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Animals are no less emotional than we are

347 points by mykowebhn 8y ago

quickthrower2 8y ago
https://outline.com/Dumckz https://outline.com/Dumckz
linguistbreaker 8y ago
I believe they are more emotional in many ways - more driven and consumed by their emotions. Especially in social animals emotional reactions are inescapable for them. Humans are able to overcome emotion through higher level thinking and effort. Also depends on one's definition of emotion. Is fear an emotion?
- Erlich_Bachman 8y ago
  IMO fear is widely viewed as one of the simplest emotions, yes. Or at least, it can be: the word can be used to reference different aspects of fear, one of which is the emotion of it.
ocdtrekkie 8y ago
It's strange to me that this is still considered controversial. Even long-duration emotional effects like depression is very obvious in pets after the loss of other/companion pets in a home.
- jimmy1 8y ago
  It's not if you take a simple view of emotion. What's controversial is whether or not they feel complex emotions. Is that really depression or just sadness? Do adult elephants have periods of melancholy that are suddenly brought on by seeing elephant children playing in the watering hole which causes the adult elephants to remember their home town and childhoods and wish they never came to this distant country for better opportunities -- leading to regret, and then anxiety because they realized they did this all for naught are and feel trapped in their current situation? Who knows. I doubt it.
  - radicaldreamer 8y ago
    If you've been around elephants much, your scenario is in no way implausible.
  - sjtindell 8y ago
    That’s not a complex emotion, it’s a story. The deep related emotions themselves could still be felt.
  - tdb7893 8y ago
    It's not controversial that many mammals have emotions very very similar to humans (my wife is literally an animal welfare researcher). You're talking about more about how they think than their emotions, whether they are sad because they see their dead child or sad because they regret some complex chain of events it's still the same emotion, the only difference is their ability to understand the chain of events.
  - selune 8y ago
    It has been speculated that elephants know bones of elephants from other animals and that they kind of "mourn" their dead [1][2] in a way. Most mammals would react to fresh corpses of members of the same species, most would feel what we would call sadness when loosing a member of tribe, parent etc. But feeling emotions towards bones? That's pretty complex IMO. I've also read somewhere about instances of elephants "burying" other elephants via covering their bodies with leaves. I'll edit and add a source if I manage to find it. [1]: http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1497634.htm http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1497634.htm [2]: https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/photos/12-facts-change-way-see-elephants/elephants-honor-bones-their-dead https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/photos/12-facts-ch...
- telchar 8y ago
  It's hard to get a man to understand something if his accustomed lifestyle depends on his not understanding it (to paraphrase Upton Sinclair). It's harder to justify eating meat and supporting factory farming if you believe animals have emotions. I'm not a vegetarian myself but I think that is more uncomfortable for me than for someone who doesn't believe animals have emotions.
  - hjek 8y ago
    > I'm not a vegetarian myself but I think that is more uncomfortable for me than for someone who doesn't believe animals have emotions. If you don't mind me asking, what do you think is making you still eat animals, given that you are aware of their suffering?
    - tomt2323 8y ago
      I can answer this from my own experience after having been vegan for 5ish years (but I am decidedly not now). There are two things at play: the more "justified" first thing is I'm politically active and still maintain an interest in animal welfare, but I'm focusing the energy I have for activism on systemic changes and participating in/enabling mass action rather than focusing on individual choices, which often act as a release valve for important political discontent without directly confronting the systemic causes. The less noble second thing is that, given the American food supply chain, it's simply still more of a burden and less pleasant to eat vegan as well as easy to not think about when making food choices.
      - kanjus 8y ago
        Your explanation very much resembles the one I used to have for not being vegan: in hindsight, it was nothing but a way to avoid the cognitive dissonance between my belief that I was a good person and the knowledge that I simply didn’t care about veganism/vegetarianism. I’m not saying it’s the same here, but your explanation is flawed on arguably every level, I hope you take the time to think about your decision more, but congrats for your 5 years of veganism 1. “I have limited energy for activism, and I distribute it wisely”: statements like these are often untrue and a way to brush away an ethical question while continuing to appear ethical (“I fly on planes, flying on planes is bad for the planet, but X [droughts in Africa] is more critical, so I prefer to think about X than about planes”). One, willpower is probably not finite, as was found in a famous recent study (granted, I conflate willpower and energy here, but they’re quite close). Two, being vegan takes basically the same amount of effort/time/money as eating animal products for someone with no medical condition. Three (more subjective), veganism is a pretty safe bet when it comes to activism, it’s a low effort/high impact part of climate change activism, which is one of the most critical things you can pour your energy into 2. “Enabling mass action is more important than my individual behaviour”: not how the world works. In theory, you could argue for veganism, even become the most respected vegan philosopher, while at the same time eating a different animal at every meal. In practice, if you’re a “do what I say, not what I do” person, the probability that someone becomes vegan after listening to you would be pretty much 0. I also have trouble imagining why anyone would see someone like this as part of the vegan community and a worthy ally when it comes to mass action 3. “Individual action makes people think they’ve done their part and not partake in mass action”: this is untrue on many levels. Individual action is what mass action is made of and the end goal basically. Most people take the strength for political commitment from their individual everyday choices, I would even say that everyday choices are what makes political commitment inevitable. I have never met an activist who is committed only on a theoretical/group level 4. “Being vegan is a chore in America”: being vegan in a rich country is arguably the closest you’ll get to finding it easy 5. “Being vegan is less pleasant than not being vegan”: I can only assume you’re speaking about taste here, which I find weird from a former vegan. The imbalance between personal gustative pleasure and the suffering of species/ecology might be the most frequent discussion about veganism, and the one that demonstrates the most obviously to all involved that eating animal products is unethical (or at least neutral)
- TaupeRanger 8y ago
  It's considered controversial because we don't understand the nature of consciousness. The fact that your dog behaves similarly to you under similar circumstances tells us literally nothing about what it is actually like to have the dog's experiences. The question isn't whether they have them, it's whether they're as similar to humans as some think, or more that we project our emotions onto them. There is no way of knowing.
  - geuis 8y ago
    It is possible to know. While we still don’t have the capability to do full brain emulation for hardly any species, we are left with comparison studies. These comparison studies should be as equally valid between humans as animals. We can only compare behavioral responses. You can perform similar behavioral studies among people that don’t speak the same language for example. I admit it’s not easy with humans, given how interconnected we are culturally but it’s not impossible.
spinach 8y ago
