I love the word ‘anthropomorphosis’…. it sounds like something that should happen to you in a fifties alien invasion B-Movie…. but really, of course, it means to treat something non-human as if it were human – A major danger for psychologists who pursue animal research. We must take care when we extrapolate research findings from animals to humans (‘extrapolate‘ – another lovely term) to ensure that we recognise differences between species.

But then again, let’s take flies for example, as one researcher points out:

“Flies do most things that humans do—they eat, they sleep, they fight, they mate, they forage for food”

Furthermore, as this article seems to indicate, flies can’t sleep if they drink too much coffee and find the whole business of trying to attract members of the opposite sex exhausting.

So maybe they’re not so different after all….