How To Tell If Animals Can Feel Love

Practise elephants experience joy, chimpanzees grief and depression, and dogs happiness and dejection? People disagree about the nature of emotions in nonhuman brute beings (hereafter animals), especially concerning the question of whether any animals other than humans can feel emotions (Ekman 1998). Pythagoreans long ago believed that animals experience the aforementioned range of emotions as humans (Coates 1998), and current enquiry provides compelling evidence that at least some animals likely experience a full range of emotions, including fear, joy, happiness, shame, embarrassment, resentment, jealousy, rage, anger, beloved, pleasure, pity, respect, relief, disgust, sadness, despair, and grief (Skutch 1996, Poole 1996, 1998, Panksepp 1998, Archer 1999, Cabanac 1999, Bekoff 2000).

The expression of emotions in animals raises a number of stimulating and challenging questions to which relatively little systematic empirical research has been devoted, especially amid free-ranging animals. Popular accounts (e.k., Masson and McCarthy's When Elephants Weep, 1995) have raised awareness of animal emotions, particularly among nonscientists, and provided scientists with much useful information for further systematic enquiry. Such books have as well raised hackles among many scientists for being "besides soft"—that is, too anecdotal, misleading, or sloppy (Fraser 1996). Even so, Burghardt (1997a), despite finding some areas of business concern in Masson and McCarthy's volume, wrote: "I predict that in a few years the phenomena described here will be confirmed, qualified, and extended" (p. 23). Fraser (1996) also noted that the volume could serve equally a useful source for motivating hereafter systematic empirical research.

Researchers interested in exploring animal passions enquire such questions as: Do animals experience emotions? What, if anything, do they feel? Is at that place a line that clearly separates those species that experience emotions from those that do not? Much current research follows Charles Darwin's (1872; come across also Ekman 1998) lead, gear up forth in his book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Darwin argued that at that place is continuity between the emotional lives of humans and those of other animals, and that the differences amidst many animals are in degree rather than in kind. In The Descent of Human and Option in Relation to Sexual practice, Darwin claimed that "the lower animals, like human, manifestly feel pleasance and pain, happiness, and misery" (p. 448).

Naturalizing the study of animal emotions

Field research on behavior is of paramount importance for learning more than nearly animal emotions, considering emotions have evolved in specific contexts. Naturalizing the study of animal emotions will provide for more than reliable data considering emotions have evolved only as have other behavioral phenotypes (Panksepp 1998). Categorically denying emotions to animals because they cannot exist studied directly does non plant a reasonable argument against their existence. The same concerns could be mounted against evolutionary explanations of a wide variety of behavior patterns, stories that rely on facts that are impossible to verify precisely.

Hither I discuss various aspects of animal emotions, provide examples in which researchers provide strong evidence that animals feel different emotions, and suggest that researchers revise their agenda concerning the report of passionate nature. In item, I suggest that scientists pay closer attention to anecdotes forth with empirical data and philosophical arguments as heuristics for future enquiry. I concur with Panksepp (1998), who claims that all points of view must be tolerated as long as they atomic number 82 to new approaches that expand human understanding of creature emotions. The rigorous study of animate being emotions is in its infancy, and inquiry volition benefit profoundly from pluralistic perspectives.

My goal is to convince skeptics that a combination of "hard" and "soft" interdisciplinary research is necessary to advance the study of brute emotions. I fence that researchers have already gathered ample evidence (and that data are continually accumulating) to support arguments that at least some animals have deep, rich, and circuitous emotional lives. I besides posit that those who claim that few if whatever animals have deep, rich, and complex emotional lives—that they cannot feel such emotions as joy, love, or grief—should share the burden of proof with those who argue otherwise.

What are emotions?

Emotions can be broadly divers every bit psychological phenomena that assistance in behavioral management and control. Nonetheless, some researchers argue that the word "emotion" is and then general that it escapes any single definition. Indeed, the lack of understanding on what the give-and-take "emotion" ways may well have resulted in a lack of progress in learning about them. Likewise, no single theory of emotions captures the complication of the phenomena called emotions (Griffiths 1997, Panksepp 1998). Panksepp (1998, p. 47ff) suggests that emotions exist divers in terms of their adaptive and integrative functions rather than their general input and output characteristics. It is important to extend our enquiry across the underlying physiological mechanisms that mask the richness of the emotional lives of many animals and larn more about how emotions serve them equally they get about their daily activities.

Generally, scientists and nonscientists alike seem to hold that emotions are real and that they are extremely important, at to the lowest degree to humans and, possibly, to some other animals. While at that place is not much consensus on the nature of animal emotions, in that location is no shortage of views on the subject. Followers of René Descartes and of B. F. Skinner believe that animals are robots that go conditioned to answer automatically to stimuli to which they are exposed. The view of animals as machines explains and then much almost what they exercise that information technology is easy to sympathise why many people have adopted it.

