When I was reading The Horse and his Boy, all of the Chronicles really, but mainly with this story I really enjoy how Lewis in a sense adds animal traits to the characters personality. Obviously it is a matter of perspective and imagination on his part but I really enjoy the notion. Example being how regal the war horses' attitude remained throughout the story until he felt shame and cowardice when they were running from 'the lion' and Cor fell off.
This way of thinking makes me think of cultural relativism, in a sense that whats to say that animals on Earth don't have these advances in language or even in complex thought or emotion. As the human brain has trouble enough for Americans trying to relate with people who only speak Chinese. Or for how much of a conflict in culture it must have been for the early American colonists to try to relate to the "savage" and "wild" Indians. They didn't have the same language at all, and their behavior was so foreign to colonist that they had no real connection to them.
What is to say that this is the same for inter-species, as opposed to inter-cultural. I don't think this idea too far-fetched, and I actually think that animals have certain knowledges and perceptions of the world that we as humans cannot comprehend.
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