There is something rather wonderful about animal characters. You can have a completely ordinary story about a group of people going about their lives, or you can replace everyone with a collection of animals and suddenly I'm paying considerably more attention. I'm not saying every story needs a horse in it. ...I'm just saying it wouldn't hurt. But what is it about animal characters that makes them so appealing? Why do we keep coming back to stories about talking foxes, adventurous dogs, grumpy horses and creatures that probably shouldn't be allowed to operate heavy machinery? I have a few theories... Animals Give Us a Different Way to Tell Stories One of the most interesting things about using animals in fiction is that they allow us to explore familiar ideas from a different perspective. A story about friendship is one thing. A story about friendship between a horse, a cheetah, a dog and an eagle? Now we're talkin'. Each animal brings its own physical chara...