In a recent article - "Do cats have emotions?", the author, Sarah Hartwell has done a deep study on the emotions of cats. We may consider a broader questions whether animals have emotions, and what type of emotions can be expect?
Some excerpts from Sarah's article:
"Emotion" is the term we use for feelings, some of which are instinctive and some of which are learned from those around us as we conform to society's expectations and norms. Human emotions range from "primitive" feelings such as disgust, rage, fear and lust to "complex" emotions compassion and jealousy.
Recent studies, especially in fields such as neuropsychology, show that the more "primitive" or basic emotions have a physiological basis and may be caused by chemical stimuli (such as sexual attractant scents called pheromones) or visual stimuli. Basic emotions appear to cause chemical changes in the body in response to a stimulus.
Do cats (and other higher animals) have feelings? Can they respond emotionally?"
http://messybeast.com/emoticat.html
Yes, dear Sundar, animals have emotions and feelings. They feel sad or happy. Evidence for the feelings in animals has been primarily anecdotal, from persons who interact with their pets.
Yes, just watch them, your pets or wildlife animals. Especially imposing is the emotional behaviour of elephants - mother and child-, young male rowdies.
Certainly: they can be afraid, curious or content, express love and anger...
Emotions are not identical with feelings. To occur as emotion, you need additionally to your feelings the affects. This affects are uttered with strong signs of your body like gestures, changed voices, production of stress hormones, red skin, accelerated heart rates etc. So I think we should distinguish emotions from feelings.
To come back to the animals emotions, they need excitements, which can be perceived by the surrounding. Therefore the cuddling dog or pets don´t show emotions, they show feelings. The threatening gestures of a lion, a cat, a leopard show their emotions. Emotions should be taken earnestly because the excitation status reduces the self control.
As a demonstration I attend a photo taken in Namibia 2012, where I was a little bit to encouraged taking a leopards picture from to small distance.
Certainly, Animals have emotions just like human being. You can see that clearly because they don't know how to hide their emotions, unlike human being.
Emotion can be found even in small organisms. Did you ever watch two male beetles, imposing when competing for a female or a territory?
If you say that animals do not have emotions, either you need to review the concept of emotion or you need a pet at home.
Dear Vilemar,
this depends on the kind of pet at your home. Watch a barking dog, giving signals to you and a possible enemy, or a snarling cat, showing to you who is the boss. These pats show clear emotions.
The curring cats or the cuddling dogs don´t show emotions. The have feelings like "nice place here" or similar feelings. Their utterances are not targeted signals to the surrounding.
Dear Hanno Krieger - Some monkeys in the zoo, when they see us, or when they eat, seem to look like they are "smiling". Do animals smile also?? You have pets at home!
Dear Hanno,
i would consider that we may not identify how some animals communicate their emotions. But as soon as they start living in community they start showing emotions.
Humans are animals too. And while humans are extraordinary they are not so unique as to be the only species capable of emotion, social interaction, or communication via facial expression.
Some animals, such as dogs, have an incredibly broad range of facial expressions. Our inability to break free of our own tendency to try to interpret those expressions as human should not lead us to falsely conclude that expression is not occurring at all.
This can be a little controversial for someone that has learned that great apes make fear grins similar to smiles when they area scared, but in the case of bonobos they can do both things "fear grins" and big open smiles.
Chimpanzees smile, or make play faces:
One of my best friends in my youth was a male cat, sleeping in my bed and showing his priority with its sharp claws. And I love dogs with all their emotions and feelings.
I think that smiling is derived from showing one´s teeth, which originally was the emotion signal "caution!". We reinterprete this signal as kind gesture and see it of course at the chimpanzees. The smiling of a gorilla is a clear warning similar to its chest drumming. And the smiling of a pavian is an agression signal. I´ve never watched a smiling with an orang-utan.
Dear Vilemar: Why do you state that wild animals don´t show emotions? Could it be that you use a different definition of emotion? Have a short look on the wiki.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion
Hi,
if we agree, that emotions are something that happens in the brain, and the there are specialized structures responsible for creating emotions, and finally, that these structures have evolved, as part of the whole organisms, we have to accept, that processes similar to our emotions are present in other minds.
Some references that may be relevant.
