You raised the point of the experience of animals themselves, and the way they process thoughts and see the world, but I'm not sure how well it fits into your overall argument. Building on what Rakuen Growlithe said, studying the depictions of an animal over a range of cultures could aid one's understanding of the species, but eventually you would need to take a more analytical approach to investigate further.
The depiction of a certain animal in most any culture is going to be based on SOMEONE's observation of that animal, taking note of its behavior, appearance, and so forth. Going off those observations, there are ultimately going to be a limited number of conclusions, different ways to interpret the animal and its role. You listed the sexually-minded trickster fox as an example of a narrow stereotype, but that archetype is present in folklore originating on all three continents that red foxes are widespread on (I'm not well-versed in North African lore on the species, but considering how much commerce crossed the Mediterranean since Classical times, I wouldn't be surprised if it were similar to European fox mythology).
Scientific study is probably the way to go to learn about what's going on in animal's heads, there has been pretty extensive research in how animals approach human topics like speech and language, and how they solve problems, use tools, and so forth. The results of those studies show that different animals do in fact have fundamentally different thought processes from one another and from humans, but there's still fairly little that's conclusively understood about the topic. Who knows where that line of research might lead? Maybe one day it'll be possible to overcome language and communication barriers between species altogether.
You raised the point of the experience of animals themselves, and the way they process thoughts and see the world, but I'm not sure how well it fits into your overall argument. Building on what Rakuen Growlithe said, studying the depictions of an animal over a range of cultures could aid one's understanding of the species, but eventually you would need to take a more analytical approach to investigate further.
The depiction of a certain animal in most any culture is going to be based on SOMEONE's observation of that animal, taking note of its behavior, appearance, and so forth. Going off those observations, there are ultimately going to be a limited number of conclusions, different ways to interpret the animal and its role. You listed the sexually-minded trickster fox as an example of a narrow stereotype, but that archetype is present in folklore originating on all three continents that red foxes are widespread on (I'm not well-versed in North African lore on the species, but considering how much commerce crossed the Mediterranean since Classical times, I wouldn't be surprised if it were similar to European fox mythology).
Scientific study is probably the way to go to learn about what's going on in animal's heads, there has been pretty extensive research in how animals approach human topics like speech and language, and how they solve problems, use tools, and so forth. The results of those studies show that different animals do in fact have fundamentally different thought processes from one another and from humans, but there's still fairly little that's conclusively understood about the topic. Who knows where that line of research might lead? Maybe one day it'll be possible to overcome language and communication barriers between species altogether.