I think it's just human conceit, that which drives us to think we are special, as an individual, as a species, as a planet in the universe, that also makes us not want to see that animals also feel a range of deeper emotions. You can look at ducks and see a mother making sure all her little children are following her into the lake and are safe. Is it love? Why not? We call love a profound feeling but is it really? Isn't love a function that helps us take care of our young and survive as a species? An alien, who had never encountered our planet before and perhaps thinking they are the intelligent life while the beings on Earth are just 'responding to stimuli' wouldn't see the emotions humans feel. As ducks to humans, humans to these aliens. Ducks and humans alike would appear just to be going through the motions.
- meowface 8y ago
  Exactly. There's surely a threshold below which emotions can't be paralleled between humans and animals in that way, but it seems mammals are above it.
- brink 8y ago
  In your view, what constitutes special? What does a species have to do to be special?
- burke 8y ago
  I agree, our major issue is that we can't get over this intuition that we must be special somehow. This quote from Westworld really gets to the heart of it, for me at least: > There is no threshold at which we become greater than the sum of our parts; no inflection point at which we become fully alive. We can't define consciousness because consciousness does not exist. We humans like to fancy that there's something special about the way we perceive the world, and yet, we live in loops as tight and as closed as the hosts do—rarely questioning our choices—content, for the most part, to be told what to do next.
  - tj-teej 8y ago
    > There is no threshold at which we become greater than the sum of our parts; no inflection point at which we become fully alive. We can't define consciousness because consciousness does not exist The idea that consciousness doesn't exist is very interesting, and I'm not poo-pooing it, however the argument that it doesn't exist because you can't identify an inflection point is an example of the grains of sand fallacy. The Grains of Sand fallacy basically claims you can't say "there's no way adding one piece of sand would render a pile of sand un-liftable." This isn't true as I can lift a bag with one grain of sand and can't lift a bag with a billion grains of sand, therefore there has to be a point where I can lift the bag with N grains of sand, and can't lift the bag with N+1 grains. I agree it's hard to identify an inflection point; but that doesn't prove that consciousness isn't real. If we define consciousness as something dead people don't have and an alive person has (or at least SOMEONE once has had), then there has to be an inflection point as people die.
CNJ7654 8y ago
It's strange to think that not too long ago, the scientific consensus was that animals were closer to automatons than conscious beings. Of course it's silly to assume they can experience the world just as we do, but they can clearly feel real emotions, even complex ones. Most animals probably evolved complex emotions to maintain social structures, like us
fogleman 8y ago
We are animals.
- gugagore 8y ago
  And tomatoes are fruits. But there are multiple actual definitions of words and very often "animal"1 = non-human "animal"2
Erlich_Bachman 8y ago
Not arguing with the contents of the article, or its applicability, but is there a large mass of people who think that people are more emotional than animals? Wouldn't the logical straight-forward way of looking at it would be that because humans have higher abstract intelligence/thinking capabilities, they should obviously be less emotional than animals? All animals have is basically emotion (well dolphins and monkeys probably have some simple symbolic language, but nevertheless), while humans have both emotion, and also the logical apparatus, the thoughts, the prefrontal cortex to inhibit (that's its function in a nutshell - selective inhibition) the rest of the (emotional) intelligence, thus making the general operation of an individual less emotion-based, as compared to a generic animal?
- matthewtoast 8y ago
  The article subhead ("animals are no less emotional than we are") is a bit misleading. (The headline likely wasn't written by the author.) This essay is not so much about whether animals operate on more or less of emotional basis than us; but the degree to which animals have subjective experiences to begin with. I.e., when a cat or monkey or bat feels sad, is there someone in there feeling that sadness? Because non-human animals exhibit demonstrably less higher intelligence than us, we tend to assume also that their subjective experience is somehow less sharp or detailed or consequential than ours. Consider the way that virtually our entire civilization treats animals as disposable goods. We confine them in horrendous conditions, we slaughter them for food in brutal ways, we force them to do hard labor, and we even hurt and scare them for petty entertainment. Many people seem to assume that because animals don't cry or smile or frown or grimace like we do, they must not be feeling the emotions we associate with those faces. If we all could believe that non-human animals could experience emotions such as fear, loneliness, loss, terror, shame, embarrassment, and joy just as richly and profoundly as we do -- and the article suggests that they do, indeed -- then what might we have to change about the way we regard and interact with them? I believe this is the question the article wants us to consider.
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  >because humans have higher abstract intelligence/thinking capabilities, they should obviously be less emotional than animals? // I'd imagine that the thinking goes that emotion requires self-reflection. Being depressed isn't really a thing if I don't even realise it's me that is depressed because I have no conception of self. If there is no higher function that can decide to suffer pains then pain is irrelevant, reaction is not emotion.
skosch 8y ago
I like how quickly this line of thinking leads to panpsychism. Alright, so your dog has some level of cognition – sensations, emotion, joy, pain. Perhaps less complex than a human, but nevertheless nonzero. Because whatever computations happens in its brain feel like something from the inside. How about a frog? Less, but still nonzero. How about a worm? Less, but still nonzero. But hey: we can already model a worm's nervous system [0]. And if consciousness is just what computation feels like from the inside, then torturing the model worm creates real pain (or the worm-equivalent of pain, whatever that emotion is). Something interesting to think about. [0] http://openworm.org http://openworm.org
- pygy_ 8y ago
  You can get that down to single cells, actually. Transcription factors (genes whose product activate or inhibit other genes) form regulation network that are equivalent in function to neural nets. There's also evidence of memory in single cell organisms.
  - skosch 8y ago
    Absolutely, and why stop there? Neural nets just add up numbers – other physical systems do that, too.
    - pygy_ 8y ago
      Indeed!
- hjek 8y ago
  > But hey: we can already model a worm's nervous system. It surely is interesting to think about, at least as long as this Chinese Room way of thinking isn't used to dismiss or justify pain or suffering inflicted on other living beings.
  - chr1 8y ago
    There is one important difference between other living beings and the model, in the case of other living beings you do not own the computer, you are not the one who started the computation, and you do not have a power to undo your actions. But in case of the model nothing would exist if you didn't build the computer, and you can take snapshots to restore any state you want. It seems like people in some way always understood this difference, because they were ok with god sending arbitrary tortures to them, and then granting them eternal life undoing the effect of the torture.
jrlocke 8y ago
When I took classes with Daniel Dennett, he was always amazed at the strength of convictions people had about consciousness even without education in the area. This is an unpopular opinion, but the human intuition is not a good discriminator of consciousness: "Dennett (who argues that consciousness is unique to humans), claims that intuitive attributions of mental states are “untrustworthy”, and points out that “it is, in fact, ridiculously easy to induce powerful intuitions of not just sentience but full-blown consciousness (ripe with malevolence or curiosity) by exposing people to quite simple robots made to move in familiar mammalian ways at mammalian speeds (1995).”"[1] Personally, I'll be agnostic until consciousness is much better understood. [1]https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-animal/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-animal/