Chen, Y., Li, H., Jin, Z., Shou, T., & Yu, H. (2014). Feedback of the amygdala globally modulates visual response of primary visual cortex in the cat. NeuroImage, 84, 775–85. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.09.010
Davis, M., & Whalen, P. J. (2001). The amygdala: vigilance and emotion. Molecular Psychiatry, 6(1), 13–34. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11244481
Laberge, F., Mühlenbrock-Lenter, S., Grunwald, W., & Roth, G. (2006). Evolution of the amygdala: new insights from studies in amphibians. Brain, Behavior and Evolution, 67(4), 177–87. doi:10.1159/000091119
Lanuza, E., Belekhova, M., Martinez-Marcos, A., Font, C., & Martinez-Garcia, F. (1998). Identification of the reptilian basolateral amygdala: an anatomical investigation of the afferents to the posterior dorsal ventricular ridge of the lizard Podarcis hispanica. European Journal of Neuroscience, 10(May), 3517–3534. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1460-9568.1998.00363.x/full
Of Course They Do!
http://thebark.com/content/do-animals-have-emotions
Dear Hanno,
I see there is a misunderstand here. I did not say that animals did not show emotions. I defend that animals living in communities do show emotions, we MAY not understand it at all times, but it does not mean emotions are not there. I thought you were trying to prove the oposite. Then, the picture in your profile is of a cat and you also mentioned you had one at home. So, our opinions are the same about this matter.
Dear Vilemar,
nice to correct your information. The cat in my profile is a fennec, some call it desert fox.;-)
But to come back to the discussion, I try to distinguish emotions from feelings. Emotions first need feelings and the are shown emotionally, i.e. with somatic expressions and external signals.
Yes. Cats have emotions following the common understanding of feelings/emotions.
As you cited, Sarah Hartwell, defined emotions in an anthropocentric analogous way by comparing/linking observations in cats to human emotions and feelings:
"Human emotions range from "primitive" feelings such as disgust, rage, fear and lust to "complex" emotions compassion and jealousy." (i skip discussing the social aspect raised by Sarah Hartwell, because it won't help on foremost solitary living higher animals (i.e. think of bears)).
I guess, rage and fear can be well linked to physiological changes and appropriate behavioral changes, even though lust and joy. Also pain, that might be seen as another emotion/feeling beside it's role in signal processing, is indisputable present in cats. Furthermore frustration might be added here.
From a formal point of view, the question "Do cats ... have feelings?" is hereby answered for the cat.
Anyway, to get more precision, the term "feeling/emotion" needs further refinement.
Emotions
1 - are an individual and temporary mental (internal) state.
2 - predispose for (a change in) physical state and (modulate) reaction to external stimuli.
3 - might interleave or overlap.
4 - correspond - to different extinct - with a measure able physiological or behavioral trait, that is typical (in a statical sense) for the species in question.
(5a) - in social animals communicating their individual internal (emotional) state may pose a evolutional advantage and will therefore have get higher representation in the genetic pool of the species.
(5b) - in foremost solitary animals internal states (feeling/emotion) motivate/preperates for (non-) action (alertness, tense, frighten ...) and such predisposition also poses an evolutionary advantage.
In some cases this might be signals that can be interpreted between species either (antilopes "understanding" play signals in lions and keep on grazing, sheep "understand" the sheepdog, pet dogs "understand" their holders intention to play or to command ...) but in other circumstances it might cause heavy misunderstanding (do not smile (showing your fang) or even stare at a gorilla, please).
N. 1 raises the further question if (higher) animals pose individuality in a sense of self-awareness and if they are aware of being frightened or happy. Some indication, that they do, might be, if they take action to get back into a more desirable state (leaving beside examples of pain or life threat): as children also dogs desperately apologize if they fall from grace - and like humans pets get frustrated and change their communication strategy if communicating their feelings is ineffective (learned helplessness).
To prove emotions and self-awareness in (foremost) solitary animals or in animals of prey living in closed herds or animals, that have complete different views to their environment and different senses (i.e. mole, wale) is much harder.
