07-31-2013 at 4:15 AM

Fluffy below does put up a very good scientific fact about the process of this, in which I truly believe as well. <br /> <br /> I definitely know our dogs get anxiety and depression emotions, as anytime we leave for a weekend, they show this, and have to anyone who dog sits. One of our Corgi's won't eat unless my mother is home, as they are bonded very close. When we leave she will often howl and cry, and does nothing but lay by the door until we return. Even when me or my fiancé is home, she'll continue to lay by the door until my mother arrives. As far as emotions such as hatred and what not, that's a tough one to say really. It's hard to determine whether it's dominance in some cases, or something just as hatred. Kitty (my Corgi mentioned above, her nickname anyway) often wants nothing to do with our GSD Riley, and shows this by completely ignoring her until she can't anymore, then it's simply a small growl and a walk away. Never gotten into a fight, or shown any other signs of aggression then a small warning growl, it's hard for us as people to tell just what that means, as none of us are dogs. To me, I personally think each dog has it's own way of thinking, and communicating it's own feelings and emotions. I know as humans we have a lot of emotions, so I wouldn't put it past to say that dogs couldn't or don't have have them. Really I think the only way we would every truly learn this, is if we were dogs.

07-19-2013 at 12:05 PM

i\'d like to think that animals have emotions as i\'ve heard countless stories of animals pining for their old firends (for example my grandfathers poodle) and I know several dogs that suffer from depression,however I think what everyone percieves as love is plainly a an extreme sentimental attatchment to something and I think all creatures are capable of it the same with dislike only in a negative way

06-18-2013 at 9:42 PM

I believe they do. Most animals, lets say a dog. He is taken away from his owner. Such as RunRun was when he came to be babysat at my house. He was super sad! He did not want to be there(well now he does xD he never wants to leave.) Then he his owners come he was wagging his tail like crazy! So I would believe they do!

03-25-2013 at 1:20 AM

I agree with Fluffy Horror 100%, they put it a lot better than I could have

03-25-2013 at 12:09 AM

Well, animals are capable of instinctual emotion (science proves this, actually), such as fear, affection, playfulness, anger, possessiveness, etc. Instincts ARE emotions, and animals definitely have them.<br /> <br /> What science if iffy on is whether animals can feel emotions that require conceptual thinking, such as hatred.<br /> <br /> I feel that while animals definitely have the former emotions, they lack the latter. Reacting to an abuser they see after many years, to use Moon's example, wouldn't be hatred, that would be fear/aggression triggered by the stimulus. They remember that when that person is around, they hurt them, but they are incapable of HATING them, at least from what I can gather.

03-19-2013 at 7:55 PM

Why isn't Wikipedia a credible source? It links all of the sources at the bottom of the page:<br /> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion#cite_note-30">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion#cite_note-30</a><br /> <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22153577?dopt=Abstract">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22153577?dopt=Abstract</a>

