Animal symbolicum ("symbol-making" or "symbolizing animal") is a definition for humans proposed by the German neo-Kantian philosopher Ernst Cassirer.
However, Cassirer claimed that man's outstanding characteristic is not in his metaphysical or physical nature, but rather in his work.
Humanity cannot be known directly, but has to be known through the analysis of the symbolic universe that man has created historically.
His work is represented in his three-volume Philosophie der Symbolischen Formen (1923–9, translated as The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms) and is summarized in his An Essay on Man.
W. J. T. Mitchell used this term in his essay on "representation" to say that "man, for many philosophers both ancient and modern, is the "representational animal," homo symbolicum [sic], the creature whose distinctive character is the creation and manipulation of signs - things that stand for or take the place of something else.