Why memoirs involving animals are so successful

A new memoir by Chloe Dalton, a high-flying British foreign-policy adviser, has leapt off bookshelves on both sides of the Atlantic. It sits at the confluence of two conventional story types. The first is “what I learned from wild animals”: in Ms Dalton’s case, a hare. Other authors have bonded with foxes, hawks, owls, magpies and snails—which have taught them important things about how to be human. In a new film, called “The Penguin Lessons”, a penguin instructs Steve Coogan, an unflappable comic actor.