Merriam-Webster's defines the term anthropomorphize as "to attribute human form or personality to things not human."
People like to attribute human characteristics to animals for some reason. Hollywood does it all the time with movies like Hotel for Dogs, Air Bud, Beethoven, Flipper; the list goes on and on and on. We just can't seem to get enough of these movies, the cute little animal hijinks make us giggle like school girls and we come away at the end of the movie feeling warm and wonderful. Well I don’t, but many people do. Then you have the movies where the animals are giving stock tips, are stars on the local basketball team, or foil some devious criminal plot. These are the kinds of movies that signal the end of acting careers; if you're the star of one of these movies your career has given up the ghost.
So my question is simple: We like to pretend that animals are so smart and can talk, so why do we always pretend that they can’t spell? Here are a couple of examples that come to mind. First, the classic Chik-fil-A stuff:
These cows are supposed to be smart enough to scale this billboard to write this message, but aren't smart enough to snag a dictionary on their way up?
And this:
Minding the fact that this is pre-Gabby.
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