Partly because it is embedded within his broader, functionalist response to the mind/body problem, Shoemaker's arguments against animalism and animal thought are complex (see sec. 3.2 for further discussion).
Yet the old traditions continued, and not least among them, that of animalism, in the form of conceptions about a ruler of the animals, animal cults, and similar phenomena.
Nevertheless, many replies to animalism do concern questions raised by the thinking animal argument and may fruitfully be seen as addressing one or another of its premises.
Animalism thus expresses itself in various conceptions of how animals are regarded as guardian spirits and "alter egos," of the facile and frequent interchangeability between human and animal forms, and also of a theriomorphically (animal-formed) envisioned higher being one who changes between human and animal forms and unifies them.
Features of animalism, magic, and various other views and practices may have played a role, but probably less so than in later epochs.
This phenomenon is similar to what is still known today as animalism (or nagualism or theriocentrism).
There is an undoubted poignancy in the resemblance of the young Russian to the role's original incumbent: 23-year-old Polunin not only has the heroic looks but also the animalism of Nureyev, whose physical intensity seemed to Ashton, at the time, to be "a reincarnation of Liszt".
Yet for all its animalism (and, dammit, that is wildlife I was seeing) it glimmers with humanity.
Animalism is, to a large extent, a basis for totemism, which involves various permanent relationships of individuals or groups to certain animals or other natural objects; hence animalism is occasionally called "protototemism".
Individual and cultic totemism, as opposed to group totemism of an almost solely social function, are particularly close to animalism, whereas religious and cultic meanings in group or clan totemism are usually poorly developed.
It is not possible to determine to what extent animalism had already assumed the character of true totemism in the Paleolithic Period; the early existence of clan totemism is improbable because it occurs primarily among peoples who are to some extent agrarian, and possibly a certain kind of sedentary life was prerequisite to its development.