03-19-2013 at 3:14 PM

Scarl, I agree with you, wikipedia is pretty untrustworthy. However I'm not sure about what you mean with you don't <i>believe</i> that animals evolve. Could you please describe for me what you understand under 'evolve'? (Could you send me a message please, so I won't loose track of that? I've read a lot of times things like that, but I didn't understand, so it would be very nice if you could explain it to me.)<br /> <br /> Cat Steaks, I mostly agree with you. Though I have some other points of view;<br /> First of all we need a more precise definition of the term 'love'. Well, I'll start:<br /> In my definition 'love' is the strongest attachement between two mated individuals, most likely of different gender (though the higher in evolution the higher the chance of two of the same gender falling in love) which is produced in and after the act ('making love') and in females after giving birth to a child; these actions also start the <u>elevated</u> production of oxytocine - and this hormone <i>is</i> what we feel as 'love'. I know there are tons of other definitions, this is the biological (and my personal) definition. Aside, most of the stuff you see in the poor-people-tv is not love for me. (those are rather philosophical abstractions of love for me.)<br /> <br /> So to the example of the lions: The lion loves the lioness, who gives birth to his (<i>and only his</i>) children. If 'his' lioness betrays him, he'll kill the other pups and screws off the other males. Most likely he'll screw them off <i>before</i> they get to make children with his lioness. If he wouldn't, the others would get bigger chances on getting pups, and with thinking about evolution: the genes of those who get more pups are more often there than those the ones who get less children. Evolution doesn't work in the moment, it works over hundreds and thousands of generations, enough time to sort out the ones who have less chances of surviving <i>and</i> getting children. Back to the original theme >> killing the children of others has nothing to do with loveing or not loving.<br /> Anyways, to one of your sentences; "I simply believe that they evolved and live realizing that forming strong pride connections means better chance at survival."<br /> Of course it's this way. Just the same as with human beeings, take a look at the people around you without thinking they're human - you'll see very often situations similar to that of the lion and the lioness' children: In lots of low-caste patchwork families the males don't like the offspring of their female if they aren't his offspring. Of course, we have 'morals' in our 'western culture', but that doesn't make our instincts disappear (it just blocks them to a certain extent). The male won't kill the strangers' offspring, because he got conditioned ('morals') that he gets punished (and instantly has to feel that way) if he would actually harm them. However, in cultures where it is not of importance, where the social conditioning (the 'morals') are different, the male will bahave different. But this has still nothing to do with how much he loves his female ('wife').<br /> <br /> In my opinion, the hierachy is this:<br /> (lowest^ to highest v)<br /> Survival Instincts (Flight or Fight, hunger, thirst, breath, etc.)<br /> Secundary Emotions (Embarassment, Jealousy, Pride, etc.)<br /> Primary Emotions (Fear, Joy, etc.)<br /> [Social] Conditioning (Morals, Laws, Do's & Don't's, Religion, etc.)<br /> Using one's Brain (thinking about something before doing, rational thinking, Philosophy, theoretical science, thinking about how suitable the personal conditioning is in a certain situation, etc.)<br /> <br /> And here's the major difference in human beeings' and animals' feelings: Animals can only go up to adhearing to Conditioning (except for some exceptions), which means they are not able to 'ignore' or control their Emotions actively - whereas human beeings are able to re-condition themselves and change their feelings about something, with no need of strangers or other individuals, just by using their brain. To give an example: I've never seen a dog that didn't like a certain toy, and all of a sudden - with no influence of its surrounding (not bored, not motivated, no scent put upon the toy, ...) - loves that toy.

03-18-2013 at 7:52 PM

I agree with Cat Steaks but Wikipedia is not a trusted source. And I do not believe that animals "evolved".

