On warm summer evenings, the groundhog who lives beneath my deck likes to climb atop a bench and look across the field. As I watch, I sometimes wonder what is on her mind while she surveys her domain. The simple explanation is that she is scanning for predators, and given the realities of groundhog life, this is quite likely. But is that all there is to it? Might she also enjoy the sight of grasses swaying in the breeze and the sound of rustling leaves? Might she even find them beautiful?

Such sensibilities are an essential, everyday part of human experience. They have also been largely denied to other animals. ‘Sensitivity to beauty and making or doing things that are perceived as “beautiful” are among the traits that elevate man above the brutes,’ wrote the great evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky in 1962. It’s a statement emblematic of scientific attitudes past and present. Even though research on animal intelligence has flourished, the aesthetic capacities of other species have received little attention. Today, we are comfortable describing these animals as having self-awareness, complex emotions, language-like communication, and even culture, but we hesitate to say they have a sense of beauty.