zoomorphize

• zoomorphise

zoomorphize (third-person singular simple present zoomorphizes, present participle zoomorphizing, simple past and past participle zoomorphized)

1. (transitive) To endow with animal qualities.
   • 1964, Margaret Mead, Continuities in Cultural Evolution

     This provides for greater communicability but it also introduces new pitfalls, for the possibility of anthropomorphizing birds is at least as great as that of a zoomorphizing man.

   • 2017, Holly Dunsworth, Anne Buchanan, "Sex makes babies", Aeon, 9 August:

     So evolutionary speculation about the origin of human mating strategies not only rests on science’s tendency to ‘zoomorphise’ us. It also entangles science in a dizzying web of anthropomorphic assumptions about other animals.