I think you're right, but historically there have been problems. Frans de Waal has written about how in his field there was a lot of early egregious anthropomor

I think you're right, but historically there have been problems. Frans de Waal has written about how in his field there was a lot of early egregious anthropomorphizing. As people realized how flawed that was, they swung around the other way, to refusing to consider analogous human behavior. But things like de Waal's work demonstrating moral sense in animals is hard to explain in any other way. [1] Even so, it can be tricky. In Bernd Heinrich's excellent "Mind of the Raven" [2], he points to a story where a woman, lost in the wilderness, noticed a raven crying near her and spotted something like a mountain lion creeping up on her. In the news story she gave the raven credit for warning her and saving her life. But Heinrich points out that ravens have a demonstrated history of leading predators to prey, because that way they get the leftovers with much lower risk. So although the woman was correct that the raven understood her danger and was demonstrating advanced social cooperation, her anthropomorphic bias led her to perhaps be dangerously wrong about who the raven was trying to help. So although I think shorthand like, "The octopus is playing" is fine for casual use, I think serious people have to always be challenging those tempting assumptions. [1] e.g., this book https://www.amazon.com/Good-Natured-Origins-Humans-Animals/dp/0674356616 https://www.amazon.com/Good-Natured-Origins-Humans-Animals/d... or this TED talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg [2] A stellar book, and I recommend it strongly to anybody fascinated by corvids or interested in decoding animal behavior more generally: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/mind-of-the-raven-bernd-heinrich?variant=32122736476194 https://www.harpercollins.com/products/mind-of-the-raven-ber...