Using animal names in a disparaging or condescending way

We are never kind to animals in our language; with few exceptions we belittle or vilify animals. We use the animal names in a disparaging or condescending way.  I throw these examples here as an introduction; please feel free to add more.

snail

in contrast to email, the mailed (physically delivered) ones are disparagingly called snail mail.

Shakespeare in his As You Like It let Jaques describe man’s seven stages, “Then the whinning schoolboy [the second stage] . . . creeping like snail, Unwillingly to school.” 

bear (bear market)

Like the cartoon depicts, to use bear to connote a lousy down market is highly insensitive.

bull (bull market)

bull is pleased to be associated with a strong and exuberant market, like we have today (Dec. 1, 2010), but the kindness stops here; we don’t want to be called bullheaded (stupidly stubborn)

J.D. Salinger wrote in The Catcher in the Rye, “I was sort of thinking of something else while I shot the bull”.  Shot the bull is a [NOT an] euphemistic or polite way to say bull-shitting (trivial, boastful, and inaccurate talk of little consequence)

J.D. Salinger also wrote, “That kind of stuff.  The old bull” (the lies or nonsense talk). Holden refers to a “bull session” in a school dormitory—a gathering where students talk about everything except school work.

horse around
J.D. Salinger liked to use “horse around” in his The Catcher in the Rye, but he used it as the equivalent to acting childish, no harm done.  We read, “I horse around quite a lot, just to keep from getting bored.” and “horsing around all over the places.  It was very childish.”

Norman Miller used it in a less flattering way, “I never horse around much with the women.”

I saw this cartoon at Observer-Reporter; we use ‘horse around” to depict such a lewd and despicable behavior

fish; fishy

fishy is of doubtful character; “that story sounds very very fishy to me”, “using his position to line his pocket through fishy and degrading deals”

buffalo

I posted “Steelers almost got buffaloed by the lowly Buffalo Bills” to show buffalo also means “bamboozle, baffle, overawe or be intimidated”  J.D. Salinger also use buffalo in a very negative way. “We’ve been entertaining some Buffalo friends of Mrs. Antolini’s . . . Some buffaloes, as a matter of fact”  The first tells Mrs. Antolini’s friends are from Baffalo, N.Y. and the second buffalo is used to show Mr. Antolini’s [the alleged homosexual teacher] lack of respect for his wife and her friends.

badger
Badger is a burrowing animal, related to the weasel.  When we harass or pester someone persistently in a manner likely to cause annoyance, which means we ‘badger’ people.  Sinclair Lewis wrote, “the mill foreman . . . taunted the workers . . . badgered them, and told them that they dared not quit.”

chameleon
We often see predatory and chameleon in the same sentence.

hyena, laughed liked hyenas

J.D. Salinger didn’t present hyena in a pleasant way, “They both laughed like hyenas at stuff that wasn’t even funny.  I didn’t even enjoy sitting next to them in the movies”

fox

fox is trick by being sly and crafty; deceive; thus “sly like a fox”. “We would fox him into withdrawing vitally needed strength”

jackal and bear

Churchill was not kind in using animals to describe Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin; he wrote, “The rush for the spoils had begun.  But Mussolini was not the only hungry animal seeking prey.  To join the Jackal came the Bear.  German and Russia now worked together . . .”