Children and Animals’ Scribble

The young have always scribbled, and animals left their mark. In this chapter, I explore the riddle of children and animal’s scribbling as their shared mark making, and in their literature and culture. Fischer draws a comparison between children’s drawing and those found in the caves, as ‘instances of astonishing insight’ with ‘marvellous assurance in depicting animals and objects, reminiscent of prehistoric art’ (Fischer, 2010). He suggests this may have something to do with the ‘freshness’ of the child’s brain and its impressions undisturbed by social complexities and conventions: seeing only a small part of the world as yet, but seeing it with great intensity. We now know it is glib at best and discriminatory at worst to label the scribbles of primates and children as ‘primitive’ marks towards increasingly sophisticated artistic evolution. This chapter asks how much—or how little—progress is developmental or linear, particularly the playful, creative kinds? What might be considered the ‘life’ of scribble in the natural world?