03-17-2013 at 5:19 PM

To be honest, love is a man-made concept. If you think about it, love at it's most basic form is just a strong attachment to someone or something. Lion prides stay in family groups, they like one another. Do I believe they love one another? No. I simply believe that they evolved and live realizing that forming strong pride connections means better chance at survival.<br /> <br /> Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the emotion part of the brain in both mammals and reptiles:<br /> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion#The_neurocircuitry_of_emotion">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion#The_neurocircuitry_of_emotion</a><br /> <br /> "<i>[...]The neurobiological explanation of human emotion is that emotion is a pleasant or unpleasant mental state organized in the limbic system of the mammalian brain.</i>"<br /> So we can basically conclude that "emotion" is varying levels of either pleasant (happy, excitement, etc), or unpleasant (aggression, anger, fear) mental states in a mammal.<br /> <br /> "<i>If distinguished from reactive responses of reptiles, emotions would then be mammalian elaborations of general vertebrate arousal patterns, in which neurochemicals (for example, dopamine, noradrenaline, and serotonin) step-up or step-down the brain's activity level, as visible in body movements, gestures, and postures.</i>"<br /> Explaining that reptiles emotions are even more basic. Basically, almost just fight-or-flight, resulting from certain levels of dopamine, adrenaline, or serotonin.<br /> <br /> "<i>For example, the emotion of love is proposed to be the expression of paleocircuits of the mammalian brain (specifically, modules of the cingulate gyrus) which facilitate the care, feeding, and grooming of offspring.</i>"<br /> The section of the brain that deals with feeding, grooming, caring for offpsring is what people believe is "love". It's a man-made application of our explanation as to what we believe keeps animals doing this with their offspring. If we look back at my example of the lion pride.. most people would consider a lion/lioness taking care of it's offspring as a symbol of love... but then there's really no explanation for the more dominant males beating up and kicking out the younger males in the pride. Surely that's not a symbol of love, in my opinion... but a means of ensuring that the lesser males don't try and usurp the dominant male and take over his pride. It's a matter of survival. The top male lion knows that he's a goner should he be kicked out of the pride, so he kicks out any and all threat to his throne.<br /> Love in that case would surely wreak havoc upon the pride.<br /> <br /> "<i>With the arrival of night-active mammals, smell replaced vision as the dominant sense, and a different way of responding arose from the olfactory sense, which is proposed to have developed into mammalian emotion and emotional memory.</i>"<br /> Here, it's explaining that the olfactory sense contributes to memory. For example, if a mouse smells a cat, he may be triggered to run, because of the connection between smell and emotion (fear).<br /> <br /> So in closing.. yeah I believe animals can have emotions.. but very basic emotions. I don't believe animals are capable of feeling the emotion called "love". I feel that such an emotion would be detrimental to the evolutionary process in species.<br />

03-17-2013 at 9:47 AM

Emotions are 'produced' in the Mammal-system of our brains (this is some rather yound subcortical structure, lying under the cerebral cortex). As all mammals and some birds have this, they are all able to feel primary and at least some secondary emotions. The primarys are all along fear, happiness, sadness, anger, surprizement and so on. Secondarys are a little more complex, those are: embarrassment, guiltyness, jealousy, pride and so on.<br /> Secondarys are often influenced by the surrounding social structure and vary more greatly in human beings than in (other) mammals and in birds.<br /> <br /> Love is not even an emotion, at least not in my opinion. It is more of a biological/physiological need, or instinct, found in mammals, birds, fish and reptiles who have to care about their children(to some extend) in order to rear them. However it is not found in animals that don't need (both) parents or don't live in social structured groups (fishswarms are social structured groups).<br /> <br /> Curiosity, as Cat Steaks said, is an instict as well. In the same way as it exists with love, the markedness varies with individuals. Moreover, the higher the animal is its developement, the stronger those traits can vary, mostly because they can be conditioned by how the individual was raised. In human cultures certain personality traits are demolished while growing up, and others are promoted. This is why it is so interesting to look at different cultures; they got conditioned in a completely different way (which can be quite odd sometimes).<br /> <br /> +++<br /> <br /> The difference between human beeings and (other) animals in feeling emotions is, as far as I've seen, that we are able to control our feelings actively, while for example mice (or dogs), are not able to control their emotions. It seems to me that this is because we have a way better developed cortex than all (other) animals have.<br /> <br /> [I'm not native english, so please ask if my writing is unclear or if got something completely misspelled]

03-16-2013 at 8:53 PM

Long story short, I think they can.

12-11-2012 at 6:19 PM

They definitely do feel emotions. I once had a guinea pig, and she had two babies, and their dad. She died, and at first the dad got all happy to see her and started purring, but almost right away he noticed that she wasn't with us anymore. He was completely silent, and unlike how he usually would be. You could see the sorrow in his eyes. The babies were also sad about it. And they do feel love towards others. If you could see my pets, you would know for sure they really do love and care about each other.

12-9-2012 at 11:25 AM

I believe they can. My bird, Dosey, is an example. She pecks at some people, (always the same,) but races over to snuggle with others. Also, when my cat passed, my dog wasn't acting hersef. Wasn't eating, always slept. (She's better now though!)