Many aspects of this observations can be related to complex and energy consumptive cascades regarding activity and physiological changes (hormons, pheromones, blood pressure and regulation, motor action (facial expression, tension) or brain (region) activity). But such physiognomy would be absolute senseless (from an evolutionary POV) if the animal is not self-aware. Occam's razor tells, that animals that share the physiological capabilities to react in such a energy consumptive way will be self-aware also.
Therefore i would answer the question if higher animals have feelings/emotions (even if we cannot interprete them reliably) with 'yes' for any animal species that has evolved such anatomical and physiological (or analogous) capabilities.
Andreas
Animals do have a range of emotions like happiness, sadness, empathy, grief, curiosity, anger, anxiety and fear. Dogs look happy when they are joyous and/or amused. Long back in 1872, Charles Darwin also noted and described about animal emotions supposed to have evolved as adaptations in numerous species. They serve as a social glue to bond animals with one another and also catalyze and regulate a wide variety of social encounters among friends and foes. For example, different animals have very similar survival circuitry that alerts and tell an animal to run away from a threat are the same even if that animal runs on two legs, four legs or fly.
A three-month-old baby died in its mother’s arms earlier this month. For hours the mother, Gana, gently shook and stroked her son Claudio, apparently trying to restore movement to his lolling head and limp arms. People who watched were moved to tears — unfazed by the fact that Gana and Claudio were “only” gorillas in Münster zoo, northern Germany.
It wasn’t just witnesses who were moved. A British woman who read about Gana’s loss online posted this comment: “From one bereaved mother to another — Gana, you are in my thoughts. My baby boy died last June and you wouldn’t wish it on any form of life.”
Some, to be fair, reacted differently. One newspaper writer asked bluntly whether we are “ too quick to project human feelings onto animals”. However, Dr Bill Sellers, a primatologist at Manchester University, believes gorillas experience pain and loss in a similar way to humans, “but of course it’s extremely difficult to prove scientifically”.
http://www.enrichment.com/content/do-animals-have-emotions
We call emotions to something that characterizes some behaviours, those that include endocrine and vegetative responses. For instance, FEAR is an emotional behavioural response to some stimuli: it includes not just somatomotor components (freezing, hyper-reactivity, increased tendency to flee or fight) but also a change in the heartbeat rate, blood pressure and breathing rate, as well as an increase in circulating levels of adrenaline and corticosteroids. Not all behaviours are emotional: walking (locomotion), scratching onself or reading (for instance) have not, per se, these physiological responses that we identify as emotional.
In most animals, among which all kinds of vertebrates, these so-defined emotional reactions are also present. And the reason, as Wojciech Pisula has said, is that we, the vertebrates, share a similar neural machinery which includes an amygdala connected with the sensory systems that detect relevant stimuli and with the hypothalamic and brainstem centres that coordinate somatomotor, vegetative and endocrine components of the emotional reactions.
We reviewed this subject in:
F Martinez-Garcia, A Novejarque, E Lanuza. 2009. The Evolution of the Amygdala in Vertebrates. In: Evolutionary Neuroscience, edited by JON H. KAAS, GEORG F. STRIEDTER, JOHN L. R. RUBENSTEIN, THEODORE H. BULLOCK, LEAH KRUBITZER, TODD PREUSS, 01/2009: chapter 15: pages 313-392; Academic Press, Elsevier., ISBN: 978-0-12-375080-8
Of course all the animals have emotion but it is depend abuot how we can understand this situation . For example you can have any kind of animal and see his behaviour every day , so what you can see ? every day have a different situation .
Higher animals have great emotions than the lower category animals. The higher animals can share their emotions through behaving in a way that present their internal thinking.
In most of the time, we are unable to understand most of their emotions!!!
Shankadeep Chakravorty replied - "Higher animals have great emotions than the lower category animals."
My query: What are higher animals? What are lower category animals?
I think Shankadeep Chakravorty himself should explain his categories.
But I think the development of feelings and emotions depends on the complexity of the beeing regarded.
Take two extreme examples: hominide against bacteria.
I think that animals do have emotions and,in general, share feeling with human.
It appears that many people who have contributed to my query have pets, and their replies have come from personal experience. This is great.
Best wishes, Sundar
Just published on animal emotions: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347214004126
And also related: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267514538_The_use_of_judgement_bias_to_assess_welfare_in_farm_livestock
Article The use of judgement bias to assess welfare in farm Livestock
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/nov/13/if-only-they-could-talk-
Perhaps have a look at the recent BBC World article dedicated to Animal personalities.