Yet, not everyone accepts that animals are merely automatons, unfeeling creatures of addiction (Panksepp 1998). Why then are at that place competing views on the nature of beast emotions? In function, this is considering some people view humans as unique animals, created in the image of God. Co-ordinate to this view, humans are the only rational beings who are able to appoint in cocky-reflection. Within gimmicky scientific and philosophical traditions, there still is much debate about which animals are self-reflective.

Rollin (1990) notes that, at the terminate of the 1800s, animals "lost their minds." In other words, in attempts to emulate the up-and-coming "hard sciences," such as physics and chemistry, researchers studying animal beliefs came to realize that there was too little in studies of creature emotions and minds that was directly observable, measurable, and verifiable, and chose instead to concentrate on behavior because overt deportment could be seen, measured objectively, and verified (see also Dror 1999).

Behaviorists, whose early leaders included John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner, frown on any kind of talk about animal (and in some cases homo) emotions or mental states because they consider it unscientific. For behaviorists, following the logical positivists, simply appreciable behavior constitutes legitimate scientific data. In contrast to behaviorists, other researchers in the fields of ethology, neurobiology, endocrinology, psychology, and philosophy have addressed the claiming of learning more about animal emotions and animal minds and believe that it is possible to study animal emotions and minds (including consciousness) objectively (Allen and Bekoff 1997, Bekoff and Allen 1997, Panksepp 1998, Bekoff 2000, Hauser 2000a).

Virtually researchers now believe that emotions are non just the event of some bodily state that leads to an action (i.e., that the witting component of an emotion follows the actual reactions to a stimulus), as postulated in the late 1800s past William James and Carl Lange (Panksepp 1998). James and Lange argued that fear, for example, results from an awareness of the bodily changes (centre rate, temperature) that were stimulated by a fearful stimulus.

Following Walter Cannon'due south criticisms of the James–Lange theory, present researchers believe that there is a mental component that does not have to follow a bodily reaction (Panksepp 1998). Experiments have shown that drugs producing bodily changes like those accompanying an emotional experience—for instance, fear—do not produce the same type of conscious experience of fearfulness (Damasio 1994). Also, some emotional reactions occur faster than would exist predicted if they depended on a prior bodily alter that is communicated via the nervous organization to appropriate areas of the brain (Damasio 1994).

The nature and neural bases of creature passions: Primary and secondary emotions

It is difficult to lookout elephants' remarkable behavior during a family or bond group greeting ceremony, the birth of a new family member, a playful interaction, the mating of a relative, the rescue of a family member, or the inflow of a musth male, and not imagine that they experience very strong emotions which could be all-time described past words such equally joy, happiness, love, feelings of friendship, exuberance, entertainment, pleasure, pity, relief, and respect. (Poole 1998, pp. 90–91)

The emotional states of many animals are easily recognizable. Their faces, their eyes, and the ways in which they carry themselves can be used to make potent inferences nigh what they are feeling. Changes in musculus tone, posture, gait, facial expression, eye size and gaze, vocalizations, and odors (pheromones), singly and together, indicate emotional responses to certain situations. Even people with lilliputian feel observing animals commonly agree with one another on what an fauna is nigh likely feeling. Their intuitions are borne out considering their characterizations of animal emotional states predict future behavior quite accurately.

Master emotions, considered to be basic inborn emotions, include generalized rapid, reflexlike ("automatic" or difficult-wired) fearfulness and fight-or-flight responses to stimuli that correspond danger. Animals tin can perform a primary fear response such equally avoiding an object, but they do not have to recognize the object generating this reaction. Loud raucous sounds, certain odors, and objects flying overhead often lead to an inborn abstention reaction to all such stimuli that indicate "danger." Natural selection has resulted in innate reactions that are crucial to individual survival. There is petty or no room for error when confronted with a dangerous stimulus.

Primary emotions are wired into the evolutionary old limbic arrangement (especially the amygdala), the "emotional" part of the encephalon, then named past Paul MacLean in 1952 (MacLean 1970, Panksepp 1998). Structures in the limbic arrangement and similar emotional circuits are shared among many unlike species and provide a neural substrate for primary emotions. In his three-brain-in-1 (triune brain) theory, MacLean (1970) suggested that in that location was the reptilian or archaic brain (possessed by fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals), the limbic or paleomammalian brain (possessed by mammals), and the neocortical or "rational" neomammalian brain (possessed by a few mammals, such as primates), all packaged in the cranium. Each is connected to the other 2 but each likewise has its own capacities. While the limbic system seems to be the main area of the encephalon in which many emotions reside, electric current inquiry (LeDoux 1996) indicates that all emotions are non necessarily packaged into a unmarried system, and at that place may be more than one emotional system in the brain.

