DO ANIMALS HAVE EMOTIONS?

©By Susan B. Eirich, Ph.D.

A hyena called Phoenix was raised by a human caretaker, Christine Drea, until he was old enough to be put into a pack. One day she came back to visit him. As she approached his pen she heard great screaming and crying. He had been attacked by the females in the female-dominated hyena society. The words "How is he" barely escaped my lips when there was an outpouring of pitiful whining. He met me at the fence, falling to his carpals and continuing his cacophony as though recounting the morning's ordeal. His body posture epitomized hyena submissiveness, - bared teeth in an open-mouthed appeasement grin, ears plastered to his head, the look of defeat in his stance. As I entered his pen he glued himself to me. His hindquarters turned to jelly. He sank to the floor, and like any frightened creature, he relieved himself all over my boots. With Phoenix entwined in my legs I stumbled to a pile of straw and sat down. Before I was even fully seated he crawled into my lap (which he had long since outgrown), turned over on his back, stared up at me with bewildered eyes, and whined a little longer. As I consoled him and checked for cuts, he lowered his head, closed his eyes, and fell sound asleep.

Granted Phoenix had taken an emotional beating, but there was hardly a physical bruise on him. A little disinfectant here, a little patting there, and he was good to go. In scientific terms he was a low-ranking hyena who had suffered the stress and acute changes in circulating cortisol levels brought on by social interactions with higher- ranking animals. In layman's terms he was a frightened hyena who needed comforting.

This incident illustrates the split we have had as a society about whether or not animals feel emotions. There is the scientific analysis (circulating cortisol levels), and the human interpretation (he feels miserable). But based on scientific evidence attitudes are changing. There is increasing acceptance that animals DO have, and feel emotions.

On the cover of the November 10, 2002, Sunday New York Times magazine was a photograph of a sheep lounging on a red couch, accompanied by a pig, calf and chicken. The feature article examined the question of animal emotions and the implications for treating animals differently. In 2000 PBS Nature aired a program titled "Do Animals Have Emotions?" In 2003 Newsweek published an article. In 2000 Discovery Channel published "The Smile of a Dolphin: Remarkable Accounts of Animal Emotions" with accounts from top scientists around the world illustrating love, grief, anger, joy and compassion from birds to giraffes, to pigs, hyenas, foxes and dolphins. From a historically discredited and controversial underground movement, the idea that animals have feelings similar to ours is going mainstream. The science is compelling. Evidence from the fields of anatomy, physiology, ethnology (the study of animals in their natural environment), neurochemistry, endocrinology, DNA analysis and psychology all support the position that on an emotional level, animals are very much like us.

Based on his research in the 1950's, neurologist Paul McLean, director of the Laboratory of Brain Evolution and Behavior in Poolesville, Maryland, developed the concept of a triune brain - that humans and other mammals have essentially three brains in one. He called these the reptilian, the paleo-mammalian, and the neo-mammalian brains, each one developing on top of its evolutionarily older layer. The three brains have interconnections but nevertheless are anatomically and chemically distinct. The reptilian brain contains what we have in common with reptiles - it controls our autonomic nervous system functions of breathing, circulation, reproduction, muscles, reflexes, ritualized behavior patterns, territoriality and social dominance. The neo-mammalian brain is the seat of our intellectual life, our capacity for abstract thought, reasoning and language. But the paleo-mammalian brain, held in common with all mammals, evolved before our capacity for abstract thought, is the seat of the limbic system. And the limbic system is the seat of emotions, of the capacity to feel joy, anger, love, grief, bonding.

According to MacLean it is in the limbic system where we feel whether something is agreeable or disagreeable, i.e. "good or bad." This is the underlying basis of our value judgments (do I like this or not) - and this we have in common with animals. Not that animals have "values," but the roots of our capacity to have values lie in our brain and biology, and may have developed from what we have in common with mammals.

The limbic system is also the location of emotionally charged memories. Jane Goodall and many others believe, for example, that animals as well as people suffer from post traumatic stress disorder. Traumatized animals show many of the same physiological signals in the brain as traumatized humans do, and the same symptoms. We recognize the symptoms of trauma or abuse in animals familiar to us - dogs, cats, horses. Many researchers believe that wild animals too suffer in the same way, as when we cull elephants, breaking up intense family bonds and having family members watch others wounded and killed. Animals also exhibit the same behavioral and physiological signs of depression as humans. Emotions are accompanied by measurable biochemical changes in the brain. Animal and humans systems are so similar in fact, that vets prescribe the same medications for animal emotional and behavior problem as doctors prescribe for humans - Prozac for depression, other "specific serotonin uptake inhibitors" or SSRI's such as Zoloft and Paxil for compulsive behaviors, which in animals may be as fur biting or feather pulling. The chemical neurotransmitters of animals are the same as humans - dopamine, serotonin, opioids. The hormones are similar - those used for hormone replacement therapy in women are made from the urine of pregnant mares. The same hormones perform the same functions - oxytocin, for example, initiates maternal bonding, care, tenderness, protection across all the females of all the mammalian species including humans. We can interpret this to mean we are all just bags of chemicals that react- or we can interpret it to mean that tenderness is tenderness; that overwhelming grief at the loss of a young one is overwhelming grief, and is real whether is it "just chemical" or not. It certainly is real to human mothers. And brain scans of animals exhibiting the behavioral patterns of depression, for example, show the animal brain lighting up in the same places they do for depressed humans. Animals have been used in experimentation for stress, abandonment and other psychological issues for years just BECAUSE we are so similar. An abandoned chimp shows the same symptoms, the same physiology as an abandoned human baby. The peeping of a chick, the whimper of a puppy, elicits a protective, parenting feeling in humans. The distress of a young one is recognized and evokes a nurturing response across species - we recognize vulnerability and protect it.

