As Terry O'Connor has noted, ‘people's attitudes to animal bodies go right to the heart of the business of being human’. To human society, animals may be workers or entertainers, pets or pests; the source of food, clothing or tools; objects of fear or comfort, revulsion or reverence. Consequently, our relationships with other species are immensely complex in a practical sense and, concomitantly, in a symbolic sense. Even today in the west, when dogs and cats are popular pets, to call someone a dog or describe them as catty is an insult, whilst a dogged determination or feline grace may be considered commendable. To consider these animals in the same class as cows or sheep – as sources for food and skins – provokes outrage. These attitudes are, as O'Connor goes on to explain,

It is specifically to the ‘highly conceptualised and culture-specific’ aspect of man's relationship with animals that we shall now turn.

We have already encountered a number of animals and their symbolic status in our consideration of the doctrinal matters represented in misericord carvings, yet the menagerie which occupies the underside of choir stalls is far more extensive, ranging from the domestic to the exotic, the mundane to the mythical. We will consider this latter category of strange beasts more closely in the next chapter, but the current chapter shall focus upon the former category which includes the domestic dog and cat, farm animals such as pigs, sheep and cattle, the hunter's prey of hare and deer, and everyday pests such as rats and mice. Of course, this does not preclude first-hand observation of less common beasts. An unusual instance of locally observed fauna, for example, is the series of carvings in Beverley Minster which show the hunt, capture and display of a bear (fig. 15). As Malcolm Jones has suggested, it is surely more than mere coincidence that the construction of the stalls in 1520 coincides with the visit of one John Grene and his tame bears to the town in the same year. Whilst these animals are closely and carefully observed, other beasts of imported entertainment – those which are more exotic and less frequently seen – are rather less accurately rendered.