Secondary emotions are those that are experienced or felt, evaluated, and reflected on. Secondary emotions involve higher encephalon centers in the cerebral cortex. Although nigh emotional responses appear to be generated unconsciously, consciousness allows an individual to make connections between feelings and action and allows for variability and flexibility in behavior.

The study of animal minds: Cognitive ethology

The Nobel laureate, Niko Tinbergen (1951, 1963), identified four areas with which ethological investigations should be concerned, namely, development, adaptation (function), causation, and development. His framework besides is useful for those interested in animal noesis (Jamieson and Bekoff 1993, Allen and Bekoff 1997), and can exist used to written report creature emotions.

Cognitive ethologists desire to know how brains and mental abilities evolved—how they contribute to survival—and what selective forces resulted in the broad diversity of brains and mental abilities that are observed in various animal species. In essence, cognitive ethologists desire to know what information technology is like to be another fauna. Asking what it is similar to be some other animate being requires humans to try to recollect as they do, to enter into their worlds. By engaging in these activities much can be learned nigh animal emotions. In an endeavor to expand Tinbergen'southward framework to include the written report of brute emotions and animal cognition, Burghardt (1997b) suggested adding a 5th surface area that he called private experience. Burghardt's aim is to sympathise the perceptual worlds and mental states of other animals, research that Tinbergen thought was fruitless considering he felt that information technology was impossible to know about the subjective or private experiences of animals.

Emotion and cognition

Maybe the most difficult unanswered question about beast emotions concerns how emotions and cognition are linked, how emotions are felt, or reflected on, by humans and other animals. Researchers also do non know which species take the chapters to appoint in witting reflection most emotions and which do not. A combination of evolutionary, comparative, and developmental approaches ready forth by Tinbergen and Burghardt, combined with comparative studies of the neurobiological and endocrinological bases of emotions in various animals, including humans, carries much promise for futurity work concerned with relationships between cognition and individuals' experiences of various emotions.

Damasio (1999a, 1999b) provides a biological explanation for how emotions might be felt in humans. His explanation might also utilise to some animals. Damasio suggests that various brain structures map both the organism and external objects to create what he calls a 2d-club representation. This mapping of the organism and the object near likely occurs in the thalamus and cingulate cortices. A sense of self in the act of knowing is created, and the individual knows "to whom this is happening." The "seer" and the "seen," the "thought" and the "thinker" are one and the same.

Conspicuously, an agreement of behavior and neurobiology is necessary to understand how emotions and noesis are linked. It is essential that researchers acquire as much as possible about animals' private experiences, feelings, and mental states. The question of whether and how animals' emotions are experienced presents a claiming for future research.

Private minds

One problem that plagues studies of animal emotions and noesis is that others' minds are private entities (for detailed discussion of what the privacy of other minds entails, see Allen and Bekoff 1997, p. 52ff). Thus, humans do not have direct access to the minds of other individuals, including other humans.

While it is truthful that it is very difficult, mayhap impossible, to know all there is to know about the personal or subjective states of other individuals, this does not mean that systematic studies of behavior and neurobiology cannot be undertaken that help usa acquire more about others' minds. These include comparative and evolutionary analyses (Allen and Bekoff 1997, Bekoff and Allen 1997). Nonetheless, with respect to emotions, there seem to be no avenues of inquiry or scientific information stiff enough to convince some skeptics that other animals possess more than some basic primary emotions. Even if future research were to demonstrate that like (or analogous) areas of a chimpanzee's or canis familiaris's brain showed the same activity as a man encephalon when a person reports that they are happy or pitiful, some skeptics hold tightly to the view that it is impossible to know what individuals are truly feeling, and that therefore these studies are fruitless. They claim that just considering an animal acts "equally if" they are happy or distressing, humans cannot say more merely "every bit if," and such "equally if" statements provide insufficient show. The renowned evolutionary biologist, George Williams (1992, p. 4) claimed: "I am inclined just to delete information technology [the mental realm] from biological explanation, because information technology is an entirely private miracle, and biological science must deal with the publicly demonstrable." (See too Williams 1997 for a stronger dismissal of the possibility of learning about mental phenomena from biological research.)

Nonetheless, many people, including researchers studying animal emotions, are of the opinion that humans cannot exist the only animals that experience emotions (Bekoff 2000). Indeed, it is unlikely that secondary emotions evolved simply in humans with no precursors in other animals. Poole (1998), who has studied elephants for many years, notes (p. ninety): "While I feel confident that elephants experience some emotions that we practice not, and vice versa, I as well believe that we experience many emotions in mutual."

Information technology is very difficult to deny categorically that no other animals enjoy themselves when playing, are happy when reuniting, or become sad over the loss of a close friend. Consider wolves when they reunite, their tails wagging loosely to and fro and individuals whining and jumping nearly. Consider also elephants reuniting in a greeting commemoration, flapping their ears and spinning most and emitting a phonation known as a "greeting rumble." Likewise, think nearly what animals are feeling when they remove themselves from their social group at the decease of a friend, sulk, stop eating, and die. Comparative, evolutionary, and interdisciplinary research tin shed much light on the nature and taxonomic distribution of animal emotions.

