I think this is largely a reading thing, though? We have some defaults on how we frame subjects. In large, we want subjects to be singular things. For storie

I think this is largely a reading thing, though? We have some defaults on how we frame subjects. In large, we want subjects to be singular things. For stories that span large amounts of time, though, the thing with the same name is largely not the same thing. Ship of Theseus being the famous example of that. This gets more complicated with actually living things. That is, if you had "How the Ship of Theseus got its mast," I doubt you would necessarily think of any active choices from the ship. See the same for "how chickens came to lay an egg a day" and you would perhaps think there was a bit more active choice on the chickens of old. Realistically, they were both the result of external choices to the subject.