Expression of animal feelings is linked to Animal Personalities, or not?
It is worrying to see how, in the XXI century, people still classify animals as superior vs inferior. I imagine that, in this scale, we the human beings are the top of the top. Maybe this has to do with the fact that it is a human being who classifies the rest of the animals.
But think that ours is a young species, and nobody knows for how long we will survive: as compared to some reptiles (turtles, crocodiles) we are just newcomers. They have survived for ages because of their highly adaptive features: in a way they are superior. One can also argue that we have som disfunctional features that make us inferior: we engage very often in programmed social aggression (war), and we show high rates of strange pathologies such as autism, schizophrenia or major depression, likely derived from the special features of our frontal lobes.
Humans, and to my surprise scientists are not an exception, are usually puffed up with pride, up to the point that many people think that what we consider our highest mental functions are exclusively human. The theory of evolution clearly indicates that this is absolutely unlikely. Just read Charles Darwin, more than one century ago he already clearly stated that animals have emotions. And he nearly proved it, if this can be proven.
Most animals that have the functional resembling part of the brain similar to human should show some emotions. It’s probably depends on the harmony between functional network of the brain of individual animals and the environment in which they live, which require understanding and coordination within and across species and level of the social cognitive emotions. There are growing evidence that certain type of emotions in animals are regulated by the specific neural circuits which may consists of several brain regions like amygdala, pfc, cingulate cortex, ofc, vta and several other regions to from a intra-network or interwork connectivity throughout the brain to regulate and control the emotions. The malfunction of any of these brain regions or the dysfunction of any of these neural circuit networks distributed all over the brain may results into psychological abnormality. In animals it has already been discovered that if we remove or inactivate amygdala part of the brain the animals become fearless, amygdala is known as the fear center of the brain and main region for the emotional regulation across species. Several of these brain regions have neural circuit control to balance between the negative emotions (i.e. sadness) and positive emotions (i.e. happiness) , like pfc has been shown to have a top down neural circuit based control over amygdala and over activation of amygdala has been found to be implicated in depression and anxiety like disorders. So it has been know for long time that animals do have emotions, but the mechanism behind driving and control of the emotions have been part of the modern science and focus will continue in future to know more about the psychological problems caused by the imbalance of emotional control and ability of animals to cope with the severe environmental and social threat of different type of emotional stress.
http://www.investigatinghealthyminds.org/ScientificPublications/2001/DavidsonNeuralSocialScienceInformation.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10915615
If you live with an animal, you feel the animal has (profound) feelings. Many scientists work on animals, but they do not live with them
How to quantify motivations underlying behavioral expression?
The interpretation of wildlife behavior from a distance is not easy. Scientists cannot ask wildlife to explain in human language why they behaved as they behaved. Motivation expressed in the mind will influence behavioral action, but the same perceived behavior might result from different underlying motivations or feelings. This can be illustrated with scientific observations from a distance that one individual only drinks wine whereas another individual only drinks water. How to interpret this observation? Specialists in taste science might propose that the two individuals drink what they like to drink: one person likes wine, whereas the other person likes water or does not like wine. Specialists in social sciences may argue that the two individuals like wine, but that one of the two drinks water because the other prefers wine. Health specialists could perhaps propose that the individual that drinks water only drinks water because others told him that too much wine penalizes personal health condition. Wildlife specialists might explain that the person only drinking water does not want to share the bottle of water with the other person. Specialists in religion might think that the person that drinks wine is forcing to other to drink water so that the other remains healthy. Specialists in natural history might want to know the role of historical facts. Did the person that drink water drunk too much wine the day before? How can observers analyze and interpret wildlife behavior from a distance without having access to information provided by individuals explaining why they shared or not shared resources or without having access to historical facts prior to the initiation of observations? Apparently, there are many possible interpretations based on a few simple observations in the field or a cafeteria. Ideally, different hypotheses should propose different predictions perhaps requiring different tools or methods to test them. For instance, consumption constraints could be decreased by giving two individuals >2 bottles of wine and >2 bottles of water. The order of consumption of all the bottles received might test the ‘taste’ hypothesis in more detail or could verify if two individuals exchange bottles differing in content, and if so, in what direction. Blood tests or other physiological sampling methods might indicate overconsumption of resources (e.g. wine) in the recent past or in the absence of observers. Wildlife psychologists or ethnologists might accept or reject some hypotheses through analysis of face expressions, gestures or social interactions.
