Dog butlers, Gucci bowls and pet spas? The real story is how luxury hotels are turning consumer psychology into one of hospitality’s smartest profits ...

At the start of Elizabeth Hobson’s career as an ecologist, she knew to stick to one rule: Never anthropomorphize the animals you study. For plenty of people, assigning human characteristics to another ...

This post is in response to When Animals Wear Pants: Anthropomorphism and Learning By Boby Ho-Hong Ching Ph.D. I have learned that anthropomorphism is a deeply suspect word, used to defend cruelty to ...

People talk to their plants, pray to humanlike gods, name their cars, and even dress their pets up in clothing. We have a strong tendency to give nonhuman entities human characteristics (known as ...

If you think your dog loves you, you’re a fool. If you feel a kinship with a tree, you’re a hippie. And if you over-empathize with a wild animal, you must be wearing cheetah prints and a flower crown, ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Sahar Hashmi, M.D., Ph.D., is a Boston-based, award-winning AI expert. Feb 28, 2026, 11:53pm EST Mar 01, 2026, 01:07am EST A ...

"For the longest time, science has depicted animals as stimulus-response machines while declaring their inner lives barren. This has helped us sustain our customary 'anthropodenial': the denial that ...

Cute internet videos and animals in children’s entertainment with human-like intentions can be useful, harmful or both – depending on whom you ask Humans have long attempted to portray the natural ...

Autumn begins tomorrow. Suffused already with a seasonal nostalgia, I'm replaying scenes of summer in my head. Among them is sitting in a dark theatre, watching apes clamber across San Francisco's ...