Anthropomorphism.
It means to endow human qualities to non-humans.
We've all been exposed to it. Be it Mickey mouse, Donald Duck or right here in DA, usually in the shape of a really cute bunny/cat/mouse girl with the face of an angel and tits the size of watermelons.

Let's go a bit deeper. Why is it that when a computer or program crashes, we scream at it as if it has feelings? Why is it that when the car won't start we hit the dashboard or kick the tires? Why do we keep talking to our pets as if we expect them to feel, behave or act as we do?

I think we are hard wired to identify familiar patterns in order to make sense of the world.
You see, we can't take in everything we see, hear, smell and touch. Why? Because if we did, our brains would be the size of trucks and use more energy than what we can generate through eating food.
So we pick and choose what we take in and comprehend that information by linking new experiences with experiences already stored in our brain.

Take a look at this...



Number 1 is the photo-realistic interpretation of a face created by photons bouncing off a face and forming an image on a CCD or CMOS sensor chip.

Number 2 is a series of lines in a specific arrangement with a variation of frequencies which we interpret as colours.

Number 3 is just 2 dots with a curved line.

The funny thing is, as far as we are concerned, they are all faces. The very fact that two dots and a line can be interpreted as a face, shows that our basic level of comprehension for a face is extremely basics, meaning that in order to identify a face, we don't need masses of stored information in our brain to understand what we see.
Same thing with everything else. In order to understand a table, our brain does not need to store the measurements, type of wood and varnish used. Instead we think of it in personal, familiar terms. The table has four legs. Legs? Tables have not developed limbs, but as we link the world into familiar, personal terms, the table then sprout legs instead of vertical beams. We also create emotional attachments to inert objects as if they had emotions and feelings even though clearly they don't.

Our most familiar experience is the personal one, and by that I mean, intimate. We know ourselves better than we know anyone or anything else... no matter what doctor Phil says.
We process the world around us with ourselves as the basic benchmark for measurement. That's why we tend to humanise everything, cars, dogs, personal items, etc. That may not be a bad thing, because if we didn't, we may end up dehumanising each other. Now that would be disastrous.

This is just my theory, I could be way off the mark and may be talking shit. I guess what I'm trying to say is that, whether we like it or not, we are all furries by nature.

Fucking furries.