Kids love animal characters while adults love human characters

The reason is obvious, Children are more  drawn towards Pictures,. That's their typical Characteristic. They wonder how these Animals are able to talk.. . But once the child grows up, the same child because of maturity,of brain his way of thinking will be different. Different stages of life , ,different ways of behaviour  and different ways of thinking.

I think we all should  love animals, it is something that should go on with us all through our life, if we have been inculcated with the right values in life since childhood. It is also imperative that children be taught to treat animals with care and understanding , not just as play things that can be used and discarded at will. We have seen how adults can be cruel to animals in a recent case where a few youngsters threw a dog down from the top of a roof..This kind of flawed thinking comes because of lack of humanity , sensitivity and selfishness where they think only their lives are precious.

I will answer it from the perspective of an educator who works with children of all age group from 3 to 18. A lot of learning happens in early year and basically the moral values. Children learn values better when they see adults around them living it and not by moral preaching. These moral values are hidden in all animal stories of Panchtantra. They should be told to children without telling them the hidden message till they reach a certain age (9years) when they actually make sense of it. Before that age it should be left to the child to make sense of it using his imagination and his little experience. Animal characters serve the following purpose 

1. They provoke the imagination.
2. They make the picture books more attractive.
3. The real life situations and moral values come through animals. It has been proved by psychologists that it has more impact on the children if it comes from characters that are not so familiar from day to day life. These stories relate directly to life situations but indirectly to the characters in real life. This does not impact the child's emotion and his self esteem but does transfer the message. If it is a human character who is cunning instead of the fox, child creates a direct connection and it might evoke his emotions or damage his self esteem if he identifies that trait in him too. It is very important for story tellers to read it as a story and not connect it to real life situation or not tell the hidden message to the young brain. Leave to his imagination and answer his queries in age appropriate way invoking his imagination and not his intellectuality.

As an adult we do not like animal characters because our head takes over our heart i.e our intellectualism dominates our imagination.

The fascination and imagination of animals being able to behave and speak like humans, may interest kids a lot. Also, animals can be funny and can easily teach new lessons to kids.