Charles Darwin and the evolution of animal emotions

It is remarkable how often the sounds that birds make propose the emotions that we might feel in similar circumstances: soft notes like lullabies while calmly warming their eggs or nestlings; mournful cries while helplessly watching an intruder at their nests; harsh or grating sounds while threatening or attacking an enemy…Birds so oft respond to events in tones such as we might utilize that we suspect their emotions are similar to our ain. (Skutch 1996, pp. 41–42)

As long as some creature experienced joy, then the status for all other creatures included a fragment of joy. (Dick 1968, p. 31)

Charles Darwin is normally credited with existence the first scientist to give serious attention to the written report of animal emotions. In his books On the Origin of Species (1859), The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sexual activity (1871), and The Expression of the Emotions in Homo and Animals (1872), Darwin argued that at that place is continuity between humans and other animals in their emotional (and cerebral) lives; that there are transitional stages among species, non big gaps; and that the differences amidst many animals are differences in degree rather than in kind.

Darwin practical the comparative method to the study of emotional expression. He used half dozen methods to study emotional expression: observations of infants; observations of the insane, whom he judged to be less capable of hiding their emotions than other adults; judgments of facial expressions created by electrical stimulation of facial muscles; analyses of paintings and sculptures; cantankerous-cultural comparisons of expressions and gestures, especially of people distant from Europeans; and observations of animal expressions, especially those of domestic dogs.

A broad evolutionary and comparative approach to the study of emotions will help researchers larn more about the taxonomic distribution of emotions. For instance, reptiles, such as iguanas, maximize sensory pleasance (Cabanac 1999, 2000, Burghardt 2000). Cabanac (1999) plant that iguanas prefer to stay warm rather than venture out into the common cold to become food, whereas amphibians such as frogs practice not show such beliefs. Neither do fish. Iguanas feel what is chosen "emotional fever" (a ascent in body temperature) and tachycardia (increased heart rate), physiological responses that are associated with pleasance in other vertebrates, including humans. Cabanac postulated that the first mental event to emerge into consciousness was the power of an private to feel the sensations of pleasure and displeasure. Cabanac's research suggests that reptiles feel basic emotional states, and that the power to take an emotional life emerged between amphibians and early reptiles. His findings are consistent with some of MacLean's (1970) theory of the triune brain.

Joy, happiness, and play

Examples of animate being emotions are arable in pop and scientific literature (Masson and McCarthy 1995, Panksepp 1998, Bekoff 2000). Social play is an excellent example of a beliefs in which many animals partake, and one that they seem to enjoy immensely. Individuals get immersed in the activity, and in that location seems to be no goal other than to play. Every bit Groos (1898) pointed out, animals at play appear to feel incredible freedom.

Animals seek play out relentlessly and when a potential partner does not respond to a play invitation they ofttimes turn to some other individual (Bekoff 1972, Fagen 1981, Bekoff and Byers 1998). Specific play signals likewise are used to initiate and to maintain play (Bekoff 1977, 1995, Allen and Bekoff 1997). If all potential partners pass up their invitation, individual animals will play with objects or chase their own tails. The play mood is also contagious; but seeing animals playing can stimulate play in others. Consider my field notes of two dogs playing.

Jethro runs towards Zeke, stops immediately in front of him, crouches or bows on his forelimbs, wags his tail, barks, and immediately lunges at him, bites his scruff and shakes his head apace from side-to-side, works his manner effectually to his behind and mounts him, jumps off, does a rapid bow, lunges at his side and slams him with his hips, leaps upwards and bites him neck, and runs away. Zeke takes wild pursuit of Jethro and leaps on his back and bites his muzzle and then his scruff, and shakes his head rapidly from side-to-side. They so wrestle with 1 another and part, only for a few minutes. Jethro walks slowly over to Zeke, extends his mitt toward Zeke'due south head, and nips at his ears. Zeke gets upwardly and jumps on Jethro's back, bites him, and grasps him effectually his waist. They and then fall to the basis and wrestle with their mouths. So they chase i another and scroll over and play.

I once observed a immature elk in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, running across a snow field, jumping in the air and twisting his torso while in flight, stopping, catching his jiff and doing it again and again. At that place was plenty of grassy terrain around but he chose the snowfall field. Buffaloes will also follow ane another and playfully run onto and slide across ice, excitedly bellowing "Gwaaa" as they practise and so (Canfield et al. 1998).

It seems more than hard to deny that these animals were having fun and enjoying themselves than to take that they enjoyed what they were doing. Neurobiological data back up inferences based on behavioral observations. Studies of the chemistry of play support the thought that play is enjoyable. Siviy (1998; see Panksepp 1998 for extensive summaries) has shown that dopamine (and perhaps serotonin and norepinephrine) is of import in the regulation of play, and that large regions of the brain are active during play. Rats show an increase in dopamine activity when anticipating the opportunity to play (Siviy 1998). Panksepp (1998) has as well plant a close association between opiates and play and claims that rats bask being playfully tickled.

