Empathy is fundamentally an attempt at translating feelings by drawing upon pathos. As humans, we have to transform an animal into a human being in order to attempt to understand the other. We attach our own consciousness to an animal and auto-affectedly respond with human emotions towards them, treating them as though they were capable of response. This is essentially an act of anthropomorphism, which perpetuates a satisfying relationship with those we desire to know but are not able to understand.