Related - Charles Foster has put perhaps the most effort of any individual to try to really understand what it's like to live as an animal. From the blurb or 'Being a Beast':

> He lived alongside badgers for weeks, sleeping in a sett in a Welsh hillside and eating earthworms, learning to sense the landscape through his nose rather than his eyes. He caught fish in his teeth while swimming like an otter; rooted through London garbage cans as an urban fox; was hunted by bloodhounds as a red deer, nearly dying in the snow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_A._Foster