Why is its wrong to give animals human characteristics?
Scientists don’t like anthropomorphism (giving animals human characteristics) because, when following the scientific method, a scientist should only report things they can directly observe. For example, a scientist might talk about aggression, because (s)he can see one animal attack another, but the scientist wouldn’t say the animal was angry or fearful, because (s)he can’t usually observe emotions directly. Anthropomorphism can also bias a scientist’s observations, when the scientist projects his/her emotions onto observed behavior. Beyond a science context, I see no reason not to assign animals human-like emotions. Birds, reptiles, and mammals all have a structure in their brain called the amygdala, which is responsible for emotions in humans, so it’s likely that they feel something like love, fear, and anger, at the very least. However, animal motivations, desires, and perceptions are often very different from our own, and an animal in a certain situation will probably feel very dif