- ergothus 8y ago
  I come from the opposite direction: I'm not so sure humans are all that conscious. My personal theory goes something like: * Consciousness is a side-effect of the brain running "what-if" scenarios that include anticipating it's own actions. Self-awareness. This definition allows for non-human consciousness, but also doesn't take a stance on it, as it also allows for a range of awareness, rather than a binary state. (that said, I'll talk in binary terms for simplicity) * Consciousness is calorically expensive - the brain shuts it down when it isn't needed, because it stops adding value then in terms of survival. * Side effect: The primary job of consciousness is to figure out how to turn the unexpected into the routine, which in turn shuts down consciousness. Result: We spend a lot of time NOT self-aware, then back-fill that we must always be self-aware when we consider that time (because we are self-aware during that consideration). Impossible to self-measure, but my personal guess is that we spend somewhere between a high number of minutes to low number of hours "sentient" each day. Note: I'm using Self-aware/consciousness rather broadly here. Even if it's illusion, there's a state of having that illusion (or however to phrase that) and a state of not being aware that you aren't even considering...anything. (Dang it is hard to describe that without using language that assumes awareness).
  - wozer 8y ago
    That would explain why spending a few hours meditating can feel like a very long time, being more conscious than usually. Edit: On the other hand, when meditating deeply, one does not run what-if scenarios. Quite the opposite. Nevertheless, awareness is particularly strong in this state.
kissgyorgy 8y ago
I was pretty surprised when I saw this video about a dog watching Lion King movie and getting sad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHKC958R8Z8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHKC958R8Z8
- pault 8y ago
  Uhh, I'm skeptical. My dogs do exactly that any time they see something on the TV that looks like something they would chase. I suspect that's what is going on here. I doubt the doggy is aware that Mustafa is dead and Simba is now an orphan.
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    Yeah. They've also got tens of thousands of years worth of selective breeding for cueing off their owners. There are what I'd call clear examples of animals expressing emotions. I'm not sure this one'd qualify.
- goda90 8y ago
  I don't doubt at all that animals are emotional, but this video really made me wonder about what the dog is comprehending about the scene. Does it perceive that Mufasa is dead? Does the music affect it? Does it see the sadness in the anthropomorphic face of Simba?
jphalimi 8y ago
Opinion: Your Dog Feels as Guilty as She Looks Science does not need opinions. The question is worth asking, but this article does not seem to be backed by any kind of research or experiments.
- Felz 8y ago
  Yea. The entire argument appears to be a single anecdote about some guy's dog acting really upset after biting his hand. Quoting the article: > For the longest time, science has depicted animals as stimulus-response machines while declaring their inner lives barren. This has helped us sustain our customary “anthropodenial”: the denial that we are animals. We like to see ourselves as special, but whatever the difference between humans and animals may be, it is unlikely to be found in the emotional domain. Isn't this just a strawman in service to an applause light?
- tim333 8y ago
  There are some research and experiments in the article - eg give a dog a lemon is one you could try at home. The author has loads of science awards, papers etc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frans_de_Waal#Awards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frans_de_Waal#Awards Even including an Ig Nobel prize for showing chimps can recognise each other from butt pics.
superkuh 8y ago
The word 'animals' is far to generic to have any meaning in this context. Obviously social mammals that we share many of our brain structures with experience reality the same way we do. But this is far less obvious in animals like reptiles, fish, and the like.
ausjke 8y ago
Please someone at YC invented meat-alike alternatives so we don't eat animals for the sake of everything. Not really an animal lover, just think we don't really need consume animal meat to live longer/happier, there got be some other options.
Sharlin 8y ago
The weirdest thing about the "do animals have emotions" debate is that we now know that the emotion-handling parts of the brain (the limbic system, particularly the amygdala) are shared by not only by all mammals but also by reptiles and birds. The limbic system is ancient and fairly well-preserved; there's not much special in a human amygdala compared to a mouse one.
dgudkov 8y ago
One of the most interesting explanations of emotions that I've read is that emotions are subconscious predictions produced by the brain (sorry, didn't save the link). For instance, happiness is a subconscious prediction of safety. Depression is a subconscious prediction of death. It's like super-scalar execution -- the event hasn't happened yet (and may never happen), but the brain has already calculated its outcome and signals its estimation through emotions. A few conclusions: A) Anything with brains has some kind of emotions. The bigger the brain the more developed emotions are. B) Emotions in animals has nothing to do with "soul" or anything transcendental. It's just a way the animal brain works. Humans can feel empathy to animal emotions because they are also technically animals.
- yarone 8y ago
  > emotions are subconscious predictions produced by the brain Thank you for sharing. Such an interesting thought.
- TaupeRanger 8y ago
  This is one of those "non-explanations" you often get from modern neuroscience (in this case from the cult of "predictive coding"). There is absolutely no explanatory power here with regard to the nature of emotions. It just assumes its conclusion. The brain should just make its prediction and the behavior should happen in experiential void. Why is there any feeling associated with this prediction? There's no explanation for it that doesn't engage in obvious handwaving. And even if you accept one of the handwavy answers, it still doesn't even remotely approach the questions that people actually care about, like: why would the prediction give this specific quality of feeling, rather than some other?
donatj 8y ago
Was this up for debate? My understanding was always emotion is just animal survival instinct kicking in. The BIOS. The dumb part of your brain the should fight to override.
hhs 8y ago
This makes me think of Wittgenstein's point that words shape our reality and also limit our perception of reality. "Emotion" is a word that's a human construct. Going along with this human construct, I wonder what the boundaries are among humans and animals when it comes to "emotions". Are there certain emotions that animals have that we can't tap into and, therefore, never experience? And to go further, what role do sensory organs have with emotions? Does access to certain sensory organs influence this? For instance, fishes have access to the lateral line system to help them sense pressure gradients and their surroundings. It could be that they have unique emotions.
mamon 8y ago
What's the surprise here? If anything I would expect animals to be even more emotional than humans. Emotions are something primal, something that came to be before conciousnes. Animals are emotional and all they ever do is act on their emotions, whether that is: hunger, fear, joy, lust, etc. The human-specific part of mind is the rational part, planning, reflecting, self-correcting, etc. Animals never come close to humans in this regard.
rland 8y ago
I have some early memories from when I could barely talk. Back then, the world was composed almost entirely of emotions. They completely dominated the scene. Not only that, but my brain was smaller and less physically developed, so I had reduced capacities as well. I think animals are exactly the same. Of course, animals' brains never develop past that stage ruled by emotion. As a result of this, I believe anyone can do a thought experiment to see the world as an animal sees it: just think of very early memories from right when you first learned to talk. That is what being an animal is like.