11-16-2012 at 3:05 PM

Hatred is prejudiced hostility towards someone or something. I don't believe a dog can rationalize something like that. I believe that a dog can be fearful of an old abuser or something and show aggression because he remembers that person, but I don't believe a dog can sit around and say "man, I really hate ____"<br /> <br /> Idk, that's just the way I think<br /> <br /> <i>"Gordon Allport defined prejudice as a "feeling, favorable or unfavorable, toward a person or thing, prior to, or not based on, actual experience."</i>

11-16-2012 at 1:36 PM

Uh It would be wise to define hatred first.<br /> I think that animals (even 'lesser' animals as long as they are either mamal, reptile, bird and maybe even fish) can and do feel hatred. <br /> I define hate as a stronger emotion than anger. Anger is just a moment - a few weeks at most. Hatred is someting that can become a constant. It is there for many years. <br /> I couldn't otherwise explain the sudden agression many animals show to an old tormentor they see again after years of beeing out of their tormentors clutches.<br /> <br /> I don't know about love. But really... why not? It still is the same biochemical reaction we have. Why shouldn't feel an animal the same? <br /> <br /> I think most people that say animals have no emotions are either highly religious and can't stand the thought that anything other that mankind could be blessed with emotions from their god OR do it to calm their conscience in face of animals that are obviously hurting emotionally or physicaly. <br /> The same way as it was believed that animals wouldn't feel pain when hurt in earlier centuries.

11-15-2012 at 10:29 AM

I know that this mostly applies to humans, but I feel that it would be a good example for what I think animals feel.<br /> <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/60/Maslow%27s_Hierarchy_of_Needs.svg/800px-Maslow%27s_Hierarchy_of_Needs.svg.png">[LINK]</a><br /> <br /> The way Maslow's Hierarchy works is that we start at the bottom. Once a human has those very basic needs met, it may work up and up. The most important, basic needs for survival are at the bottom, we can survive on those (not thrive, but survive).<br /> I believe that a dog's cap is about at the red level. Dogs are made for survival, they're made to hunt their own food, they are not as intelligent as us humans (we don't need to rely on our very primitive instincts just to survive, we thrive every day of our lives) so I feel that a dog really only feels scared, angry (security), stressed, happy. It doesn't need anything beyond that, because the dog's entire life (and IQ, that sorta thing) is revolved purely around "how do I survive, how do I please this bigger dog so that he doesn't rip my throat out"<br /> Because that's what the pack is, the pack is not about "yayyy I'm popular!", it's about realizing that hey, more of us means a better chance at catching that deer (yellow level). I'd better not piss off the top dog or my life will be at stake (red level).

11-15-2012 at 12:14 AM

I definitely have to agree that yes, they experience emotion. Besides just dogs, my 5 betta fish all exhibit basic emotions.<br /> <br /> They get stressed, happy, sad, etc. <br /> <br /> Feeding time is the best time because they become much more active. It's the same reaction as if you go up to a puppy with a bacon treat. They also become stressed out, which is one of the main causes of betta deaths unfortuntely. <br /> <br /> Bettas also do experience a kind of sadness. Despite the whole "betttas are solitary animals," if you put one with a certain fish for a extended amount of time, there is an attachment, and I see it with my one betta and the oto cat. There have been times where I separated the two for a few days because of treatments, and the betta exhibits different behavior without her (he looks for her around the tank, especially where she normally is) <br /> So yea, I do believe that it is possible. While my examples aren't complete evidence, they're enough for me.

11-14-2012 at 8:31 PM

I believe that animals (aside from the more intelligent ones like apes) can feel very basic emotions: fear, excitement, happiness, anger, sad, that's about it. Animals rely on one of two things when confronted with situations: fight or flight. A less-intelligent animal (again, compared to humans, apes, etc) does not need to feel love, it doesn't need to feel confident with its appearance, it needs to know "do I fight this thing? or do I run from this thing?"<br /> I believe that an animal can feel happy about being around someone and want to be around that person a lot, but I don't believe that an animal can feel love.. for an animal to be capable of feeling love, it must be capable of feeling hatred, and I don't believe less-intelligent animals are capable of feeling hatred.<br /> <br /> Also, "curious" is more of a personality trait and not an emotion.