The central conceit of Yann Martel’s Life of Pi novel is that the book’s protagonist conveys two stories accounting for his shipwreck survival, one featuring animals and the second only humans. Importantly, Martel frames the first narrative as the “better story.” In part due to its animal focus, the majority of the literary scholarship regards Martel’s vision as a counter-anthropocentric text. I problematize Life of Pi’s reputation as a counter-anthropocentric, ecologically conscious novel and propose a new reading that re-purposes Martel’s meta-anthropo-allegorical frame while inviting students to interrogate the question of what constitutes a “better story” for animals and humans alike.