We just adore categories. As human beings are ‘pattern makers’, a species that naturally looks for similarities and groupings in order to understand the world around us, we base our knowledge upon a series of categories and once we have generated an assessment process through our schooling, we readily place items into their respective categories. However one thing may belong to more than one category and it is not a matter of learning but a matter of prejudice, which category we assign. And further more it is a matter of teaching which category we assign to ourselves.
I am always surprised that people still think animals only act out of instinct and don’t have language. They may not have dictionaries but few don’t make an attempt to be understood. And if animals did not have an understanding of their own bodies, when trapped they wouldn’t go to the trouble of eating their trapped paw off to get away. I once read of a man cutting away his trapped foot and all he thought about was getting back to his wife and children as he couldn’t escape from the fallen tree any other way. This was not instinct in him, but reason. And it works exactly the same way in the trapped animal. To stay, is to die and the animals and the man, understand that well.
We have a set of assumptions and a set of categories and we must challenge them all the time.