Human uses of animals
Human uses of animals include both practical uses, such as the production of food and clothing, and symbolic uses, such as in art, literature, mythology, and religion.
Animals such as horses and deer are among the earliest subjects of art, being found in the Upper Paleolithic cave paintings such as at Lascaux.
Cultural universals in all human societies include expressive forms like art, music, dance, ritual, religion, and technologies like tool usage, cooking, shelter, and clothing.
[6][7] Marine fish of many species, such as herring, cod, tuna, mackerel and anchovy, are caught and killed commercially, and can form an important part of the human diet, including protein and fatty acids.
[6][8][9] Invertebrates including cephalopods like squid and octopus; crustaceans such as prawns, crabs, and lobsters; and bivalve or gastropod molluscs such as clams, oysters, cockles, and whelks are all hunted or farmed for food.
[12] Textiles from the most utilitarian to the most luxurious are often made from non-human animal fibres such as wool, camel hair, angora, cashmere, and mohair.
Other animals have been hunted and farmed for their fur, to make items such as coats and hats, again ranging from simply warm and practical to the most elegant and expensive.
In classical times, Tyrian purple was taken from sea snails such as Stramonita haemastoma (Muricidae) for the clothing of royalty, as recorded by Aristotle and Pliny the Elder.
[26] Animals such as the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, the zebrafish, the chicken and the house mouse, serve a major role in science as experimental models,[27] being exploited both in fundamental biological research, such as in genetics,[28] and in the development of new medicines, which must be tested exhaustively to demonstrate their safety.
[52][53] Birds such as partridges, pheasants and ducks, and mammals such as deer and wild boar, are among the terrestrial game animals most often hunted for sport and for food.
[54][55][56] Non-human animals, often mammals but including fish and insects among other groups, have been the subjects of art from the earliest times, both historical, as in Ancient Egypt, and prehistoric, as in the cave paintings at Lascaux and other sites in the Dordogne, France and elsewhere.
Famous images of other animals include Albrecht Dürer's 1515 woodcut The Rhinoceros, and George Stubbs's c. 1762 horse portrait Whistlejacket.
[57] Animals as varied as bees, beetles, mice, foxes, crocodiles and elephants play a wide variety of roles in literature and film, from Aesop's Fables of the classical era to Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories and Beatrix Potter's "little books" starting with the 1901 Tale of Peter Rabbit.
Among the insects, in both Japan and Europe, as far back as ancient Greece and Rome, a butterfly was seen as the personification of a human's soul, both while they were alive and after their death.
[74] Among the mammals, cattle,[75] deer,[70] horses,[76] lions,[77] bats[78][79][80][81][82] bears,[83] and wolves (including werewolves),[84] are the subjects of myths and worship.
