Pets Names

I am a strong believer in the concept of anthropomorphism, which is giving human characteristics or attributions to animals and other non-human things. Ever since I was a little girl and still till this day I have always believed that animals take on and have human characteristics. I feel as most individuals do in that they believe in anthropomorphism whereas other individuals believe in what is known as anthropodenial, which is known as blindness to the human like characteristics of other animals. I feel as those who are in anthropodenial are ignorant because they need to ask themselves, how can animals not have human characteristics when we are all animals just in different classifications? We all eat, drink, socialize, have families and etc. Some may argue that we eat different things, have different living styles, socialize differently, have different ways of getting things and communicate differently but that doesn't make us humans different than most animals because we all have to do those basic things to survive. Yes we might do them differently but that is because we all have different manners of doing such things in which suits our lifestyle better, but that's all.

I believe in anthropomorphism because I have first hand witnessed and seen animals having human characteristics. Just like humans, animals have emotions and feelings such emotions like being sad, happy, loving, mad, and showing such attributions like loyalty. Also just as humans, animals give birth, deal with deaths, play around with others and go through different stages throughout their lifetime such as being infants, toddlers, teens, adults and becoming elders. In the films that we watched in class we saw great examples of animals doing such things. We saw Tote Macaques all huddling/hugging together mourning the death of their leader. You could see the sadness and grief in their faces and also by their actions because when we as humans have a death, we all come together and mourn and try to comfort one another in this time of grief just as we saw the tote macaques doing. Animals are also very smart and intelligent just as humans are. As shown in the films we watched in class, we saw that chimps have the capability of making tools just like humans do. We saw chimps making arrows out of branches to hunt for bush babies in tree holes. We also saw how chimps use sticks to poke at termite mounds to access food so that they can eat them. If these examples of the actions chimps are capable of don't make you a believer in anthropomorphism then I don't know what would because obviously it shows us that they are smart and use their brains. This is because it isn't like they learned how to do that from watching human beings.

Koko the gorilla was also a fabulous example of the capabilities that animals have. Koko is a gorilla who was taught and learned sign language from a young age and demonstrated that gorillas do have emotions just as