- otabdeveloper2 8y ago
  Don't know about you personally, but normal human babies certainly aren't at all like animals. The sheer, mind-boggling rational and learning capacity needed to learn highly symbolic and abstract things like language and arithmetic means that babies are 'smarter' than adults. (If by 'smarter' we mean the capacity for learning, mental models and abstract generalization.)
amelius 8y ago
Related question: can animals have religious thoughts?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  Religion is a philosophy, and philosophies are the models we construct of reality in order to explain and predict. It seems undoubtable that many animals construct models of reality, and indeed we have seen them display behavior consistent with models we would associate with religion. Elephants, for instance, appear to practice some form of reverence for their dead by visiting and touching their bones.
philwelch 8y ago
Well, sure. I don't think anyone who's encountered an angry cat can deny that cats are capable of anger. Equivalently, you could say our emotions are the subjective experience of our ancient animal instincts.
dredmorbius 8y ago
Expression Of The Emotions In Man And Animals by Darwin, Charles Publication date 1873 https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.43657/page/n3 https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.43657/page/n3
morningmoon 8y ago
Just one of the many reasons I am vegan. You can eat a healthy, fulfilling diet that meets all your nutrition requirements without consuming meat or dairy and contributing to animal suffering. We have the choice to avoid imprisoning, mutilating, and killing animals to survive, by eating a plant-based diet. I’ve been vegan for many years and have never felt better or happier. You can too. https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/how-go-vegan https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/how-go-vegan https://rightasrain.uwmedicine.org/body/food/want-go-vegan-heres-how-do-it-healthy-way https://rightasrain.uwmedicine.org/body/food/want-go-vegan-h...
- eMSF 8y ago
  >We have the choice [...] Do you think other species have less of a choice because of their limited emotional response? If so, can you consider the implications? (rather than being the butt of the age old joke)
  - morningmoon 8y ago
    I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make. I don’t care to argue about whether we should avoid causing emotional and physical suffering to other beings. Carnivorous animals kill to survive, unlike all of us living in the modern world. It’s not just the killing, it’s the whole process of enslaving, breeding, raping, mutilating animals just to serve our tastes. If you think I’m being melodramatic don’t take my word for it. You can see the terrible suffering inflicted on animal farms and slaughterhouses only a quick google search away. It’s not necessary. We aren’t living in the bush having to kill another animal in order to live.
- meotimdihia 8y ago
  yes, and help you are not sick or infect from animal ills.
mbell 8y ago
You can't make global claims about 'animals' based on dogs. Humans created dogs, we extricated them from the harsh reality of evolution in order to serve as workers and companions to us. It's no surprise we bred them to match our emotional viewpoint. The reality of nature is _extremely_ harsh by human standards. It's largely an emotionally cold and deadly place that is entirely removed from most humans day to day lives.
- cm2187 8y ago
  In fact animals don't die in a nice way. They end up either eaten alive or left behind by the herd to die of thirst when they are too old or too sick.
agumonkey 8y ago
I remember a documentary about octopus reproduction, the mother would spend their final hours heating water around the nest then as a last gesture would go die as far as possible from it, allegedly to avoid attracting predator around "her" corpse. I have no idea if the sacrificial narrative is to be trusted but I was nearly tearing up.
peter303 8y ago
The human forebrain may inhibit some emotion. Injury tonthe fore brain- trauma, stroke, dementia plaques- sometimes results in highly emotional people.
notadoc 8y ago
Do we need to be reminded that humans are animals? Humans have large egos, but aside from that we're not particularly special.
squirrelicus 8y ago
New York Times: "Here I go overstating a vapid point again" The easy part is pretending animals are like us, even if there's no rigorous reason to believe they are. The hard part is trying to figure out why the tiger isn't immoral for killing the gazelle.
- nearbuy 8y ago
  You're going against the scientific consensus if you're suggesting animals don't have any emotions. Do you have any reason to believe that they don't? Whether tigers hunting for survival is immoral seems entirely tangential to whether animals can feel.
- pdamoc 8y ago
  > The easy part is pretending animals are like us, even if there's no rigorous reason to believe they are. You should look into the work of Jaak Panksepp. Watch his TEDTalk [1] for a quick overview but the really mind altering information you will find in his books. I highly recommend "The Archeology of the Mind" to everyone who wants to learn more how the concept of SELF is being created into the brain and the role primary affect plays in complex enough organisms (mammals, some social reptiles/birds). [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65e2qScV_K8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65e2qScV_K8
rasengan0 8y ago
I thought humans are animals?
muzani 8y ago
An intriguing idea brought up in the book Flow, is that perhaps animals feel things better than us. One of the conditions of flow is that the individual focuses on that one thing and doesn't think about anything else. Humans are constantly juggling several things in their heads at one time. When we brush our teeth, we think about how we're going to be late. When we play with our kids, we're also worrying about that problem at work or the unpaid bills. But the lion does not need to do this. When the lion is hunting, they focus 100% on it. When it eats, it enjoys its meal, not having to worry about the next kill or food preservation. When it sees a sunrise, it can sit there and enjoy the sunrise, without pondering what it has to do in the next few hours.
- stackola 8y ago
  But maybe the DO think about the next kill while looking at the sunrise. Who are we to tell?
otabdeveloper2 8y ago
So what? Since when is 'emotion' is some sort of validation of personal worth instead of a condition you need to learn to live with?
- anigbrowl 8y ago
  Same reason restaurants compete to provide interesting flavors instead of just serving water and nutrient cubes. Emotions are what provide interest in life to most people. My impression is that you have them too but their expression has been a source of stress for you, possibly due to negative reaction from others.
austincheney 8y ago
The purpose of emotions was proven by accident. Emotions exist as a physiological component of the brain to help make complex cognitive decisions on the fly. It is safe to think of this as a short circuit around analysis paralysis, but it also comes at a cost of various cognitive biases. It should be no surprise that animals have emotions similar to humans since the physiology of many animal brains is not incredibly different from human brains. The discovery: https://www.smh.com.au/national/feeling-our-way-to-decision-20090227-8k8v.html https://www.smh.com.au/national/feeling-our-way-to-decision-... It was hard to confirm the discovery because people with no emotion are rare, but some of it was arguably confirmed later through interviews with John Wayne Gacy who demonstrated much of the same behaviors but had learned to compensate and fake it for much of his life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wayne_Gacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wayne_Gacy
vemv 8y ago
Quite obviously emotions are a continuum that correlates with intelligence. The most intelligent animals feel/express the most sophisticated emotions. To think otherwise would be clearly contrary to science (i.e. you believe in souls transcending to the physical world; OR you believe that a deity made an 100% equitative distribution of emotions among his creatures, from the worm to the dolphin). This point is defended in Hofstadter's works.
tim333 8y ago
The author showing monkeys getting emotional about unfairness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dMoK48QGL8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dMoK48QGL8

