oxygen jumps onto hydrogen and carbon

An example of metaphor in popular science writing:

"To get the raw materials for life, we need to start with basic constituents like carbon and hydrogen and turn them into progressively more complex molecules. But you can't do that if there's plenty of oxygen around, because it jumps onto the hydrogen to make water (H₂O), and onto the carbon to make carbon dioxide (CO₂), and everything stops there"

Andrew May

May, A. (2019) Astrobiology. The Search for Life Elsewhere in the Universe

This metaphor seems a little anthropomorphic to me, as 'jumping' seems to imply some kind of deliberate, as we as enthusiastic, act?

Read about anthropomorphism

Read examples of anthropomorphism in science

Many examples of anthropomorphism are listed in 'Creative comparisons: Making science familiar through language. An illustrative catalogue of figurative comparisons and analogies for science concepts'. Free Download.