Animals generate distinct expectations about an entity depending on whether they take her to be animate or inanimate, and they mistrust those entities that violate these expectations. If you live with a dog, you may have noticed that they find the vacuum cleaner and the hairdryer to be absolutely terrifying. This is because these are objects that violate their expectations. By classifying them as inanimate objects, our pets don’t expect them to generate the noise and movement that they do. That’s why they find them so unsettling.
