Brandon Paton

Humans have exhibited strong emotional bonds with animals since the beginning of recorded history. The question of animal emotion, then, is whether or not these emotional bonds have ever been mutual. Can animals possibly feel emotions similar to the way humans do? This fundamental question has sparked controversy between scientists, philosophers, and animal lovers for decades. Conclusive scientific research regarding emotions in animals is sparse, largely due to the notion that ascribing human emotions to animals is anthropomorphic. In addition, reliable conclusions regarding emotion are difficult to attain due to the non-linguistic nature of animals. Conversely, many animal lovers are ardent proponents of animal emotion, stemming from extensive personal experiences.

In order to comprehend the theory of animal emotions, our vernacular understanding of emotion must be universalized. Simply hearing the word emotion ignites an unconscious transderivational search by which we assign contextual significance to words. The product of this process is based upon past experiences and feelings that we can relate to. According to Paul Ekman, the six basic emotions humans encounter are anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise. These emotions, as expected, can be fractured into subsets of secondary and tertiary emotions.

But how might these emotions apply to animals? Dr. Filippo Aureli’s research shows that self directed behaviors, such as scratching and grooming, although obviously having a hygienic function, also reflect motivational ambivalence or frustration. Increase in frequency of such behavior has been observed in situations of uncertainty, social tension, or impending danger, similar to the way humans bite their nails.

We must understand that outward changes in appearance which we regularly interpret as emotional responses, such as crying, should be perceived only as symbols for an underlying emotion, and nothing more. Our past situational experiences cause us to conclude a crying human is experiencing feelings of sadness, despair, or a conjunction of several other emotions. While attempting to interpret emotions in other species, we must completely evade this strategy. Because we do not share common experiences with other species it is difficult to conclude what emotion, if any, an animal feels. Therefore, we must diligently express caution before interpreting the smile of a baby orangutan as a symbol of joy.

Despite the controversy, research has confirmed that there are distinct behavioral similarities in the expression of emotions between animals and humans. Dr. Aureli believes that “animals respond to the environment much as humans do, reacting emotionally to others and even becoming stressed and anxious in times of danger. These emotions have a marked effect on their behavior.” Although scientists may never know what an animal actually feels, we can no longer deny the complexity and the inner-workings of animals. “[Dr. Aureli’s] research has shown that emotion is a valid topic for scientific investigation in animals and helps us to understand how animals behave with great flexibility.” He continues to say that animals operate in a social world not unlike humans. The more we understand about emotions in other species, particularly that of primates, the better we will understand ourselves.

As scientific research begins to suggest that animals may have emotions, our treatment of animals with regard to ethics has come under evaluation. If animals can feel emotions, and behave similarly to humans, why should they not have rights? Spain recognized this question, and became the first country in the world to introduce animal rights in June of 2008. With numerous countries considering a similar course of action, a number of skeptics and critics have voiced their concerns. An article entitled “Why Animals Cannot Have Rights” was published on an Internet newspaper. The author introduces the topic as follows. “Animals and humans are fundamentally different. This is what makes us superior beings and has led to our domination of the earth and our complex ability to communicate, to take one step back in order to take two steps forward.” He continues to suggest that the difference between humans and animals is that our emotions and rationale (higher mind) are able to override our most primitive instincts (lower mind). He says that the majority of animals do not have the control of a higher mind. Such animals take longer to learn from their mistakes, as the mistake must be deeply embedded into their lower mind in order for them to change their behavior.

Some animals, however, do have a higher mind. Included in this group are the primates, who seem capable of rational and emotional thought. But there is a fundamental difference between animals and humans. “The best illustration of this is suicide. Animals do not commit suicide; their basic instinct to survive overrides their emotion and rationale to dispose of themselves (that is, if an animal has ever had these thoughts).” Humans are capable of suicidal thoughts, and certain individuals have acted on their ideations, demonstrating complete control over their instinctual longing for life.

In Charles Darwin’s Decent of Man, Darwin recognizes that the difference between the mind of the lowest man and that of the highest animal is immense. “Nevertheless the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.” He suggests that senses, intuition, and various emotions and faculties of which man considers exclusive to Homo sapiens, may be found as an incipient trait in animals, if not a well-developed condition.

The difference between animal emotions and human emotions, from the perspective of an autistic author, is that emotions in animals are not experienced ambivalently. Animals don’t have the same love-hate relationships as humans can. “That’s one of the reasons humans love animals so much; animals are loyal. If an animal loves you he loves you no matter what. He doesn’t care what you look like or how much money you make.”

When we think of emotional behavior in an individual, we often connect their outward expression of feelings with their personality. We perceive some people as overly aggressive and others as “drama queens.” Similarly, animals have been proven to be emotionally complex. Samuel Gosling, a biologist at the University of Texas, identified four dimensions of canine personality: “sociability, affection, emotional stability and competence, a word used to represent obedience and intelligence combined.” Notably, three of those dimensions are “remarkably similar to the four basic categories of human personality found in standard psychological tests.”