From another angle, there is profoundly suggestive research on African baboons by Stanford University researcher Robert Sapolsky. By measuring hormones found in each individual's feces, Sapolsky's team has been able to show that baboon troops are high stress societies with higher-ranked individuals maintaining order by intimidating lower-ranked troopmates. And baboons, he found, suffer from the "human" stress diseases of ulcers, depression, and arteriosclerosis. So it may not be "modern life" itself, but a society structured by power and competition rather than cooperation, that causes the worst of our stress diseases.

From a behavioral perspective it only makes sense that animals would experience emotions. As Jane Goodall notes, social animals must be able to read other animals in their society, and must be able to maintain social bonds. When you think about it, strong emotion underpins social behavior and connection. We use emotion to sort out what to do next. Emotions function as motivators - note the emotion of love. One theory is that over evolution emotions have slowly replaced instincts as the directors of our lives. The more complex the social organization of an animals- apes, dogs, wolves for example, the richer the range of emotions. And finally there is the well-known and evocative fact that we share approximately 99% DNA with our close relatives the great apes, and a significant percentage of the same DNA with all living things.

If we accept that animals feel emotion, the next question is, are they aware of them? Steven Budiansky, author of "If a Lion Could Talk," likens the way animals feel to how we drive a car while we are thinking of other things at the same time; or to the fascinating phenomenon of blind sight, a human capacity to see without "seeing" by using an ancient visual pathway in the brain. Certain people with brain damage cannot "see" yet they can avoid objects, or tell us the color of a painting while saying they cannot see it. Budiansky believes animals are aware of their emotions, but they are limited in their awareness by not being able to formulate their feelings into words and express them consciously. One way to understand this concept is to take into consideration that the links between the limbic system and the neocortex become more complex up the evolutionary scale as the cortex grows larger and more complex. The neocortex sends connections back down into the limbic system, giving higher mammals increasing control over their emotions and drives (an example is the capacity of a dog to curtail his behavior and emotions upon training - a form of education). And the limbic system sends connections up to the neocortex, allowing us to be consciously aware of, evaluate and process our emotions.

Any issue about animals can be looked at from a variety of levels; scientific, emotional, artistic, intuitive/experiential, spiritual. What we believe, and perhaps know, depends on what evidence we accept as valid - science for some, intuition for others. From their point of view, pet owners always knew their pets felt emotions. Researchers into the relationship between people and their pets have asked some interesting questions. For example how is it that dogs know when their owners are coming home? What sense are they using? Some carefully controlled and provocative studies have been done on this matter, and suggest the easiest explanation is a sort of seventh sense, almost a form of telepathy. This seventh sense is most frequently activated in the context of strong emotion. It is most common between mothers and children and between pets and owners where there is a close love relationship - a mysterious communication facilitated by the emotion of love. And then we must ask the question - if dogs and cats can feel love, and loss...doesn't it logically follow that other animals can too?.

Some dramatically helpful insights are coming from the new information on animal emotions. But there are difficult issues to face as well. It is no wonder that huge amounts of science are required for us to accept that animals can feel, for if animals can feel fear, pain, loss, sadness, depression and joy, then as a culture we must look at how we treat them, eat them, raise them, hunt them, experiment on them. It has been easier to make a schizophrenic split - a scientist experimenting on dogs as machines, then going home to his own dog and talking about how glad it is to see him and how much it loves him. Dogs are wonderful while wolves, which are essentially identical genetically, are bad. Horses are loved. Pigs, crammed into horrible living conditions, are ham. We are beginning to realize the irrationality of this split and are making changes as a culture. For example there is increasing pressure for cruel factory farming practices to be changed, a change we can quickly enforce with selective buying practices. That was the focus of the New York Times article - if animals feel, we are morally obligated to eat meat that has been humanely raised.

There is ultimately no way to know if animals or even another human experiences emotions just like we do. Behavior, structure, and brain chemistry is similar in humans and animals. As the old adage says "if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck maybe it IS a duck." It is therefore likely, if not certain that they feel as we do. Even if animals do feel but are aware of it on a different level than we, as a decent society we must reevaluate, and are reevaluating, much of how we interact with animals. There are bumps and bruises along the way as extremes weigh in on both sides. But once we come out of this sea-change of awareness, there is the possibility of an infinitely richer life for all of us, animals and people, as we share this exquisite earth and the gift we call life.

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