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Zoomorphic text

The word zoomorphism derives from the Greek ζωον (zōon), meaning "animal", and μορφη (morphē), meaning "shape" or "form". It can mean:

• Art that imagines humans as non-human animals^[1]
  


• Art that portrays one species of animal like another species of animal


• Art that creates patterns using animal imagery, or animal style
  


• Deities depicted in animal form, such as exist in ancient Egyptian religion^[2]
  


• 
  Therianthropy: the ability to shapeshift into animal form^[3]
  


• Attributing animal form or other animal characteristics to anything other than an animal; similar to but broader than anthropomorphism
  


• The tendency of viewing human behaviour in terms of the behaviour of animals, contrary to anthropomorphism, which views animal or non-animal behaviour in human terms

Examples

Zoomorphic representation in religion

• The appearance of the Holy Spirit like a dove in the New Testament (The Gospel According to Luke 3: 22), "and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove..."


• 
  Mark the Evangelist as a lion in later Christian iconography.


• The Egyptian gods were often depicted as zoomorphic or as hybrid
  


• The names of the two most prominent Hebrew Bible female prophets - Deborah and Huldah - were in the Babylonian Talmud interpreted in zoomorphic terms as "wasp" and "weasel."^[4]
  

Zoomorphic language for things, ideas

• A literary phrase such as "The roar of the ocean".


• 
  Sin lurking like a beast waiting to devour Cain in Genesis.^[5]
  

Humanity portrayed in evolutionary context

Desmond Morris in The Naked Ape and The Human Zoo, Robert Ardrey in African Genesis and Konrad Lorenz in On Aggression all wrote from a sociobiological perspective. They viewed the human species as an animal, subject to the evolutionary law of Survival of the fittest through adaptation to the biophysical environment.^[6]

Other

• 
  Fenrisulfr, a wolf in Norse mythology


• 
  Airavata, the king god of elephants in Indian mythology.


• 
  Paw feet bathtub, with feet in the shape of a lion's paws


• The sphinx from the "Oedipus Rex" by Sophocles
  


• 
  Elephantine Colossus, a hotel


• In The Flintstones and Night at the Museum, the dinosaurs Dino and "Rexy" behave and vocalize like dogs.


• 
  Aslan in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a lion that is the king of Narnia


• Robotic pets, like AIBO, modeled on dogs or other animals


• In 2010 city planners from Southern Sudan, which would become independent a year later, unveiled plans for the city center of its capital, Juba, to be built in the shape of a rhinoceros. The city of Wau was to be transformed in the shape of a giraffe.^[7]
  

See also

• Amity-enmity complex

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Animal-shaped objects.