Neurobiological data are essential for learning more about whether play truly is a subjectively pleasurable act ivity for animals as it seems to be for humans. Siviy'southward and Panksepp'southward findings propose that it is. In lite of these neurobiological ("difficult") data concerning possible neurochemical bases for various moods, in this example joy and pleasure, skeptics who merits that animals do not feel emotions might be more likely to take the idea that enjoyment could be a motivator for play behavior.

Grief

Never shall I forget watching equally, three days subsequently Flo'southward death, Flint climbed slowly into a alpine tree well-nigh the stream. He walked along one of the branches, so stopped and stood motionless, staring down at an empty nest. After about 2 minutes he turned away and, with the movements of an onetime human, climbed down, walked a few steps, then lay, wide eyes staring ahead. The nest was ane which he and Flo had shared a curt while before Flo died…in the presence of his big brother [Figan], [Flint] had seemed to shake off a picayune of his depression. But and then he all of a sudden left the grouping and raced back to the place where Flo had died and there sank into ever deeper depression…Flintstone became increasingly lethargic, refused food and, with his immune organization thus weakened, fell sick. The last time I saw him alive, he was hollow-eyed, gaunt and utterly depressed, huddled in the vegetation shut to where Flo had died…the last short journey he made, pausing to rest every few anxiety, was to the very place where Flo's body had lain. There he stayed for several hours, sometimes staring and staring into the water. He struggled on a picayune farther, then curled upwardly—and never moved again. (Goodall 1990, pp. 196–197)

Many animals display grief at the loss or absenteeism of a close friend or loved one. I vivid description of the expression of grief is offered above—Goodall (1990) observing Flint, an 8 and one-half-year one-time chimpanzee, withdraw from his group, stop feeding, and finally die afterward his mother, Flo, died. The Nobel laureate Konrad Lorenz observed grief in geese that was similar to grief in young children. He provided the post-obit business relationship of goose grief: "A greylag goose that has lost its partner shows all the symptoms that John Bowlby has described in immature human children in his famous volume Babe Grief…the eyes sink deep into their sockets, and the individual has an overall drooping experience, literally letting the caput hang…." (Lorenz 1991, p. 251).

Other examples of grief are offered in Bekoff (2000). Sea lion mothers, watching their babies being eaten by killer whales, squeal eerily and wail pitifully, lamenting their loss. Dolphins too have been observed struggling to save a dead infant. Elephants have been observed to stand baby-sit over a stillborn baby for days with their head and ears hanging down, quiet and moving slowly equally if they are depressed. Orphan elephants who take seen their mothers being killed oftentimes wake uscreaming. Poole (1998) claims that grief and depression in orphan elephants is a existent phenomenon. McConnery (quoted in McRae 2000, p. 86) notes of traumatized orphaned gorillas: "The light in their eyes simply goes out, and they die." Comparative research in neurobiology, endocrinology, and behavior is needed to larn more about the subjective nature of animal grief.

Romantic beloved

Courtship and mating are two activities in which many animals regularly engage. Many animals seem to autumn in love with 1 some other simply as humans do. Heinrich (1999) is of the opinion that ravens autumn in dearest. He writes (Heinrich 1999, p. 341): "Since ravens have long-term mates, I suspect that they fall in dear like us, simply because some internal reward is required to maintain a long-term pair bond." In many species, romantic love slowly develops betwixt potential mates. Information technology is as if partners need to prove their worth to the other before they complete their relationship.

Würsig (2000) has described courtship in southern right whales off Peninsula Valdis, Argentina. While courting, Aphro (female) and Butch (male) continuously touched flippers, began a wearisome caressing motility with them, rolled towards each other, briefly locked both sets of flippers every bit in a hug, so rolled back up, lying side-past-side. They then swam off, side-by-side, touching, surfacing, and diving in unison. Würsig followed Butch and Aphro for about an 60 minutes, during which they connected their tight travel. Würsig believes that Aphro and Butch became powerfully attracted to each other, and had at least a feeling of "after-glow" as they swam off. He asks, could this not be leviathan love?

Many things have passed for love in humans, nevertheless we do not deny its beingness, nor are we hesitant to say that humans are capable of falling in honey. It is unlikely that romantic love (or any emotion) first appeared in humans with no evolutionary precursors in animals. Indeed, in that location are common encephalon systems and homologous chemicals underlying love that are shared among humans and animals (Panksepp 1998). The presence of these neural pathways suggests that if humans can feel romantic love, then at least some other animals besides experience this emotion.

