in the U.S. more than one group of dog-owners who organize Halloween events with dogs appropriately attired.

However, when it comes to finding matters where comedy and animals intersect, I find more fascinating those incidents that were not contrived.  I especially get a laugh out of incidents where animals had the last laugh.

For example, I've read, about an incident when city officials in Paris gathered up thousands of pigeons and transported them into the countryside over 120 miles away.  Little did the officials realize that the urbanized pigeons still possessed the directional abilities, homing instincts, and speed of their ancient ancestors.  When the human officials got back to Paris, they found that the exiled pigeons had beaten them back home.

Such stories serve as more than amusement; They also keep us from becoming too arrogant. One ancient example is the Biblical story of a man named Balaam, who cannot see an angel blocking the road ahead, even though the donkey he is riding can.  And so the donkey resists moving forward.  Even though the story is wryly crafted to be comedy for its human audience, the donkey might consider the story to be tragicomedy.  The donkey, beaten by Balaam for its stubbornness, protests to Balaam by saying "Am I not your donkey, which you have ridden all your life to this day? Have I been in the habit of treating you this way?"  (Num. 22:30, NRSV)  After Balaam admits his error, he can see the angel.

Konrad Lorenz

Another form in which our laughter and animals intersect is when visitors to a zoo stand before the cages and laugh at the seemingly peculiar appearance or behavior of some animals.  The animal behaviorist Konrad Lorenz, however, takes a humble stance when he writes:  "It is seldom that I laugh at an animal, and when I do, I usually find out afterwards that it was at myself, at the human being whom the animal has portrayed in a more or less pitiless caricature, that I have laughed."

There are thus different ways that our laughter and the animal world can intersect. Costuming dogs, although unusual, is benign.  Laughing at animals' appearances can be an obstacle to appreciating wonderful biodiversity.  Laughing at ourselves seems to me to be the safest approach.

There must be many contemporary stories from backyard-birdwatchers who tried to keep squirrels from raiding birdfeeders.  But recording all those stories would mean that the humans involved would have to admit they were outwitted by a squirrel!

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Have animals helped you lighten the burden of life in any way?  How?

(The quotation by Lorenz is from

King Solomon's Ring, by Konrad Z. Lorenz, © 1952.)