347 points by mykowebhn 8y ago

https://outline.com/Dumckz https://outline.com/Dumckz

I believe they are more emotional in many ways - more driven and consumed by their emotions. Especially in social animals emotional reactions are inescapable for them. Humans are able to overcome emotion through higher level thinking and effort. Also depends on one's definition of emotion. Is fear an emotion?

Erlich_Bachman 8y ago
IMO fear is widely viewed as one of the simplest emotions, yes. Or at least, it can be: the word can be used to reference different aspects of fear, one of which is the emotion of it.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago

It's strange to me that this is still considered controversial. Even long-duration emotional effects like depression is very obvious in pets after the loss of other/companion pets in a home.

jimmy1 8y ago
It's not if you take a simple view of emotion. What's controversial is whether or not they feel complex emotions. Is that really depression or just sadness? Do adult elephants have periods of melancholy that are suddenly brought on by seeing elephant children playing in the watering hole which causes the adult elephants to remember their home town and childhoods and wish they never came to this distant country for better opportunities -- leading to regret, and then anxiety because they realized they did this all for naught are and feel trapped in their current situation? Who knows. I doubt it.
- radicaldreamer 8y ago
  If you've been around elephants much, your scenario is in no way implausible.
- sjtindell 8y ago
  That’s not a complex emotion, it’s a story. The deep related emotions themselves could still be felt.
- tdb7893 8y ago
  It's not controversial that many mammals have emotions very very similar to humans (my wife is literally an animal welfare researcher). You're talking about more about how they think than their emotions, whether they are sad because they see their dead child or sad because they regret some complex chain of events it's still the same emotion, the only difference is their ability to understand the chain of events.
- selune 8y ago
  It has been speculated that elephants know bones of elephants from other animals and that they kind of "mourn" their dead [1][2] in a way. Most mammals would react to fresh corpses of members of the same species, most would feel what we would call sadness when loosing a member of tribe, parent etc. But feeling emotions towards bones? That's pretty complex IMO. I've also read somewhere about instances of elephants "burying" other elephants via covering their bodies with leaves. I'll edit and add a source if I manage to find it. [1]: http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1497634.htm http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1497634.htm [2]: https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/photos/12-facts-change-way-see-elephants/elephants-honor-bones-their-dead https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/photos/12-facts-ch...
telchar 8y ago
It's hard to get a man to understand something if his accustomed lifestyle depends on his not understanding it (to paraphrase Upton Sinclair). It's harder to justify eating meat and supporting factory farming if you believe animals have emotions. I'm not a vegetarian myself but I think that is more uncomfortable for me than for someone who doesn't believe animals have emotions.
- hjek 8y ago
  > I'm not a vegetarian myself but I think that is more uncomfortable for me than for someone who doesn't believe animals have emotions. If you don't mind me asking, what do you think is making you still eat animals, given that you are aware of their suffering?
  - tomt2323 8y ago
    I can answer this from my own experience after having been vegan for 5ish years (but I am decidedly not now). There are two things at play: the more "justified" first thing is I'm politically active and still maintain an interest in animal welfare, but I'm focusing the energy I have for activism on systemic changes and participating in/enabling mass action rather than focusing on individual choices, which often act as a release valve for important political discontent without directly confronting the systemic causes. The less noble second thing is that, given the American food supply chain, it's simply still more of a burden and less pleasant to eat vegan as well as easy to not think about when making food choices.
    - kanjus 8y ago
      Your explanation very much resembles the one I used to have for not being vegan: in hindsight, it was nothing but a way to avoid the cognitive dissonance between my belief that I was a good person and the knowledge that I simply didn’t care about veganism/vegetarianism. I’m not saying it’s the same here, but your explanation is flawed on arguably every level, I hope you take the time to think about your decision more, but congrats for your 5 years of veganism 1. “I have limited energy for activism, and I distribute it wisely”: statements like these are often untrue and a way to brush away an ethical question while continuing to appear ethical (“I fly on planes, flying on planes is bad for the planet, but X [droughts in Africa] is more critical, so I prefer to think about X than about planes”). One, willpower is probably not finite, as was found in a famous recent study (granted, I conflate willpower and energy here, but they’re quite close). Two, being vegan takes basically the same amount of effort/time/money as eating animal products for someone with no medical condition. Three (more subjective), veganism is a pretty safe bet when it comes to activism, it’s a low effort/high impact part of climate change activism, which is one of the most critical things you can pour your energy into 2. “Enabling mass action is more important than my individual behaviour”: not how the world works. In theory, you could argue for veganism, even become the most respected vegan philosopher, while at the same time eating a different animal at every meal. In practice, if you’re a “do what I say, not what I do” person, the probability that someone becomes vegan after listening to you would be pretty much 0. I also have trouble imagining why anyone would see someone like this as part of the vegan community and a worthy ally when it comes to mass action 3. “Individual action makes people think they’ve done their part and not partake in mass action”: this is untrue on many levels. Individual action is what mass action is made of and the end goal basically. Most people take the strength for political commitment from their individual everyday choices, I would even say that everyday choices are what makes political commitment inevitable. I have never met an activist who is committed only on a theoretical/group level 4. “Being vegan is a chore in America”: being vegan in a rich country is arguably the closest you’ll get to finding it easy 5. “Being vegan is less pleasant than not being vegan”: I can only assume you’re speaking about taste here, which I find weird from a former vegan. The imbalance between personal gustative pleasure and the suffering of species/ecology might be the most frequent discussion about veganism, and the one that demonstrates the most obviously to all involved that eating animal products is unethical (or at least neutral)
TaupeRanger 8y ago
It's considered controversial because we don't understand the nature of consciousness. The fact that your dog behaves similarly to you under similar circumstances tells us literally nothing about what it is actually like to have the dog's experiences. The question isn't whether they have them, it's whether they're as similar to humans as some think, or more that we project our emotions onto them. There is no way of knowing.
- geuis 8y ago
  It is possible to know. While we still don’t have the capability to do full brain emulation for hardly any species, we are left with comparison studies. These comparison studies should be as equally valid between humans as animals. We can only compare behavioral responses. You can perform similar behavioral studies among people that don’t speak the same language for example. I admit it’s not easy with humans, given how interconnected we are culturally but it’s not impossible.

spinach 8y ago

I think it's just human conceit, that which drives us to think we are special, as an individual, as a species, as a planet in the universe, that also makes us not want to see that animals also feel a range of deeper emotions. You can look at ducks and see a mother making sure all her little children are following her into the lake and are safe. Is it love? Why not? We call love a profound feeling but is it really? Isn't love a function that helps us take care of our young and survive as a species? An alien, who had never encountered our planet before and perhaps thinking they are the intelligent life while the beings on Earth are just 'responding to stimuli' wouldn't see the emotions humans feel. As ducks to humans, humans to these aliens. Ducks and humans alike would appear just to be going through the motions.

