In what ways is Moby Dick like an actual human being?

Moby Dick is not much like an actual human being—plus, he only appears in three chapters of the novel. However, it seems as if he has a much larger presence because everyone talks and thinks so often about this giant whale.
Moby Dick is what is known in literature as a palimpsest. In real life, a palimpsest is a blank piece of paper or papyrus. In literature, it's a character on which everyone projects their own story. (Moby Dick is even white like a blank piece of paper, lending more weight to the idea of him as a palimpsest.) There's a whole chapter in the novel explaining the color white as the symbol of evil, but that, again, is someone writing their own story on the blank sheet of the white whale.
The point is that other characters project human characteristics onto Moby Dick. Captain Ahab is probably the chief offender. He is utterly obsessed with the idea that the whale is actively malevolent (spiteful) and personally out to get him, just as one human being might be out to get another human. Ahab has, in fact, decided Moby Dick is evil incarnate. But all of this is, as the saying goes, "on" Ahab. Arguably, Moby Dick is simply a whale who wants to be left alone. Ahab's imagination builds him into a symbol of active malevolence.
Perhaps Moby Dick's most human characteristic, although it also is a trait most animals share, is that he won't go down without a fight. If attacked, he will defend himself.