An example of anthropomorphism in scientific writing:
" I was, therefore, surprised to find, close by, a large bed of the common Antirrhinum in which all the flowers had one or two irregular slits, or holes, on the under side of the corolla at its base, close to the small protuberance which represents the spur in Linaria, and therefore directly in front of the nectary at the foot of the germen. From the position of these orifices they cannot be seen without turning up the flower; but the humble-bees seemed to understand this method of picking pockets full as well as the other, and never hesitated where to go, but quickly flew from the under side of one flower to that of another. Now I can speak positively, as far as the experience of part of two summers goes, that country humble-bees are not so cunning, and invariably crawl into the flower by forcing open the elastic lower lip; and a very pretty spectacle it is to watch them. All the flowers of Salvia Grahami and the Antirrhinum, which I looked at in different parts of the garden, were bored; and out of the many hundreds in bloom in the two large beds of Stachys and Pentstemon, I could not find one without its little orifice, nor did I see one bee crawl in at the mouth. Nevertheless I found, and the fact appears to me very curious, two separate plants of the Stachys coccinea, and one large one of the Pentstemon argutus, with all their flowers unbored; from the scratches on the lower lip of the flowers of two former plants I have no doubt that many bees had entered in the usual way, and I actually saw one bee crawling into the flowers of the Pentstemon. One is tempted to conjecture that in these plants each humble-bee as it came, not finding a hole ready cut, thought it less trouble to extract the nectar by the mouth than to make one; but that on the beds of the same flowers, where very many bees were rivalling each other in getting honey, some few set to work boring holes, and others copied the example. From the comparative fewness of the hive-bees on the Pentstemon, their evident awkwardness in finding the orifices, and the smallness of their mandibles, I can hardly doubt they were profiting by the workmanship and the example of the humble-bees: should this be verified, it will, I think, be a very instructive case of acquired knowledge in insects. We should be astonished did one genus of monkeys adopt from another a particular manner of opening hard-shelled fruit; how much more so ought we to be in a tribe of insects so pre-eminent for their instinctive faculties, which are generally supposed to be in inverse ratio to the intellectual! Moreover, from what I have above stated regarding the Antirrhinum, I much suspect that the practice of boring holes in its flowers is likewise a piece of acquired knowledge, whether the Humble-bees do it instinctively or not in other cases. Although I have said that country humble-bees appear to be less cunning than London ones, yet I confess I saw this June, in Staffordshire, some in the act of cutting holes at the base of the corolla of the Rhododendron azaleoides; the greater number entered the mouth of the corolla, as indeed was evident from the quantity of pollen on the stigma, brought by the bees from neighbouring Azaleas–this hybrid not having a single grain of pollen of its own. One bee was seen which entered the mouth of some of the flowers and cut holes in others; this shows that the orifices are made simply to save trouble, and not because the bee cannot extract the nectar from the long tube. In the Stachys and Pentstemon it is also evident that the bees cut the holes because they can fly much quicker from the upper surface of one flower to that of another, than clamber in on the fringed edge of the lower lip."
Charles Darwin (1841) Humble-bees. Gardeners' Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette
Many examples of anthropomorphism are either naive, or intended metaphorically. In this extract Darwin is actively and deliberately considering how cunning some bees are. He suggests that they understand that holes bored in the right part of a flower give ready access to nectar, that some bees may acquire tihs tecnique by copying others, and even that bees may make evaluations of the releative effort involed in boring a new hole when one is not already present compared with simply crawling into the flower to collect nectar.
From a position of our current knowledge of cognition, of the brain and nervous system in relation to cognition in different species (such as insects), I think Darwin's suggestions seem fanciful. However, much less was known about these issues when he was writing – and the extract shows he is aware that his suggestions are speculative.
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