meowface 8y ago
Exactly. There's surely a threshold below which emotions can't be paralleled between humans and animals in that way, but it seems mammals are above it.
brink 8y ago
In your view, what constitutes special? What does a species have to do to be special?
burke 8y ago
I agree, our major issue is that we can't get over this intuition that we must be special somehow. This quote from Westworld really gets to the heart of it, for me at least: > There is no threshold at which we become greater than the sum of our parts; no inflection point at which we become fully alive. We can't define consciousness because consciousness does not exist. We humans like to fancy that there's something special about the way we perceive the world, and yet, we live in loops as tight and as closed as the hosts do—rarely questioning our choices—content, for the most part, to be told what to do next.
- tj-teej 8y ago
  > There is no threshold at which we become greater than the sum of our parts; no inflection point at which we become fully alive. We can't define consciousness because consciousness does not exist The idea that consciousness doesn't exist is very interesting, and I'm not poo-pooing it, however the argument that it doesn't exist because you can't identify an inflection point is an example of the grains of sand fallacy. The Grains of Sand fallacy basically claims you can't say "there's no way adding one piece of sand would render a pile of sand un-liftable." This isn't true as I can lift a bag with one grain of sand and can't lift a bag with a billion grains of sand, therefore there has to be a point where I can lift the bag with N grains of sand, and can't lift the bag with N+1 grains. I agree it's hard to identify an inflection point; but that doesn't prove that consciousness isn't real. If we define consciousness as something dead people don't have and an alive person has (or at least SOMEONE once has had), then there has to be an inflection point as people die.

CNJ7654 8y ago

It's strange to think that not too long ago, the scientific consensus was that animals were closer to automatons than conscious beings. Of course it's silly to assume they can experience the world just as we do, but they can clearly feel real emotions, even complex ones. Most animals probably evolved complex emotions to maintain social structures, like us

fogleman 8y ago

We are animals.

gugagore 8y ago
And tomatoes are fruits. But there are multiple actual definitions of words and very often "animal"1 = non-human "animal"2

Erlich_Bachman 8y ago

Not arguing with the contents of the article, or its applicability, but is there a large mass of people who think that people are more emotional than animals? Wouldn't the logical straight-forward way of looking at it would be that because humans have higher abstract intelligence/thinking capabilities, they should obviously be less emotional than animals? All animals have is basically emotion (well dolphins and monkeys probably have some simple symbolic language, but nevertheless), while humans have both emotion, and also the logical apparatus, the thoughts, the prefrontal cortex to inhibit (that's its function in a nutshell - selective inhibition) the rest of the (emotional) intelligence, thus making the general operation of an individual less emotion-based, as compared to a generic animal?

matthewtoast 8y ago
The article subhead ("animals are no less emotional than we are") is a bit misleading. (The headline likely wasn't written by the author.) This essay is not so much about whether animals operate on more or less of emotional basis than us; but the degree to which animals have subjective experiences to begin with. I.e., when a cat or monkey or bat feels sad, is there someone in there feeling that sadness? Because non-human animals exhibit demonstrably less higher intelligence than us, we tend to assume also that their subjective experience is somehow less sharp or detailed or consequential than ours. Consider the way that virtually our entire civilization treats animals as disposable goods. We confine them in horrendous conditions, we slaughter them for food in brutal ways, we force them to do hard labor, and we even hurt and scare them for petty entertainment. Many people seem to assume that because animals don't cry or smile or frown or grimace like we do, they must not be feeling the emotions we associate with those faces. If we all could believe that non-human animals could experience emotions such as fear, loneliness, loss, terror, shame, embarrassment, and joy just as richly and profoundly as we do -- and the article suggests that they do, indeed -- then what might we have to change about the way we regard and interact with them? I believe this is the question the article wants us to consider.
pbhjpbhj 8y ago
>because humans have higher abstract intelligence/thinking capabilities, they should obviously be less emotional than animals? // I'd imagine that the thinking goes that emotion requires self-reflection. Being depressed isn't really a thing if I don't even realise it's me that is depressed because I have no conception of self. If there is no higher function that can decide to suffer pains then pain is irrelevant, reaction is not emotion.

skosch 8y ago

I like how quickly this line of thinking leads to panpsychism. Alright, so your dog has some level of cognition – sensations, emotion, joy, pain. Perhaps less complex than a human, but nevertheless nonzero. Because whatever computations happens in its brain feel like something from the inside. How about a frog? Less, but still nonzero. How about a worm? Less, but still nonzero. But hey: we can already model a worm's nervous system [0]. And if consciousness is just what computation feels like from the inside, then torturing the model worm creates real pain (or the worm-equivalent of pain, whatever that emotion is). Something interesting to think about. [0] http://openworm.org http://openworm.org

pygy_ 8y ago
You can get that down to single cells, actually. Transcription factors (genes whose product activate or inhibit other genes) form regulation network that are equivalent in function to neural nets. There's also evidence of memory in single cell organisms.
- skosch 8y ago
  Absolutely, and why stop there? Neural nets just add up numbers – other physical systems do that, too.
  - pygy_ 8y ago
    Indeed!
hjek 8y ago
> But hey: we can already model a worm's nervous system. It surely is interesting to think about, at least as long as this Chinese Room way of thinking isn't used to dismiss or justify pain or suffering inflicted on other living beings.
- chr1 8y ago
  There is one important difference between other living beings and the model, in the case of other living beings you do not own the computer, you are not the one who started the computation, and you do not have a power to undo your actions. But in case of the model nothing would exist if you didn't build the computer, and you can take snapshots to restore any state you want. It seems like people in some way always understood this difference, because they were ok with god sending arbitrary tortures to them, and then granting them eternal life undoing the effect of the torture.