Embarrassment

Some animals seem to feel embarrassment; that is, they promise to cover up some event and the accompanying feeling. Goodall (2000) observed what could exist called embarrassment in chimpanzees. When Fifi's oldest child, Freud, was v and a one-half years old, his uncle, Fifi'southward brother Figan, was the alpha male of the chimpanzee community. Freud always followed Figan; he hero-worshipped the large male. Once, as Fifi groomed Figan, Freud climbed up the thin stalk of a wild plantain. When he reached the leafy crown, he began swaying wildly back and along. Had he been a human child, we would have said he was showing off. Of a sudden the stem broke and Freud tumbled into the long grass. He was not hurt. He landed shut to Goodall, and as his head emerged from the grass, she saw him look over at Figan—had he noticed? If he had, he paid no attention but went on grooming. Freud very quietly climbed some other tree and began to feed.

Hauser (2000b) observed what could exist labeled embarrassment in a male rhesus monkey. After copulating, the male strutted away and accidentally fell into a ditch. He stood up and chop-chop looked around. Afterward sensing that no other monkeys saw him tumble, he marched off, back high, head and tail upwardly, equally if nothing had happened. Over again, comparative research in neurobiology, endocrinology, and behavior is needed to learn more about the subjective nature of embarrassment.

Studying brute emotions

The best way to learn nigh the emotional lives of animals is to spend considerable fourth dimension carefully studying them—conducting comparative and evolutionary ethological, neurobiological, and endocrinological research—and to resist critics' claims that anthropomorphism has no place in these efforts. To claim that one cannot understand elephants, dolphins, or other animals because we are not "1 of them" leaves us nowhere. It is important to endeavour to larn how animals live in their own worlds, to sympathise their perspectives (Allen and Bekoff 1997, Hughes 1999). Animals evolved in specific and unique situations and information technology discounts their lives if we only try to empathise them from our ain perspective. To exist certain, gaining this kind of knowledge is difficult, just it is not impossible. Perhaps so little headway has been made in the study of animal emotions considering of a fear of being "nonscientific." In response to my invitation to contribute an essay to my forthcoming book on fauna emotions (Bekoff 2000), one colleague wrote: "I'thousand non sure what I can produce, just it certainly won't be scientific. And I'm just not sure what I tin say. I've not studied animals in natural circumstances and, though interested in emotions, I've 'noticed' few. Let me think almost this." On the other hand, many other scientists were very eager to contribute. They believed that they could be scientific and at the aforementioned time utilize other types of information to learn about animal emotions; that is, that it is permissible for scientists to write nigh matters of the centre (although at least one prominent biologist has had trouble publishing such material; Heinrich 1999, p. 322).

Biocentric anthropomorphism and chestnut: Expanding science with care

…we are obliged to acknowledge that all psychic interpretation of animal behavior must be on the analogy of human experience….Whether we volition or no, we must be anthropomorphic in the notions we class of what takes identify in the listen of an animal. (Washburn 1909, p. 13)

The manner human being beings draw and explain the behavior of other animals is limited past the linguistic communication they use to talk almost things in general. Past engaging in anthropomorphism—using human terms to explain animals' emotions or feelings—humans make other animals' worlds accessible to themselves (Allen and Bekoff 1997, Bekoff and Allen 1997, Crist 1999). But this is non to say that other animals are happy or sad in the same means in which humans (or even other conspecifics) are happy or sad. Of course, I cannot exist absolutely sure that Jethro, my companion domestic dog, is happy, sad, angry, upset, or in love, but these words serve to explain what he might exist feeling. Nevertheless, merely referring acontextually to the firing of different neurons or to the action of unlike muscles in the absence of behavioral information and context is insufficiently informative. Using anthropomorphic language does not accept to discount the animate being'due south point of view. Anthropomorphism allows other animals' behavior and emotions to exist accessible to us. Thus, I maintain that we can be biocentrically anthropomorphic and do rigorous science.

To make the apply of anthropomorphism and anecdote more acceptable to those who experience uncomfortable describing animals with such words every bit happy, sad, depressed, or jealous, or those who do not retrieve that mere stories about animals truly provide much useful information, Burghardt (1991) suggested the notion of "critical anthropomorphism," in which various sources of information are used to generate ideas that may be useful in time to come research. These sources include natural history, individuals' perceptions, intuitions, feelings, careful descriptions of beliefs, identifying with the animal, optimization models, and previous studies. Timberlake (1999) suggested a new term, "theomorphism," to lead us away from the pitfalls of anthropomorphism. Theomorphism is animal-centered and "is based on convergent information from behavior, physiology, and the results of experimental manipulations" (Timberlake 1999, p. 256). Theomorphism is essentially "disquisitional anthropomorphism" and does not help us overcome the ultimate necessity for using human terms to explain fauna beliefs and emotions.

