Animals and Prayer

An odd post for an odd verse: In the longest discussion between man and God in the Bible, Job is asked rhetorically about animals and prayer:

Who provides food for the raven, when its young cry out to God and wander about for lack of food? - Job 38:41

The implied answer is, of course, God. But it's highly unusual to hear animals spoken about in terms of prayer, perhaps even more so in the Bible!

I do wonder whether the point of ascribing to animals a supposedly human action (perhaps the human action) is to equate human suffering and animal suffering from God's perspective. In other words, surely God cares about all His creations.

On a lighter note, I am reminded of the howling dog in John Steinbeck's The Moon is Down:

down toward one end of the village, among the small houses, a dog complained about the cold and the loneliness. He raised his nose to his god and gave a long and fulsome account of the state of the world as it applied to him.

Perhaps prayer is more natural than we think?