A smile is a facial expression that generally indicates happiness, joy, pleasure, or amusement. According to Wikipedia, Signe Preuschoft, a primatologist, traced the smile back over 30 million years! It started as a ‘fear grin’ among primates who would show their clenched teeth to a predator to let them know that they were harmless or to signal submissiveness.
When people give a human emotion to an animal is it called anthropomorphism. And it is an innate tendency of human beings.
In modern literature, stories like Pinocchio, The Jungle Book and Winnie-the-Pooh (just to name a few), feature animals and creatures that exhibit human traits and emotions (some of the animals even talk and walk like humans).
According to Wikipedia, biologists warn us not to assume animals have the same mental, social, or emotional abilities as humans – but that really does take the fun out of things!
