I hold hands with strangers. I do it quite often, and for long minutes at a time. I wrap my arms around them to bring them close in an embrace. I search their faces. I fit my body to their dips and hollows. Recently a man said to me, “I can feel your hot belly.” He happened to be French, and something about the deliberate way he said it, carefully pronouncing the English words, meant that I could suddenly feel my hot belly too. It was as though I were inside him, and the heat pushing out through my skin was really pushing in. The membrane between us was suddenly so thin we could have peeled it off, or pressed right through it. Where did I end and where did he begin?

Humans have spent decades trying to teach other animals our languages—sometimes for convenience or amusement, sometimes out of scientific curiosity—but we’ve made little effort to learn theirs. Today, as a virus from another species upends human society, the usefulness of communicating with animals on their own terms is suddenly more imaginable.