The Queen & the Raven: the UK's Special Relationship With a Very Smart Animal

Legends and fairy tales are set in a world where relations between animals and human beings are egalitarian and reciprocal. This places human dominance in question, and many societies try constantly to distance themselves from that message. Already, in ancient Greece and Rome, the fables attributed to the half-legendary Aesop were set in an indefinite period of the past "when animals talked like human beings."