Emotion in animals

Emotion in animals considers the question whether animals feel in the sense humans understand it.

Different answers have been suggested throughout human history, by animal lovers, scientists, philosophers, and others who interact with animals, but the core question has proven hard to answer since we can neither obtain spoken answers, nor assume anthropomorphism. As a result, on the one hand society recognizes animals can feel pain, by criminalizing animal cruelty, and yet on the other hand it is far from clear whether we truly believe animals "feel" in a meaningful sense. Often expressions of apparent pleasure are ambiguous as to whether this is emotion, or simply innate response, perhaps to approval or other hard-wired cues. The ambiguity is a source of much controversy in that there is no certainty which views, if any, are "right".

In recent years, research has become available which suggests strongly animals have emotions as people do, albeit lacking certain cognitive insights. This matches recent advances that have revolutionized prior understandings of animal language, cognition and tool use, and even sexuality. Emotions arise in the mammalian brain, or the limbic system, which human beings share in common with other mammals as well as many other species. This presents both a scientific dilemma -- how can we tell? -- and an ethical one -- if true what does it mean?

Background

Whilst different sections of humanity have had very different views on animal emotion, the examination of animals with a scientific, rather than anthropomorphic, eye, has led to very cautious steps towards any form of recognition beyond the capacity for pain and fear, and such demonstrations as are needed and engendered, for survival. Historically, prior to the rise of sciences such as ethology, interpretation of animal behavior tended to favor a kind of minimalism known as behaviorism, in this context the refusal to ascribe to an animal a capability beyond the least demanding that would explain a behavior. Put crudely, the behaviorist argument is, why should humans postulate consciousness and all its near-human implications in animals to explain some behavior, if mere stimulus-response is a sufficient explanation to produce the same effects.

The cautious wording of Beth Dixon's 2001 paper on animal emotion exemplifies this viewpoint. It is notable that in 2001, it was still felt necessary to question whether it was "legitimate" to "ascribe emotions to nonhuman animals":

"Recent work in the area of ethics and animals suggests that it is philosophically legitimate to ascribe emotions to nonhuman animals. Furthermore, it is sometimes argued that emotionality is a morally relevant psychological state shared by humans and nonhumans. What is missing from the philosophical literature that makes reference to emotions in nonhuman animals is an attempt to clarify and defend some particular account of the nature of emotion, and the role that emotions play in a characterization of human nature. I argue in this paper that some analyses of emotion are more credible than others. Because this is so, the thesis that humans and nonhumans share emotions may well be a more difficult case to make than has been recognized thus far."

In a similar tone, according to Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson:

"While the study of emotion is a respectable field, those who work in it are usually academic psychologists who confine their studies to human emotions. The standard reference work, The Oxford Companion to Animal Behavior, advises animal behaviorists that 'One is well advised to study the behaviour, rather than attempting to get at any underlying emotion'."

By way of a contrasting view, Thomas Nagel's famous 1974 paper "What is it like to be a bat?" argued that certain subjective experiences can never be attained through the objective methods of reductionism as commonly practiced in science. He concluded that because of the subjective character of experience, "we cannot even pose the mind-body problem" in a sensible way and "it seems unlikely that a physical theory of mind can be contemplated." These conclusions are contested by some philosophers and cognitive neuroscientists, who have proposed alternative reductive theories to account for the phenomenon of subjective consciousness.

There is considerable uncertainty and difficulty related to the interpretation and ambiguity of emotion: an animal may make certain movements and sounds, and show certain brain and chemical signals when its body is damaged in a particular way. But does this mean an animal feels - is aware of - pain as we are, or does it merely mean it is programmed to act a certain way with certain stimuli? Similar questions can be asked of any activity an animal might undertake, in principle. Or indeed, of any human being as well. Such philosophical questions as emotion implies are difficult to address with reductionist methods, compared to the relatively exciting and verifiable advances being made elsewhere in neuroscience at the time. Because of this the philosophical questions of consciousness and mind involved, many scientists have stayed away from examining animal emotion, and have studied instead, measurable brain functions, through neuroscience. For this reason, although many lay people will advocate and concede that animals they know have emotions, in fact the matter is not yet considered proven in science.

Approaches to studying animal emotions

One approach suggested by the author of When Elephants Weep is:

"Human beings are not always aware of what they are feeling. Like animals, they may not be able to put their feelings into words. This does not mean they have no feelings. Sigmund Freud once speculated that a man could be in love with a woman for six years and not know it until many years later. Such a man, with all the goodwill in the world, could not have verbalized what he did not know. He had the feelings, but he did not know about them. It may sound like a paradox -- paradoxical because when we think of a feeling, we think of something that we are consciously aware of feeling. As Freud put it in his 1915 article The Unconscious: 'It is surely of the essence of an emotion that we should be aware of it.' Yet it is beyond question that we can 'have' feelings that we do not know about."

"Psychiatric lexicons contain the term alexithymia for the condition of certain people who cannot describe or recognize emotions, who are able to define them 'only in terms of somatic sensations or of behavioral reaction rather than relating them to accompanying thoughts.' Such people are handicapped by their inability to understand what feelings are. It is curious that the study of animal behavior should demand that its practitioners turn themselves into alexithymics."

Current research and findings

Jonathan Balcombe's 2006 book "Pleasurable Kingdom" makes the case that animals in fact have a highly developed sense of pleasure in life, and not merely basic responses such as pain. The publishers description states that the book: "suggests that creatures from birds to baboons feel good thanks to play, sex, touch, food, anticipation, comfort, aesthetics, and more. Combining rigorous evidence, elegant argument and amusing anecdotes, leading animal behavior researcher Jonathan Balcombe proposes that the possibility of positive feelings in creatures other than humans has important ethical ramifications for both science and society." In his review, Wayne Pacelle, the President and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) comments on these findings:

"Dr. Balcombe convincingly argues that animals are individual beings with a wide range of emotions and feeling. If he is correct — and I believe he is — it follows that we must grapple with the ethical consequences of his important insights."

See also

• Animal cognition
• Animal communication
• Self awareness
• Thomas Nagel (seminal paper, "What is it like to be a bat?")
• Emotion
• Neuroethology
• Great Ape personhood
• Pet
• Zoology
• Ethology
• Emotional intelligence
• Affectional bond