Do Animals Have Feelings? By: Talan,
Jamie, Scientific American Mind, 15552284, 2006, Vol. 17, Issue 1
Do
Animals Have FEELINGS?
Animal
lovers insist their fellow creatures experience joy, sympathy, fear and grief,
but scientifically, it is hard to say
On the dusty horizon, two troops of
elephants emerge 100 yards apart and walk toward each other. The beasts trumpet
loudly, flap their ears and turn in circles. They seem to know one another — the whole event appears to be a family reunion.
Anyone who travels the African
savanna is apt to have witnessed such a meeting. In her decades of fieldwork,
Joyce H. Poole, research director for the Amboseli
Trust for Elephants in
Investigators have also watched as a
herd gathers around a stillborn calf. The pachyderms repeatedly touch the dead
infant with their trunks, as if to rouse it. Then for days they stand vigil,
with drooping ears. At other times, when a herd member is sick or wounded by a
hunter, they caress the victim, offering support, and care for it until it is
restored to health or dies.
Other animals seem to show emotions.
Roughhousing chimpanzees emit sounds characteristic of joy and laughter. Dogs
yelp to spur other dogs to play, and researchers who have played recordings of
these sounds in kennels and shelters have shown that the noise can reduce
stress levels in the animals there. Even laboratory rats make seemingly
delighted chirps above the range of human hearing when tickled, some experts
say.
Individuals who claim animals have
feelings are usually accused of anthropomorphism — ascribing human traits to
nonhuman beings. But after years of ignoring or discounting what pet lovers
have long maintained, scientists are finally beginning to believe that mammals,
at least, have some form of emotions — and investigating them is now a hot
topic.
Some eminent scientists have boldly
explored the riddle of animal emotions. Charles Darwin, the English naturalist
and father of evolutionary theory, wrote an entire book entitled The Expression
of the Emotions in Man and Animals. No one can deny that animals have emotions,
he concluded, given the striking similarities between human and animal
behavior. But in the century that followed the book's publication in 1872, a
reductionist view took hold: bees, frogs, cats and all animals are merely
organisms that follow hardwired, instinctual behavior patterns. They are devoid
of feelings.
Recently, however, a more nuanced
view has begun to gain credence, sparked by the question of what survival
advantage humans, or animals, gain from emotions anyway. According to
Darwinism, every organism has one overriding goal: to reproduce, as well and as
often as possible. For worms, insects or jellyfish, following a predetermined
pattern of behavior in pursuit of this goal might be sufficient to achieve it.
But for fish, reptiles, birds and vertebrates, behavior is less routinized. Ultimately, mammals are extremely flexible, and
as such their activity cannot just result from hardwired templates. How, then,
do rats, goats, apes, elephants and humans know which actions will best
guarantee survival and reproduction? Among other cues, they may use emotions.
This statement, that an animal may
"use emotions," only demonstratively means that its brain reacts to
certain events in certain ways — a network of neurons fires, initiating a
predictable behavior. An animal will avoid situations that, in the past, made
it feel threatened. Likewise, a creature that associates a positive experience
with a certain action will seek the same one in the future. So
far, so good. But does that animal feel in the course of things? This
point is where the experts disagree.
A basic part of the discussion turns
on the definition of emotion and feelings. Psychologists and neurologists do
not even concur for humans, much less for animals. In his 2003 book Looking for Spinoza, influential neuroscientist Antonio R. Damasio of the
Primary emotions include fear,
anger, disgust, surprise, sadness and joy, and Damasio
ascribes them to many animals. Even the primitive sea slug Aplysia
shows fear. When its gills are touched, its blood pressure and pulse go up and
it shrivels in size. These are not reflexes, Damasio says, but elements of a fear response — complex,
mutually dependent reactions. He emphasizes, however, that such organisms do
not produce feelings. To Damasio and many others,
emotions are physical signals of the body responding to stimuli, and feelings
are sensations that arise as the brain interprets those emotions. In humans and
sea slugs, heart rates increase and muscles contract when the organisms are
afraid of something, but an organism registers the feeling of fear only after
its brain becomes aware of the physical changes.
For social emotions, Damasio lists sympathy, embarrassment, shame, guilt, pride,
envy, jealousy, gratitude, admiration, contempt and indignation. These are not
limited to humankind either. Dominant gorillas swagger around to demand respect
from their peers. Low-ranking wolves in packs make gestures of abasement. Dogs
reprimanded by their owners for doing something wrong show clear signals of
embarrassment. Yet even in such cases, as with primary emotions, some
neuroscientists say these actions are largely automatic and inborn and count
them among the routinized mechanisms animals use to
help them survive.