jrlocke 8y ago

When I took classes with Daniel Dennett, he was always amazed at the strength of convictions people had about consciousness even without education in the area. This is an unpopular opinion, but the human intuition is not a good discriminator of consciousness: "Dennett (who argues that consciousness is unique to humans), claims that intuitive attributions of mental states are “untrustworthy”, and points out that “it is, in fact, ridiculously easy to induce powerful intuitions of not just sentience but full-blown consciousness (ripe with malevolence or curiosity) by exposing people to quite simple robots made to move in familiar mammalian ways at mammalian speeds (1995).”"[1] Personally, I'll be agnostic until consciousness is much better understood. [1]https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-animal/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-animal/

ergothus 8y ago
I come from the opposite direction: I'm not so sure humans are all that conscious. My personal theory goes something like: * Consciousness is a side-effect of the brain running "what-if" scenarios that include anticipating it's own actions. Self-awareness. This definition allows for non-human consciousness, but also doesn't take a stance on it, as it also allows for a range of awareness, rather than a binary state. (that said, I'll talk in binary terms for simplicity) * Consciousness is calorically expensive - the brain shuts it down when it isn't needed, because it stops adding value then in terms of survival. * Side effect: The primary job of consciousness is to figure out how to turn the unexpected into the routine, which in turn shuts down consciousness. Result: We spend a lot of time NOT self-aware, then back-fill that we must always be self-aware when we consider that time (because we are self-aware during that consideration). Impossible to self-measure, but my personal guess is that we spend somewhere between a high number of minutes to low number of hours "sentient" each day. Note: I'm using Self-aware/consciousness rather broadly here. Even if it's illusion, there's a state of having that illusion (or however to phrase that) and a state of not being aware that you aren't even considering...anything. (Dang it is hard to describe that without using language that assumes awareness).
- wozer 8y ago
  That would explain why spending a few hours meditating can feel like a very long time, being more conscious than usually. Edit: On the other hand, when meditating deeply, one does not run what-if scenarios. Quite the opposite. Nevertheless, awareness is particularly strong in this state.

kissgyorgy 8y ago

I was pretty surprised when I saw this video about a dog watching Lion King movie and getting sad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHKC958R8Z8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHKC958R8Z8

pault 8y ago
Uhh, I'm skeptical. My dogs do exactly that any time they see something on the TV that looks like something they would chase. I suspect that's what is going on here. I doubt the doggy is aware that Mustafa is dead and Simba is now an orphan.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  Yeah. They've also got tens of thousands of years worth of selective breeding for cueing off their owners. There are what I'd call clear examples of animals expressing emotions. I'm not sure this one'd qualify.
goda90 8y ago
I don't doubt at all that animals are emotional, but this video really made me wonder about what the dog is comprehending about the scene. Does it perceive that Mufasa is dead? Does the music affect it? Does it see the sadness in the anthropomorphic face of Simba?

jphalimi 8y ago

Opinion: Your Dog Feels as Guilty as She Looks Science does not need opinions. The question is worth asking, but this article does not seem to be backed by any kind of research or experiments.

Felz 8y ago
Yea. The entire argument appears to be a single anecdote about some guy's dog acting really upset after biting his hand. Quoting the article: > For the longest time, science has depicted animals as stimulus-response machines while declaring their inner lives barren. This has helped us sustain our customary “anthropodenial”: the denial that we are animals. We like to see ourselves as special, but whatever the difference between humans and animals may be, it is unlikely to be found in the emotional domain. Isn't this just a strawman in service to an applause light?
tim333 8y ago
There are some research and experiments in the article - eg give a dog a lemon is one you could try at home. The author has loads of science awards, papers etc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frans_de_Waal#Awards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frans_de_Waal#Awards Even including an Ig Nobel prize for showing chimps can recognise each other from butt pics.

superkuh 8y ago

The word 'animals' is far to generic to have any meaning in this context. Obviously social mammals that we share many of our brain structures with experience reality the same way we do. But this is far less obvious in animals like reptiles, fish, and the like.

ausjke 8y ago

Please someone at YC invented meat-alike alternatives so we don't eat animals for the sake of everything. Not really an animal lover, just think we don't really need consume animal meat to live longer/happier, there got be some other options.

Sharlin 8y ago

The weirdest thing about the "do animals have emotions" debate is that we now know that the emotion-handling parts of the brain (the limbic system, particularly the amygdala) are shared by not only by all mammals but also by reptiles and birds. The limbic system is ancient and fairly well-preserved; there's not much special in a human amygdala compared to a mouse one.

dgudkov 8y ago

One of the most interesting explanations of emotions that I've read is that emotions are subconscious predictions produced by the brain (sorry, didn't save the link). For instance, happiness is a subconscious prediction of safety. Depression is a subconscious prediction of death. It's like super-scalar execution -- the event hasn't happened yet (and may never happen), but the brain has already calculated its outcome and signals its estimation through emotions. A few conclusions: A) Anything with brains has some kind of emotions. The bigger the brain the more developed emotions are. B) Emotions in animals has nothing to do with "soul" or anything transcendental. It's just a way the animal brain works. Humans can feel empathy to animal emotions because they are also technically animals.

yarone 8y ago
> emotions are subconscious predictions produced by the brain Thank you for sharing. Such an interesting thought.
TaupeRanger 8y ago
This is one of those "non-explanations" you often get from modern neuroscience (in this case from the cult of "predictive coding"). There is absolutely no explanatory power here with regard to the nature of emotions. It just assumes its conclusion. The brain should just make its prediction and the behavior should happen in experiential void. Why is there any feeling associated with this prediction? There's no explanation for it that doesn't engage in obvious handwaving. And even if you accept one of the handwavy answers, it still doesn't even remotely approach the questions that people actually care about, like: why would the prediction give this specific quality of feeling, rather than some other?

donatj 8y ago

Was this up for debate? My understanding was always emotion is just animal survival instinct kicking in. The BIOS. The dumb part of your brain the should fight to override.

hhs 8y ago

This makes me think of Wittgenstein's point that words shape our reality and also limit our perception of reality. "Emotion" is a word that's a human construct. Going along with this human construct, I wonder what the boundaries are among humans and animals when it comes to "emotions". Are there certain emotions that animals have that we can't tap into and, therefore, never experience? And to go further, what role do sensory organs have with emotions? Does access to certain sensory organs influence this? For instance, fishes have access to the lateral line system to help them sense pressure gradients and their surroundings. It could be that they have unique emotions.

mamon 8y ago

What's the surprise here? If anything I would expect animals to be even more emotional than humans. Emotions are something primal, something that came to be before conciousnes. Animals are emotional and all they ever do is act on their emotions, whether that is: hunger, fear, joy, lust, etc. The human-specific part of mind is the rational part, planning, reflecting, self-correcting, etc. Animals never come close to humans in this regard.

rland 8y ago

I have some early memories from when I could barely talk. Back then, the world was composed almost entirely of emotions. They completely dominated the scene. Not only that, but my brain was smaller and less physically developed, so I had reduced capacities as well. I think animals are exactly the same. Of course, animals' brains never develop past that stage ruled by emotion. As a result of this, I believe anyone can do a thought experiment to see the world as an animal sees it: just think of very early memories from right when you first learned to talk. That is what being an animal is like.

otabdeveloper2 8y ago
Don't know about you personally, but normal human babies certainly aren't at all like animals. The sheer, mind-boggling rational and learning capacity needed to learn highly symbolic and abstract things like language and arithmetic means that babies are 'smarter' than adults. (If by 'smarter' we mean the capacity for learning, mental models and abstract generalization.)

amelius 8y ago

Related question: can animals have religious thoughts?

