Short answers, pulled from the story.
Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human personality, appearance, conduct, or cognition to non-human entities. The word derives from the Greek ánthrōpos ("human") and morphē ("form") and was first attested in English in 1753, originally in reference to the heresy of imagining the Christian God in human form.
The Löwenmensch figurine, an ivory sculpture from Germany depicting a human body with the head of a lion or lioness, is one of the oldest known examples. It has been dated to approximately 32,000 years old, placing it in the Upper Paleolithic period roughly 40,000 years ago when zoomorphic art first appears in the archaeological record.
Psychologists classify anthropomorphism as a cognitive bias. People apply schemas about other humans to non-human entities because those schemas are acquired early in life, are more detailed than knowledge about non-humans, and are more readily accessible in memory. Psychologist Adam Waytz and colleagues identified three factors that trigger anthropomorphism: low elicited agent knowledge, high effectance, and high sociality.
The Greek philosopher Xenophanes (570-480 BCE) offered the earliest known criticism, arguing that people model gods after themselves. Both Judaism and Islam reject an anthropomorphic deity; Maimonides codified Judaism's position in the twelfth century. The tenth-century Ismaili philosopher Abu Yaqub al-Sijistani argued that even negating attributes from God is a form of anthropomorphism.
Treating wild animals as humans by dressing them, feeding them human diets, or keeping them in domestic settings suppresses their natural biological needs and can mask signs of suffering. Species-specific behaviors such as fear expressions in primates are frequently misread as happiness. Romanticized depictions of wild animals, particularly on social media, have been linked to increases in illegal wildlife trafficking and weakened conservation efforts.
Children generally anthropomorphize more frequently than adults because they have acquired extensive socialization but limited experience with non-human entities, leaving them with less developed alternative schemas. Past research suggested autistic children tend to describe anthropomorphized objects in mechanical terms due to difficulties with theory of mind, but a 2018 study found that autistic people are more prone to object personification, suggesting their empathy and theory of mind may be more complex than previously understood.