Shirley- Animals in relgion

Religions have been around for over two thousand years.  Over these years, people have been worshiping various objects.  One that is an occurring theme are animals.  Why would this be the case?  Is it because they associate these animals with their abilities.  So if there is a god of the wind, it has the head of a hawk.  Is this because since this animal can flies in their world, the easiest way for them to perceive anything flying it has to have some sort of shared characteristic with known animals.  Animals are a bridge for understanding otherworldly things.  For people of primal religions, these non-human characteristics has to coincide with the animal that has those characteristics in their land.  A question I have is when do they see these characteristics as something other than animistic and more of just people having these abilities without the physical characteristics of an animal or is that asking a culture to change its religion?

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