Photograph: c Everett Collection/REX
What is the bite of animal stories? They are a good place to go to understand humans: the place where our anxieties and hopes, our hungers and terrors, leak out most vividly. For thousands of years we have offered them to children, to convey our ideals under cover of animal faces.
The story of how the panda got her markings, for example, is told to children in both China and Tibet. It explains how long ago a shepherdess, guarding her sheep, was joined every day by a panda cub. Back in those early days, all pandas were snow white, and possibly the cub believed the sheep were pandas. One day, as the panda cub was gambolling clumsily with the lambs, a leopard attacked it. The shepherdess threw herself in front of the panda, and was killed. The panda cub and his family came in sombre gratitude to the shepherdess’s funeral, and out of respect they covered their arms with black ashes, as was the custom. As the funeral went on, they wept, wiping their eyes with their paws and staining them black. As their weeping grew louder, they covered their ears, so that they would not have to hear their own sobs. The ash never washed off, and therefore they are forever marked with signs of their love and grief, their ongoing fealty to bravery.