Feelings, in contrast, well up from
the analytical mind. Someone who "feels good," who experiences joy,
is aware of her body being in a particular state. The perception of such a
feeling requires processing by several somatosensory
brain regions in the cerebral cortex that map parts of the body and their
condition and, simultaneously, brain activity that assesses what those
conditions mean. In essence, this processing constitutes self-reflection, which
can occur either slowly or very fast.
It is difficult to prove that
animals possess the capacity for self-reflection. Damasio
theorizes that pygmy chimpanzees, for example, may be able to show the social
emotion of pity for other animals but that they do not realize they are
exhibiting pity. Given this inability to confirm what is happening in an
animal's head, Damasio is reluctant to imply that it
possesses feelings.
Other experts are willing to
entertain the notion. Jaak Panksepp,
a renowned behavioral scientist at
Panksepp postulates that the roots of emotions lie in brain regions
such as the limbic system that are much older in evolutionary history and that
we share with all mammals. He points, for example, to a recent research study
led by Naomi I. Eisenberger of the
The fMRI
scans taken during the snubbing showed significant activity in several brain
regions, especially the anterior cingular cortex.
Previous studies by others have indicated that people placed in situations that
made them sad showed unusual activity in the thalamus and the brain stem. These
regions play key roles in the limbic system — the area of the brain that
produces and regulates emotion.
Interestingly, young guinea pigs
that are prematurely separated from their mother exhibit heightened activity in
the same brain system. In Panksepp's view, the
feeling of being alone and vulnerable, and the stress it creates, reflects
ancient mechanisms that are the foundation for the feeling of sadness
experienced by humans. The limbic system is an ancient brain structure, and its
central role shows that emotion is an integral part of animal life.
Biologists who have long observed
signs of joy among animals agree. In the rain forests of
It is well accepted that young
mammals have an inborn drive to play, because the interaction helps them sort
out social opportunities and limits. They learn skills that will be important
to their later survival. But what motivates them to goof around in the first
place? Marc Bekoff, a biologist at the
Studies of brain metabolism provide
evidence that animal feelings may not be very different from those in humans,
because similar physical brain processes underlie those experiences.
Experiments show, for example, that the neurotransmitter dopamine has an especially
important part in the processing of emotions such as joy and desire in humans —
and in other mammals.
In the end, it is not possible to
prove through observation whether an animal possesses conscious feelings — no
more than we can be sure about what another person is truly experiencing
inside. We know from lab work that some animals, at least, are indeed
self-aware, so it is not much of a stretch to think they could be cognizant of
their emotions, too. Bekoff emphasizes that when we
talk about animal feelings, they do not have to be the same kind that people
have. Humans can be happy in ways that vary from person to person. Animals
likewise could be happy in different ways from humans.
Animals and humans could indeed
share pride, joy, grief and shame, too. Psychologist Marc Hauser of
For Bekoff,
the new research findings have not just a scientific message but also a social
one: if animals are capable of feeling emotion, then we have yet another reason
to seriously consider how well we treat them.
Young mammals play to learn skills.
But it is the fun that ensures that they play.
Animals don't have to have the same
feelings humans do. They can be happy in different ways.
PHOTO (COLOR): Joy is a primary
emotion, along with anger and sadness.
PHOTO (COLOR): Indignation is a
social emotion, as are jealousy and pride.
PHOTO (COLOR): Feelings, such as
happiness, arise from the mind's awareness of bodily emotions.
PHOTO (COLOR)
• The
Smile of a Dolphin. Marc Bekoff. Discovery
Books, 2000.
•
Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions and Heart. Marc Bekoff.
• "Laughing" Rats and the Evolutionary Antecedents
of Human Joy. Jaak Panksepp and Jeff Burgdorf in
Physiology and Behaviour, Vol. 79, No. 3, pages
533-547; 2003.
~~~~~~~~
By Jamie Talan
KLAUS WILHELM is a biologist and
freelance science writer in
Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself
The pharmaceutical industry assumes
that animals can feel fear in the same way people do. Otherwise it never would
have spent millions of dollars on mouse experiments in the search for drugs to
combat anxiety. Fear has been better studied than any other animal emotion.
The degree of fear mice feel can be
quantified using the "elevated plus maze test." A pole about a yard
high has four arms extending out horizontally, each one at a right angle to the
next (photograph). Two of the arms have walls to prevent falling, but the other
two arms are open. If a mouse makes a false step on an open arm, it will fall
hard. Most mice placed at the middle of the maze will choose to move out along
a protected arm. If mice are given a drug that reduces anxiety in people,
however, they will readily move out along the open arms. — K.W.
PHOTO (COLOR)
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