Animal Emotions Essay -- essays papers

Animal Emotions Do animals feel joy, love, fear, anguish or despair? What ere emotions, and perhaps more importantly, how do scientists prove animals are capable of emotion? Sea lion mothers have often been seen wailing painfully and squealing eerily as they watch their babies being eaten by killer whales. Buffaloes have also been observed sliding playfully across ice, excitedly screaming â€Å"Gwaaa.† Emotions are defined broadly as psychological phenomena that help in behavioral management and control. This is a challenging question to researchers who are trying to determine the answer to this question. Through current research by close observation combined with neurobiological research, evidence that animals exhibit fear, joy happiness, shame, embarrassment, resentment, jealousy, rage, anger, love, pleasure, compassion, respect, relief, disgust, sadness, despair, and grief is likely. Charles Darwin said, â€Å"The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happines s, and misery.† I agree with Darwin. I believe animals do exhibit emotions, and denying that animals have emotions because the subject cannot be studied directly is not a reasonable explanation. One recent headline in the news showed an extraordinary event on film. When a three-year-old boy fell into a gorilla enclosure at the zoo, and was knocked unconscious. A female Gorilla named Binti Jua picked up the boy, and cradled him in her arms as if he was her own. The gorilla then gently carried the boy over to the caretaker’s door and set him down. Did the gorilla feel empathy for the boy? By watching the film alone the gorilla seemed to show emotions for the boy, but without studying the animal neurobiologically scientists cannot understand how her emotions and cognitions were linked. One scientist, Damasio, provided an explanation how emotions can be felt in humans biologically. Damasio suggested, â€Å"Various brain structures map both the organism and external objects to create what he calls a second order representation. This mapping of the organism and the object most likely occurs in the thalamus and cingulate cortices. A sense of self in the act of knowing is created, and the individual knows â€Å"to whom this is happening.† The â€Å"seer† and the â€Å"seen,† the â€Å"thought† and the â€Å"thinker† are one in the same.† By mapping the brain scientists can have a better understandi... ...ung children. He said â€Å"A greylag goose that has lost its partner shows all the symptoms that John Bowlby has described in young human children in his famous book Infant Grief. . . the eyes sink deep into their sockets, and the individual has an overall drooping experience, literally letting their head hang.† Elephants stand guard over a stillborn baby for days with their head and their ears hanging down like they were sad. The experiments and other data show that animals are not just driven by instincts alone. There is more to them than that. It is hard to watch dogs play and believe that they derive no fun or pleasure from it at all. Animals have shown that they are sensitive to their social surroundings. They punish one another and alleviate other’s pain. Some monkeys in established communities attack those that find food and don’t share. These studies are important. A better understanding of how animals are feeling could create a whole new guideline of rules on the way animals should be treated. Humans should not be so arrogant to believe they are the only animals capable of emotion. How are we capable of seeing from their viewpoint and assume they feel no emotion.