Animal sounds

Ladies with claws are popular.

Earlier this month, actress Demi Moore declared herself a puma. And on Shakira’s new record, “She Wolf,” out today, the sexy Colombian chanteuse says she’s possessed by the spirit of the title animal — loba in Spanish.

Speaking to The Post during a rehearsal break for her 2010 world tour, the petite blond singer was warm and vivacious, hardly a beastie girl from the deep woods.

She says she titled her album “She Wolf” because the wolf is “the symbol that represents the woman of our times.” We all know how sharp the wolf’s teeth are — but Shakira laughs off the threat, saying, “I’m totally harmless.”
 
Perhaps.

“The she-wolf is a woman who knows what she wants and is able to go after her dreams,” says Shakira. “She’s in touch with her deepest desires. In every woman, there is an animalistic, primal, instinctive nature that is sometimes irrational. There is a she-wolf in me.”

Shakira is 32 and has made music and danced all her life. She recalls her very first performance was an impromptu dance on top of a table at a Middle Eastern restaurant to the beat of the doumbek, a traditional Arab drum used to accompany belly dancers. Since then, she’s written and released six studio albums and become a global star.

Still, she admits she didn’t really know freedom until recently.

“I lived in a gilded cage that I built myself,” she says.

“I was always trying to please the desires of others, and I didn’t listen to my inner self. Nobody noticed that I was being suffocated.”
 
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