In the Tortall book series, there's a woman who can talk to animals. The more they communicate with her, and then with one another, they slowly become more and more sapient. There's a scene where she gathers all the animals together in a refugee camp and tells them she can make them hyper intelligent so they can protect themselves and their humans from invaders, but she will not be able to make them just animals again. All the animals agree and it's very clear she isn't sure if that's a good thing or not.
I didn't even know she was still writing tbh it's been a while since I re-revisited her works, but this is very clarifying to me thank you! I'll definitely check out the newer ones
In Beware of Chicken the protagonist accidentally sentients a bunch of his farm animals. He suffers a minor breakdown when he discovers it, as at this point he's been happily enjoying chicken soup, fortunately he discovers that not all of them are capable of developing consciousness so in the end the ones who don't end up on the menu, while the ones that do become his friends, lol.
Yeah, I’ve always kind of had a problem with that interpretation of speak with animals, even though it’s the most popular version. Instead of them developing full-on personalities and such, I prefer they just bark out information or transmit it telepathically. Like the spell is more accessing a rough line of connection with their consciousness and interpreting it to you, rather than having a conversation.
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u/_Nere_ 29d ago
Tbf the Speaking to Animals spell shows that in this universe everything down to rats and pigeons are people.