Emotions and personality in dogs are easily accepted by dog owners who sense their dog’s jealousy as they sniff the scent of the neighbor’s dog on their pant legs. Prior to recent research, psychologists have believed that most animals do not possess the “sense of self” required to experience “secondary emotions” such as jealousy, embarrassment, empathy, or guilt. These secondary emotions are more complex than feelings caused by instant reactions (such as anger of joy). However, Dr. Friederike Range has published provocative research suggesting otherwise. “… [Dogs] feel intense jealously when they spot that they are unfairly treated compared with other dogs. ‘Dogs show a strong aversion to inequity,’ she said.” Her research is one of the latest on multiple species, including sheep, cats, horses, and cows, that has shown a greater degree of self-awareness in animals than we have previously considered.

If we accept the notion of animal emotion, it is easy to interpret human-like behavior in animals the same as we would in humans. Many accounts of this have been published in books, magazines, and newspapers. Ethologist Jonathan Balcombe, in his book Pleasurable Kingdom, tells of two birds he observed on Assateague Island off the coast of Virginia:

They first engaged in flight play then, over the next 10 minutes, one bird (always the same one) repeatedly sidled up to the other, leaned over and pointed his/her beak down, exposing the nape. The other bird responded by gently sweeping his/her bill through the feathers as though searching for parasites. There was every indication that they were mates or good buddies, and that their contact was as pleasurable for both giver and receiver as a massage or caress between two humans.

One expert argues that anthropomorphism, if left unchecked, leads to a complete absence of scientific rigor in animal observations. Marian Stamp Dawkins asserts that using anecdotes as scientific data makes matters worse. Research based on anecdotes “allows anyone to speculate on what a given animal is experiencing, without any standard for what counts as evidence.” For example, we may be presented with a case of a female squirrel being separated from her offspring by a human. Carrying out her ingeniously devised plan, she stood on her hind legs to demonstrate that she had full teats and was therefore lactating. Accepting this implies that the squirrel does not only have a high degree of cognitive ability, but also attributes “theory of mind” to her decision. The squirrel must have known the human could be influenced, and believed that, in our altruistic nature, we would allow her back to her babies. This hypothesis ignores the most basic premise that the “natural anti-predator behavior of squirrels includes chattering and standing on their hind legs.”

Recent studies have shed light on these apparently cognitive behaviors in animals. Simple rules among species of animals may explain some of their more complex behavior that mimics what humans would achieve cognitively.

Recent studies on animals have shown how simple local rules can lead to complex behavior that mimics what humans achieve by more cognitive means. We might plan ahead if we were deciding where to move house. Bees do this with simple recruitment rules of following the most vigorously signalling [sic] bees around them. Dogs and horses have famously fooled large numbers of people into thinking they could count when all they were doing was reading the body language of a human who was really doing the counting. Likewise, the female squirrel could use her innate anti-predator behavior to achieve an end that we might achieve in a completely different way using our big brains and the extraordinary capacity that language gives us to plan ahead.

Marian Dawkins continues her research on the topic of animal emotion. It is not yet clear whether animals experience emotional states, as can humans. She admits that animals may have emotions, but that anthropomorphism is not the best way to study them. Emotions in humans, for example, can be either conscious or unconscious. Because of this, our emotional states are capable of being shifted by a stimuli flashed so briefly that we react strictly unconsciously. Emotion, then, need not be merely conscious. Breathing, for instance, is an unconscious autonomic function that can be voluntarily brought under conscious dictation. The fact that other species breathe like us does not imply that they are conscious of their breathing. Relating that back to emotion, it may be true that species indeed have emotion, but just lack the degree of conscious awareness and control that humans obtain.

The current research on animal emotions is clearly inconclusive. If it is true that animals do not have emotion, we can conclude that their behaviors originate from their genetic makeup and are merely responses to external stimuli and survival instincts. If animals do indeed experience emotions, we can conclude that these emotions are not as complex as human emotion, but still have remarkable influence in social interactions. Despite the feud between scientists, philosophers, and animal lovers, most would agree that animal emotion is not a subject to claim ignorance to, scientifically or ethically.

Works Cited

Animal News Center. “Scientists Acknowledge Animal Emotions.” 15 August 2003. Animal  Planet News. 01 June 1009 <http://animal.discovery.com/news/briefs/20030811/emotions.html>.

Bandler, Richard and John Grinder. Frogs Into Princes. Moab, Utah: Real People Press, 1979.

Bekoff, Marc. “Do animals have emotions?” May 23 2007. New Scientist. 01 June 2009 <http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19426051.300-do-animals-have-emotions.html?page=1>.

Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man . New York: Penguin Classics, 2004.

Ekman, Paul. Emotion in the Human Face. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

Grandin, Temple and Catherine Johnson. Animals emotion is simple and pure; Similarities between animal and autistic emotion. New York: Scribner, 2004.

Jamieson, Alastair. “Dogs can be jealous, say scientists.” 07 December 2008. Telegraph. 01 June 2009 <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/ 3659416/Dogs-can-be-jealous-say-scientists.html>.

Parrott, W. Gerrod. Emotions in Social Psychology. Philadelphia: Psychology Press, 2001.

Roberts, Martin. “Spanish parliament to extend rights to apes.” 25 Junee 2008. Reuters. 01 June 2009             <http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSL256586320080625>.

“Why Animals Cannot Have Rights.” 22 October 2007. Socyberty. 01 June 2009 <http://www.socyberty.com/Issues/Why-Animals-Cannot-Have-Rights.53473>.

Wilkie, Shonagh. “Animals and Human Experience the Same Emotions.” 05 September 2005. Alpha Galileo. 01 June 2009        <http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=27884&CultureCode=en>.