Animal Emotion Series: Part 2: At the Crossroads of Us and Them

In the spirit of welcoming a new year and each of us setting intentions for the days that lay ahead, what better time to continue this series on our relationships with animals, how our worlds are delicately intertwined and what it means if animals have emotions!

Welcome to Part 2 – At the Crossroads of Us and Them

This is such a deep, DEEP area of thought and debate that so many have self proclaimed to be experts in.

Inherently, each of us have defined in one way or another what animal emotions are, in their raw form, based on personal experience combined with social and environmental influencers, applied to our daily lives.

To the best of human ability, we are only capable of witnessing what we have the capacity to understand and therefore understanding emotions that we experience in our own lives.

Think about it; when I say “animal emotions”, what is the first thing that pops into your head? Is it your furry companion at home? Is it the image of a baby chimpanzee reaching out to Jane Goodall ,finger tip to finger tip? Is it a mother elephant weeping over her hunted calf? Most likely, whatever the image is that pops into your head has left some sort of mark on the degree to which you personally define animal emotions.

When applied to non-human species, “emotions” tends to be an extension of the respect we do or do not have for them, a hierarchical placement of species on a spectrum of relatedness to humans and our reliance on certain animals for our personal survival. Scientists and non-scientists weigh the possibility of animal emotions in association with predetermined human purpose.

While this is a rather narrow statement, the reality is that whenever data is presented in the favor of animal emotions therefore attributing feelings such as pain, suffering, happiness, etc to non-humans the significance is then brought back into the realm of “what does this mean for us?”.

The presence of animal emotions would suggest a change in rights, use and freedom for non-human species. Something not favored by many industries including medical research, agriculture, animal entertainment, fashion, breeders, etc. Wow, we certainly love to use animals for our personal benefit!

Our evolution as the world’s most “intelligent beings” has revealed human limitations in examining the possibility of emotions, culture, intelligence and feeliing in other species. Our understanding of animal emotions must to fall within the context of human language, it must remain outside the boundaries of human superiority, and it must fit in within our formed beliefs of the origins of human existence. Does the possibility to understand the raw nature of animal emotions even exist for us?

Animal behaviorist and leading scientist Mark Beckoff, who I have admired in all my years learning animal psychology, has contributed invaluable data on animal emotions and heeds that we are better off to assume that they do have subjective emotions. In doing so no harm will have been done. But in assuming the contrary can bring about unlimited cruelties. Animals must have the benefit of the doubt, if indeed there is any doubt.

What resources are available to us to measure animal emotions? What are the indicators we must look for to identify the presence of emotions? Are some species permanently disqualified from ever receiving the benefit of the doubt, fish for example? And here’s an interesting one – are emotions communicable between species?

All of the above have been common denominators in decades of modern research. As science continues to evolve across neurological, physiological and ethological fields such findings have come to the forefront.

Comparative research has shown similarities in human and non-human chemical regulators, hormones, steroids, brain structure and neurological activity, all of which are paving a bridge between similarities in human and non-human feelings, emotional responses and sensitivities.

The amount of scientific and anecdotal published research would lead us to assume that the human species should heed with compassion as Mark Beckoff suggests.

At the conclusion of this series I will provide a list of resources that are easy reads on these complicated fields of study for anyone seeking additional knowledge. We all should! Just saying