An example of anthropomorphism in public science discourse:
TG: "…the acacias in Africa…they're evolved this incredible defensive response, because when the giraffes start grazing on the acacias, they, I forget the chemical is it a tannin, I don't know, do you know Tony?"
TK: "Yeah, it's a tannin, and I think in most trees when they come under attack from insects or [sic, other] animals and they increase the tannin levels in the leaves and the branches so they become very bitter, and they can do it very quickly."
TG: "and what's amazing I've found is quite a few of the trees do that and the giraffes have worked out that the trees are communicating through the hormones in the air and so the giraffes have leapfrogged that logic, so they start at the downwind end of the row of acacias."
Writer Tristan Gooley and Tony Kirkham (Retired Head of Arboretum, Gardens & Horticultural Services at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew) were talking on an episode ('The Wonder of Trees') of the Infinite Monkey Cage.
(If approaching groups of trees downwind increased giraffe fitness then this could over time be elected for by natural selection and become instinctive. This does not need the giraffes to conceptualise how trees communicate nor have any knowledge of hormones.)
Read examples of anthropomorphism in science
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