The category of animal reaches far beyond anything that looks back at us.
Field Notes
We usually recognize an animal by its face, its movement, or the sense that someone is looking out from inside. A sponge gives us almost none of that. It lies against the reef like color or texture, easy to mistake for part of the stone.
And yet it is alive, taking in the world through its entire body. The history of animals includes lives so unlike ours that simply recognizing them requires an expansion of imagination. Before asking whether another life has a mind like ours, perhaps we first have to notice how many forms life is capable of taking.