As early as in the Han Dynasty, animals have taken their due place among the objects/creatures that were sung (yongwu 詠物) in the fu 賦 form, as the excavated “Poetic exposition on the divine crow” (ca 10 AEC), Wang Yanshou’s 王延壽 (ca 118 - ca 138) “Princely macaque” or Mi Heng’s 彌衡 (ca 173-198) “Parrot” have well demonstrated. This practice of lending a voice to animals that cannot speak, of having animals act as the spokesperson of one’s human self, or, more generally, of expressing one’s feeling/situation by means of creatures (tuowu shuqing 托物抒情) which are poetically “exposed” and described thanks to bountiful rhetorics, has reached one of its climaxes in the Wei-Jin period, when the yongwu pieces in the fu form became most flourishing. Those pieces have often been considered as allegorical and autobiographical, as assuming their part in the wider poetic mode of frustration or commiseration, otherwise illustrated by humane topics (widows and other unfortunate spouses, to begin with, but also meditations or consolations for oneself). This paper will aim at exploring which specific discourses and profits (some privileged) spokesperson animals have to offer the poet and his audience, but also at analyzing the tension between this animalistic allegorical mode and the fundamental agenda of the fu as a literary genre, namely to represent or “give a body” to objects/creatures (tiwu 體物) by means of expansive, sophisticated and inventive rhetorical language.