Zoomorphism

Zoomorphism is the figurative giving of animal shape, movement, appetite, or character to something not literally animal. The word comes from Greek zōon, "animal," and morphē, "form." Where personification makes the nonhuman human, zoomorphism makes the human or non-animal creaturely.

T. S. Eliot gives a famous modern example in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock": "The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, / The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes." The fog is not called a cat outright, but it moves like one, presses like one, and acquires the stealthy domestic life of one.

Zoomorphism overlaps with metaphor, simile, epithet, and synecdoche, but it has its own direction of transformation. "He is a fox" is zoomorphic metaphor; "he fights like a lion" is zoomorphic simile; "the jaws of the machine" gives animal anatomy to an object. Not every animal reference is zoomorphism. A literal horse in a poem is just a horse until its animal qualities are transferred elsewhere.

The figure works because animal comparison is old, quick, and bodily. It can make a crowd swarm, a city breathe, a rumor slither, or a tyrant feed. Its danger is crudity. When applied to people, zoomorphism can dehumanize as easily as illuminate, especially in political invective or ethnic caricature. The best examples sharpen perception without reducing a person to vermin, livestock, or prey.