Burghardt and others feel comfortable expanding science carefully to proceeds a better understanding of other animals. However, Burghardt and other scientists who openly support the usefulness of anthropomorphism are non alone (encounter Crist 1999). Some scientists, every bit Rollin (1989) points out, feel very comfortable attributing human being emotions to, for case, the companion animals with whom they share their homes. These researchers tell stories of how happy Fido (a dog) is when they arrive at habitation, how sad Fido looks when they exit him at home or have away a chew bone, how Fido misses his buddies, or how smart Fido is for figuring out how to get around an obstacle. Withal, when the same scientists enter their laboratories, dogs (and other animals) become objects, and talking nearly their emotional lives or how intelligent they are is taboo.

I answer to the question of why dogs (and other animals) are viewed differently "at work" and "at dwelling house" is that "at piece of work," dogs are subjected to a broad variety of treatments that would be difficult to administer to i's companion. This is supported past contempo research. Based on a series of interviews with practicing scientists, Phillips (1994, p. 119) reported that many of them construct a "distinct category of beast, the 'laboratory animal,' that contrasts with namable animals (e.g., pets) across every salient dimension…the cat or dog in the laboratory is perceived by researchers as ontologically unlike from the pet dog or true cat at home."

The importance of pluralistic interdisciplinary inquiry: "Hard" science meets "soft" science

A wide and motivated assault on the report of fauna emotions will require that researchers in various fields—ethology, neurobiology, endocrinology, psychology, and philosophy—coordinate their efforts. No one discipline will be able to answer all of the important questions that still need to exist dealt with in the report of animal emotions. Laboratory-bound scientists, field researchers, and philosophers must share data and ideas. Indeed, a few biologists have entered into serious dialogue with philosophers and some philosophers have engaged in field piece of work (Allen and Bekoff 1997). As a result of these collaborations, each has experienced the others' views and the bases for the sorts of arguments that are offered concerning animal emotions and cognitive abilities. Interdisciplinary inquiry is the dominion rather than the exception in numerous scientific disciplines, and there is no reason to believe that these sorts of efforts will not help u.s.a. learn considerably more than about the emotional lives of animals.

Future research must focus on a broad array of taxa, and not just give attending to those animals with whom we are familiar (e.g., companion animals) or those with whom we are closely related (nonhuman primates), animals to whom many of us freely attribute secondary emotions and a wide variety of moods. Much information can be collected on the companion animals with whom we are so familiar, primarily because we are so familiar with them (Sheldrake 1995, 1999). Species differences in the expression of emotions and perhaps what they feel like also need to exist taken into account. Even if joy and grief in dogs are not the same as joy and grief in chimpanzees, elephants, or humans, this does not mean that at that place is no such thing as domestic dog joy, dog grief, chimpanzee joy, or elephant grief. Even wild animals and their domesticated relatives may differ in the nature of their emotional lives.

Many people believe that experimental research in such areas every bit neurobiology constitutes more reliable work and generates more than useful ("difficult") data than, say, ethological studies in which animals are "simply" observed. Nonetheless, research that reduces and minimizes beast beliefs and animal emotions to neural firings, muscle movements, and hormonal furnishings volition not likely lead us significantly closer to an understanding of brute emotions. Concluding that we volition know most if not all that we tin can ever learn nigh animal emotions when we have figured out the neural circuitry or hormonal bases of specific emotions will produce incomplete and perhaps misleading views concerning the true nature of animal and man emotions.

All research involves leaps of organized religion from bachelor data to the conclusions nosotros describe when trying to sympathize the complexities of animal emotions, and each has its benefits and shortcomings. Often, studies of the behavior of captive animals and neurobiological research is so controlled as to produce spurious results concerning social behavior and emotions because animals are being studied in artificial and impoverished social and physical environments. The experiments themselves might put individuals in thoroughly unnatural situations. Indeed, some researchers take discovered that many laboratory animals are and so stressed from living in captivity that data on emotions and other aspects of behavioral physiology are tainted from the start (Poole 1997).

Field work also tin be problematic. Information technology can exist as well uncontrolled to allow for reliable conclusions to exist drawn. It is difficult to follow known individuals, and much of what they exercise cannot exist seen. However, it is possible to fit gratis-ranging animals with devices that tin transmit data on individual identity, heart charge per unit, body temperature, and eye movements as the animals become about their daily activities. This information is helping researchers to learn more nigh the close relationship between animals' emotional lives and the behavioral and physiological factors that are correlated with these emotions.

It is essential that researchers have direct feel with the animals being studied. There are no substitutes for ethological studies. Although neurobiological information (including brain imaging) are very useful for understanding the underlying mechanisms of the beliefs patterns from which inferences nigh emotions are made, beliefs is primary; neural systems subserve behavior (Allen and Bekoff 1997). In the absence of detailed data on behavior, especially the beliefs of wildlife living in the environments in which they have evolved or in which they at present reside, any theory of animal emotions will exist incomplete. Without detailed information on behavior, and a deep appreciation of the complexities and nuances of the myriad ways in which animals limited what they feel, we volition never come to terms with the challenges that are presented to usa.

