I am always told not to think of animals in anthropological terms, as if to imbibe them with some facets of human character were absurd, degrading or misleading to the animal and myself. Like the journalist who said on the radio his aunt would hear her budgie tweet and say ‘ Listen! every word clear as a bell!’ to loud laughter.
When you cannot talk to another person you look for expression and gesture and try to find common themes (obviously food) with which to build some form of communication. David Attenborough’s famous encounter with Amazonian people showed how a smile and hand gestures were almost universal.
It seems to me you can always go too far, but if you are dealing with nature and you know she doesn’t speak your language, communication relies upon your emotions. Percy Bysshe Shelley wanting to be the west wind, men learning to feel what is in the mind of a hunting wolf so they can breed sheepdogs and the ancient longing to feel what it is like to be a bird.
Emotion and imagination are how we communicate with a tree, with the sea, with the earth itself and as time goes on their sensitivity is being intensified by science. Because most times, the need to understand is even greater with those parts of nature to which we cannot directly communicate.