It seems harsh to label animals as mere things, but in the scheme of my premise that is where they fall. Certainly there are many works of art about animals, arguably there are works of art made by animals, but animals are not in themselves works of art.

This cardinal is an example of a creature that shares many of the physical characteristics of an artwork. It has color, shape, contrast and design that are all attractive to the eye. The fact that this evolved in the male bird in order to be attractive to female cardinals should indicate just how close the paths of humans and other animals have taken. The females of no species want to mate with the scrawniest, ugliest, least capable mates, and the males of most tend towards color, speed, strength or territory.

Perhaps art evolved as a way to attract a mate? The ability to make pictures or sculptures showed a creative mind and a creative mind would have been good in a crisis, or to invent new technologies. Can those pictures on cave walls in any way be considered what we call art today? If they were meant to demostrate an individuals abilities, they would have been more like feats of strength, showing off your ability to track game or be accurate with a spear. It would have been showmanship to attract the eye of the most coveted females. Surely art has evolved since then? Or perhaps in this world of gallery representation, collectors and prizes, nothing much has changed.

The cardinal, however, is unselfconscious about it's showiness. For it it is not a matter of pride, but a matter of survival, or propagation. Perhaps that is also something that is a part of art, passing something of the creator along to continue existence past the creative act, past the end of the artist.