ThirstyFish

The Green Heron is a small, stocky heron native to North and Central America. It mainly eats small fish, frogs and aquatic arthropods.

We, the pompous human species, used to think that animals were automatons - self operating complex machines. We thought that they were not sentient. We thought that they were not capable of empathy let alone altruism. We thought that they could not use tools. We were wrong!

The Green Heron is one of the known species that uses tools. It is known to drop food, insects, or other small objects on the surface of the water to attract fish. Certain species of gulls are also known to use tools.

The human species has few, if any, exclusive qualities that detach us from all other species. We are simply a more refined, more capable Automaton. Anthropomorphism is the attribution of characteristics assumed to be exclusively human, to animals, non-living things or abstract concepts. Many scientists that study animal behavior (ethologist) have been falsely accused of anthropomorphism. But that is not what they are really guilty of...

Yes animals are like us, but, in essence and in effect, we are more like them! We overstate our human characteristics. Proof? Just observe the people around you.