Understanding Anthropomorphism: Insights into Animal Behavior

Anthropomorphism is the act of describing animals, objects, etc., as having human qualities. I am not trying to sound smart when I mention this beautiful word, nor am I quoting from the Zootopia trailer. In fact, I may have even pronounced the word wrong and made several grammatical mistakes during the definition. However, if I were an animal, say a gecko, would I be embarrassed by my pronunciation and grammar skills? Obviously, no. But wait, how do I know that the gecko species does not have a complex system of language and maybe has the same amount of vocabulary and grammar as French? We humans, when thinking of animals, especially our pets, often classify them as four-legged or no-legged people. To partially understand animals, we need to see the world from an animal’s perspective. But that is very hard for us “normal” beings because we generalize too much.

NASA did an experiment with commercial airplane pilots. The researchers put them in a flight simulator and asked them to do a bunch of routine landings. However, on some of the landing approaches, the experimenters added the image of a large commercial airplane parked on the runway, something a pilot would never see in real life (at least, let's hope not). One quarter of the pilots landed right on top of the airplane. They never saw it. Our brain is built to see what we are used to seeing.

We “normal” people often say that autistic kids “live in their own little world.” However, autistic humans are very much like animals. They are visual thinkers, and trust me, they see way more things than we do. We “normal” humans are very abstractified. We live in a world that our brain has built for us, and we never see raw data. It's ironic that we are saying autistic people are the ones in their own little bubbles while we are the ones that are in the bubble.

This book, Animal in Translation, by Temple Grandin, is a perfect resource to teach one to be less verbal and more visual and to see more things. In the book, Grandin states that she does not know if people will ever be able to talk to animals the way Doctor Doolittle could, or whether animals will be able to talk back. But she does state that people can learn to “talk” to animals and to hear what animals have to say.

People were animals, too, once, and when we turned into human beings, we gave something up. By understanding animals partially, we bring some of it back. Even if you are not a fan of nonfiction, read this. There are no hard vocabularies or confusing formulas, only a thrilling roller coaster ride through the different aspects of nature from the mind of an autistic human being.