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
Religion is a philosophy, and philosophies are the models we construct of reality in order to explain and predict. It seems undoubtable that many animals construct models of reality, and indeed we have seen them display behavior consistent with models we would associate with religion. Elephants, for instance, appear to practice some form of reverence for their dead by visiting and touching their bones.

philwelch 8y ago

Well, sure. I don't think anyone who's encountered an angry cat can deny that cats are capable of anger. Equivalently, you could say our emotions are the subjective experience of our ancient animal instincts.

dredmorbius 8y ago

Expression Of The Emotions In Man And Animals by Darwin, Charles Publication date 1873 https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.43657/page/n3 https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.43657/page/n3

morningmoon 8y ago

Just one of the many reasons I am vegan. You can eat a healthy, fulfilling diet that meets all your nutrition requirements without consuming meat or dairy and contributing to animal suffering. We have the choice to avoid imprisoning, mutilating, and killing animals to survive, by eating a plant-based diet. I’ve been vegan for many years and have never felt better or happier. You can too. https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/how-go-vegan https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/how-go-vegan https://rightasrain.uwmedicine.org/body/food/want-go-vegan-heres-how-do-it-healthy-way https://rightasrain.uwmedicine.org/body/food/want-go-vegan-h...

eMSF 8y ago
>We have the choice [...] Do you think other species have less of a choice because of their limited emotional response? If so, can you consider the implications? (rather than being the butt of the age old joke)
- morningmoon 8y ago
  I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make. I don’t care to argue about whether we should avoid causing emotional and physical suffering to other beings. Carnivorous animals kill to survive, unlike all of us living in the modern world. It’s not just the killing, it’s the whole process of enslaving, breeding, raping, mutilating animals just to serve our tastes. If you think I’m being melodramatic don’t take my word for it. You can see the terrible suffering inflicted on animal farms and slaughterhouses only a quick google search away. It’s not necessary. We aren’t living in the bush having to kill another animal in order to live.
meotimdihia 8y ago
yes, and help you are not sick or infect from animal ills.

mbell 8y ago

You can't make global claims about 'animals' based on dogs. Humans created dogs, we extricated them from the harsh reality of evolution in order to serve as workers and companions to us. It's no surprise we bred them to match our emotional viewpoint. The reality of nature is _extremely_ harsh by human standards. It's largely an emotionally cold and deadly place that is entirely removed from most humans day to day lives.

cm2187 8y ago
In fact animals don't die in a nice way. They end up either eaten alive or left behind by the herd to die of thirst when they are too old or too sick.

agumonkey 8y ago

I remember a documentary about octopus reproduction, the mother would spend their final hours heating water around the nest then as a last gesture would go die as far as possible from it, allegedly to avoid attracting predator around "her" corpse. I have no idea if the sacrificial narrative is to be trusted but I was nearly tearing up.

peter303 8y ago

The human forebrain may inhibit some emotion. Injury tonthe fore brain- trauma, stroke, dementia plaques- sometimes results in highly emotional people.

notadoc 8y ago

Do we need to be reminded that humans are animals? Humans have large egos, but aside from that we're not particularly special.

squirrelicus 8y ago

New York Times: "Here I go overstating a vapid point again" The easy part is pretending animals are like us, even if there's no rigorous reason to believe they are. The hard part is trying to figure out why the tiger isn't immoral for killing the gazelle.

nearbuy 8y ago
You're going against the scientific consensus if you're suggesting animals don't have any emotions. Do you have any reason to believe that they don't? Whether tigers hunting for survival is immoral seems entirely tangential to whether animals can feel.
pdamoc 8y ago
> The easy part is pretending animals are like us, even if there's no rigorous reason to believe they are. You should look into the work of Jaak Panksepp. Watch his TEDTalk [1] for a quick overview but the really mind altering information you will find in his books. I highly recommend "The Archeology of the Mind" to everyone who wants to learn more how the concept of SELF is being created into the brain and the role primary affect plays in complex enough organisms (mammals, some social reptiles/birds). [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65e2qScV_K8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65e2qScV_K8

rasengan0 8y ago

I thought humans are animals?

muzani 8y ago

An intriguing idea brought up in the book Flow, is that perhaps animals feel things better than us. One of the conditions of flow is that the individual focuses on that one thing and doesn't think about anything else. Humans are constantly juggling several things in their heads at one time. When we brush our teeth, we think about how we're going to be late. When we play with our kids, we're also worrying about that problem at work or the unpaid bills. But the lion does not need to do this. When the lion is hunting, they focus 100% on it. When it eats, it enjoys its meal, not having to worry about the next kill or food preservation. When it sees a sunrise, it can sit there and enjoy the sunrise, without pondering what it has to do in the next few hours.

stackola 8y ago
But maybe the DO think about the next kill while looking at the sunrise. Who are we to tell?

otabdeveloper2 8y ago

So what? Since when is 'emotion' is some sort of validation of personal worth instead of a condition you need to learn to live with?

anigbrowl 8y ago
Same reason restaurants compete to provide interesting flavors instead of just serving water and nutrient cubes. Emotions are what provide interest in life to most people. My impression is that you have them too but their expression has been a source of stress for you, possibly due to negative reaction from others.

austincheney 8y ago

The purpose of emotions was proven by accident. Emotions exist as a physiological component of the brain to help make complex cognitive decisions on the fly. It is safe to think of this as a short circuit around analysis paralysis, but it also comes at a cost of various cognitive biases. It should be no surprise that animals have emotions similar to humans since the physiology of many animal brains is not incredibly different from human brains. The discovery: https://www.smh.com.au/national/feeling-our-way-to-decision-20090227-8k8v.html https://www.smh.com.au/national/feeling-our-way-to-decision-... It was hard to confirm the discovery because people with no emotion are rare, but some of it was arguably confirmed later through interviews with John Wayne Gacy who demonstrated much of the same behaviors but had learned to compensate and fake it for much of his life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wayne_Gacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wayne_Gacy

vemv 8y ago

Quite obviously emotions are a continuum that correlates with intelligence. The most intelligent animals feel/express the most sophisticated emotions. To think otherwise would be clearly contrary to science (i.e. you believe in souls transcending to the physical world; OR you believe that a deity made an 100% equitative distribution of emotions among his creatures, from the worm to the dolphin). This point is defended in Hofstadter's works.

tim333 8y ago

The author showing monkeys getting emotional about unfairness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dMoK48QGL8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dMoK48QGL8