Dear Marcel,
Dear All,
You must have read some articles even books of Konrad Lorenz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Lorenz ) ethologist and ornithologist. He did live together with animals! I suggest each of you to read some of his books. You can get a lot of information on animal feelings!
Yes, dear Andra. I have seen the link you attached, and for sure, I will read the book lately.
In the link, "Lorenz studied instinctive behavior in animals, especially in greylag geese and jackdaws. Working with geese, he investigated the principle of imprinting, the process by which some nidifugous birds (i.e. birds that leave their nest early), bond with the first moving object that they saw within the first hours of hatching. Although Lorenz did not discover the topic, he became widely known for his descriptions of imprinting as an instinctive emotional bond. In 1936 he met Dutch biologist Nikolaas Tinbergen, and the two collaborated in developing ethology as a separate sub-discipline of biology."
Dr Marian Dawkins of Oxford University says: “One of the biggest mistakes we can make is assuming that animals are exactly like us.” But Dr Jane Goodall is emphatic in her belief that animals, and in particular the chimpanzees that she has studied, do have emotions. Animals have a pleasure centre in their brains driven by the chemical dopamine. When this tiny part of the brain is stimulated with an electric current it produces sensations of pure pleasure.
http://www.bbcactivevideoforlearning.com/1/TitleDetails.aspx?TitleID=23840
Animals are not exactly like us
Is a human individual exactly like another human individual?
Yes indeed they have emotion. Have you ever have a dog or a cat? See how they love you and welcome you back when get home.
In 1872, Charles Darwin described about animal consciousness; afterwards, there has been very little inclination to scientifically explore the inner lives of animals. In recent decades, animal behaviourists have studied pain and suffering in animals but positive emotions, such as happiness, have been neglected. This is partly because negative emotions are easier to detect: fear generally produces observable behaviour while stress, for instance, can be measured through the stress hormones. Today, however, there is a growing field of animal happiness studies termed as 'positive emotions'.
Of course, they do. I have witnessed this with my friends having pet animals like cats, dogs, squirrel, tortoise, etc at their home.
I had a pet cat that hated having my face too close. She loved being brushed. I was brushing her, then used that to get close enough to kiss the top of her head. She then moved out of reach, though by evening she once again asked for brushing. I think she was mad at me, but with a sample size of one I will never know. Most of the time I would get tired long before she was done with brushing.
Animals do have a range of emotions, such as happiness, sadness, empathy, grief, curiosity, anger, anxiety and fear.
There is no doubt that animals can be rewarded and threatened, but their behavior is no guarantee that they are experiencing the emotions that people have. Scientists increasingly believe that animals feel emotions just like humans do, and these emotions play a critical role in their lives. Darwin explored the expression of emotions not only by humans but also by cats, dogs, horses and many other animals.
The answer to your question is "Yes". Please take a look at the following RG links.
Article Emotions in farm animals
Article Empathy in dogs: With a little help from a friend – a mixed blessing
Article The Emotional Lives of Companion Animals: Attachment and Sub...
Yes they do. My grandfather's dog called "Major" fought anyone who fought with my father. The dog would not eat whenever my grandfather fell ill and couldn't eat. Fellow dogs even sympathize with each other. So animals have emotions. They fear, they get angry, they cry, they celebrate. What's more? They even mourn.
Yes , they do. The main difference between animal emotions and human emotions is that animals don't have mixed emotions the way normal people do. Animals aren't ambivalent; they don't have love-hate relationships with each other or with people. 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
Hello all: The physiology of emotions - hormones, neurological activity, heart rate and the like - are thoroughly studied in people and many other animals. Among birds and mammals the similarities are strikingly similar and so emotions are inferred in those species where those similarities are demonstrated. Even among arthropods fear and curiosity have been demonstrated. So, yes animals have emotions. Best regards, Jim Des Lauriers
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