Sharing the burden of proof

In the future, skeptics should exist required to mount serious defense of their position and share the brunt of proof with those who accept that many animals exercise indeed experience myriad emotions. No longer volition it exist acceptable to claim that "yep, chimpanzees or ravens seem to love one some other" or that "elephants seem to feel grief" and so present innumerable reasons—"we tin never really know that animals feel emotions"—why this cannot be so. Explanations about the existence of fauna emotions often have as practiced a foundation as many other explanations that we readily accept (east.g., claims almost evolution that cannot be rigorously verified). I and others readily accept that in some instances the emotions we attribute to animals (and humans) might not be realistic pictures of their inner lives (equally expressed in overt behavior and perhaps supported by neurobiological data), merely that in other cases they might well exist.

There is too the trouble of reconciling "common sense" with information from ethological, neurobiological, and endocrinological inquiry and philosophical arguments. Many branches of science use anecdotes to develop research projects that produce "data" (the plural of anecdote is information). Allowing stories of brute emotions to motivate research that begins with the premise that many other animals do have rich emotional lives volition aid u.s. learn more about them. Nosotros truly tin can ask such questions every bit do animals love one another, practice they mourn the loss of friends and loved ones, do they resent others, or can they be embarrassed (Bekoff 2000).

Meeting the devil

Panksepp (1998) provides a useful thought experiment at the cease of his encyclopedic survey of emotions. Imagine that yous are faced with making a devil's choice apropos the being of animal emotions. You must reply correctly the question of whether or not other mammals have internally experienced emotional feelings. If you give the wrong reply yous will follow the devil home. In other words, the stakes are high. Panksepp asks how many scientists would deny nether these circumstances that at least some animals have feelings. Likely, few.

The challenging future

To affirm, for example, that scallops 'are conscious of goose egg', that they go out of the mode of potential predators without experiencing them as such and when they fail to exercise so, get eaten alive without (quite peradventure) experiencing hurting'…is to leap the bounds of rigorous scholarship into a maze of unwarranted assumptions, mistaking human being ignorance for man knowledge. (Sheets-Johnstone 1998, p. 291)

Clearly, there is much disagreement about the emotional lives of other animals. The following questions can be used to prepare the stage for learning more than about the evolution and expression of beast emotions: Our moods move us, so why not other animals? Emotions help usa to manage and regulate our relationships with others, so why not for other animals? Emotions are important for humans to conform to specific circumstances, so why not for other animals? Emotions are an integral function of human life, so why non for other animals?

Current research suggests that no 1 single theory of emotions can explain all of the psychological phenomena that are called "emotions." Panksepp claims (1998, p. 7), "To understand the basic emotional operating systems of the brain, we have to begin relating incomplete sets of neurological facts to poorly understood psychological phenomena that sally from many interacting brain activities." At that place is no uncertainty that there is continuity between the neurobehavioral systems that underlie human and nonhuman emotions, that the differences between human being and animals emotions are, in many instances, differences in degree rather than differences in kind.

Past remaining open to the idea that many animals have rich emotional lives, even if we are incorrect in some cases, picayune truly is lost. By closing the door on the possibility that many animals have rich emotional lives, even if they are very different from our ain or from those of animals with whom we are almost familiar, we volition lose corking opportunities to learn about the lives of animals with whom we share this wondrous planet.

The futurity holds many challenges and perhaps surprises for those who desire to acquire more nigh animal emotions. The rigorous study of animal emotions volition crave harnessing the best possible resources. These resources include researchers in various scientific disciplines who provide "hard data" and anecdotes (Bekoff 2000), other scholars who study animals, nonacademics who observe animals and tell stories, and the animals themselves. In that location is ample room for hard and soft science in the written report of animal emotions. In that location are many worlds beyond human experience. There are no substitutes for listening to, and having direct experiences with, other animals.

Acknowledgments

I thank Colin Allen for comments on an bequeathed typhoon of this essay and Jane Goodall for discussing many of these issues with me. Bernard Rollin, Donald Griffin, Rebecca Chasan, Janice Moore, Steve Siviy, and an anonymous referee provided numerous helpful comments for which I am deeply grateful.

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Current INTERDISCIPLINARY Research PROVIDES COMPELLING Show THAT MANY ANIMALS EXPERIENCE SUCH EMOTIONS As JOY, Fright, LOVE, DESPAIR, AND GRIEF--Nosotros ARE Non ALONE

Current INTERDISCIPLINARY Research PROVIDES COMPELLING Bear witness THAT MANY ANIMALS Feel SUCH EMOTIONS As JOY, Fright, Love, DESPAIR, AND GRIEF--We ARE NOT ALONE

© 2000 American Institute of Biological Sciences

Source: https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/50/10/861/233998

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