They absolutely do! Some animals mate for life. Some mourn when one of their own dies (see whales, elephants). Parrots who are lonely may self-mutilate. Dogs can remember you and get so excited to see you, even after being separated for years. Interspecies friendships exist. It's like... I don't see how people can still think animals DON'T have emotions.
They just don't make faces like humans do. Although interestingly, dogs developed eyebrow muscles that give them more human-like expressions, which therefore strengthens our bond with them.
No, only humans are capable of thought and emotion. every other animal on this planet is just running a basic logic loop and will despawn if you move more than 100 yards away from them.
It's not only barring teeth, dogs also do a "submissive smile" in some cases, to show they are not a threat. Not seen much but when we got our second dog she was very insecure and "smiled" a lot. Definitely not for showing happines but I think I read our smiles have similar origins.
Yes. Animals absolutely have emotions. In fact, many animals, like cats, are extremely emotional creatures, on account of not having as highly developed parts of the brain that deal with emotional regulation. Affection? Absolutely. Love? Yes, but not generally in the same ways as people.
Do cats and dogs actually feel affection when you treat them right or is it really just an instinct for "more food and drink" etc?
I have a little cat that adores me. He likes come right up to my face and head-butt me forcefully (a behavior called bunting) and he likes to fall asleep gazing at me. Domestic cats and dogs are social creatures. Left to their own devices, they will engage in social behaviors unrelated to survival and biology.
I don't think I've ever seen dogs, cats and other domestic animals smile because they're happy and show love to their owners for treating them right.
Oh they absolutely do smile, just differently than humans. Cats are especially subtle abd communicative in their body language. It's also with noting that what humans think of as smiling, to most animals is an aggression display.
Yeah I see memes but those are either photoshopped or snapped at the perfect moment to make it look like they're smiling.
Domestic dogs and cats communicate a lot with body language, the majority of it being pure emotion. Their body language, however, is different from our own. You have to meet them halfway in communication; learning to listen to what they are saying.
Yeah. It's the showing teeth (or that thereof) that in many animals is a threat display. Think of it like a non-verbal way of saying "See these teeth? How'd you like them in your face? Because that's gonna happen if you don't step the fuck off."
I find that my cats and dog DO smile with their mouths/faces closed when getting a particularly nice petting. It seems a bit subtle because they're smaller than us but, rather like a little smirk (best is when my little cat gets a particularly nice nose scritching and he can't keep his mouth closed because it feels too good and a loud purr escapes from between his little fangs).
They definitely do show sympathy, sadness, fear and joy, which are unrelated to being rewarded with food and trained behaviour.
I don't see why they shouldn't have a full range of emotions. It seems simpler and more natural than developing a transactional response only.
The bigger question is what emotions even are. If it's a chemical or biological reaction then it'd be weird if other mammals didn't have about the same emotions as humans.
It's difficult to see how an animal feels unless you know it well. I can mostly see how my own dog is doing, but I have no idea what mood a random dog on the street is in.
If you feel bad, you already made the first step: listening to yourself because you already realised how wrong it is.
If you need motivation, watch dominion. I think it's fair to say that people should have footage like that in the back of their mind when they want to enjoy animal products.
You might not believe me, but changing things like your diet to be free of any animal cruelty feels fucking great, and it just takes a certain amount of time to learn new recipes and then it's just easy going.
I can help you with whatever you struggle with if you ever need some help
What? You don't eat cats, okay. But what's the point?
There is nothing wrong with being an omnivore lol. Sure, it's just what you are. Does being an omnivore mean you HAVE TO eat meat or do you think that the scientific consensus might be that we don't have to?
And if we don't have to, what's the main reason why you still eat it? Taste? Personal pleasure? Do you think that this is a good justification for harming other individuals?
You can't be ethical about "killing individuals that don't want to die for trivial reasons like taste pleasure" which might sound a bit overexaggerated at first, however if you look it up and find out that you don't have to eat any meat, you'll see that it's exactly that. It's not ethical.
Test if by changing the situation while you keep the logic. Tell me where personal sensory pleasure is a legit justification to bring harm or death upon individuals
You know that feeling you get when you look into your dog's eyes? The same parts of your dog's brain became active, so they're probably feeling similar emotions at that moment.
Neurobiologically they absolutely do. Most animals have amygdala, for starters, so they feel a lot of basic emotions. As for love, one would only need to ask whether they can do things such as produce oxytocin, recognize faces or voices, desire touch, etc.
Best answer here as it touches on inarguable facts rather than feelings. NOTE: Emotions are mainly a mammal thing, though reptiles and birds have a sort-of amygdala, not the same though.
And an interesting bit for OP: Dogs DO smile! At the least we can that we selected for more expressive facial muscles in dogs. In contrast, my pig has about zero emotional indicators, though he seems smarter than any dog I've met.
Dogs were shaped during the course of domestication both in their behavior and in their anatomical features. Here we show that domestication transformed the facial muscle anatomy of dogs specifically for facial communication with humans. A muscle responsible for raising the inner eyebrow intensely is uniformly present in dogs but not in wolves. Behavioral data show that dogs also produce the eyebrow movement significantly more often and with higher intensity than wolves do, with highest-intensity movements produced exclusively by dogs. Interestingly, this movement increases paedomorphism and resembles an expression humans produce when sad, so its production in dogs may trigger a nurturing response. We hypothesize that dogs’ expressive eyebrows are the result of selection based on humans’ preferences.
There has been at least one study which has shown that when a dog and their owner look into each other's eyes, both experience a release of oxytocin. The humans experience a greater release, but the dogs receive some as well.
Yes. We had a cat that'd sit with us when we weren't feeling well. If you were lying in bed with a migraine he'd snuggle in and rest his chin on your forehead. He could tell when we were ill and would always settle in with us including missing mealtime.
I don't know about smiling but cats and dogs absolutely feel emotion and affection.
It's not just about emotional states, which we can observe the behavioral states of but don't know what it is like to experience as other animals. It's about experience and consciousness which I think speaks to the underlying question of when other animals experience an emotional state if we can relate it to our own phenomenology for similar appearing states.
I don't think I've ever seen dogs, cats and other domestic animals smile because they're happy and show love to their owners for treating them right.
My dog "smarls" (smile+snarl) at me when I come home. We've taken a still photo of him while smarling and it looks horrifically vicious. It's like a stock photo captioned "aggressive dog". But he's actually happy. The difference is body movement. An aggressive or dangerous dog will be very still, just showing teeth, usually growling and backs away from a threat or quickly lunge if it gets too close. A smarl is usually accompanied by a wagging tail and body wiggles and slowly approaching to get pet.
Yes, but not necessarily the same way we experience them. Dogs and cats don't have the facial muscles to smile even if they wanted to and show pleasure in other ways.
Consequence of being with humans for 30,000 years. Dogs can read human tone, facial, and body language better than any other animal, including our closest relatives, chimpanzees.
I'm a cat lover. It's true they can be assholes, but they can be affectionate as well. They're not nearly as domesticated as dogs are since not only have we only been living around them about a third as long, but they only really started living indoors with us in the last hundred years or so. They're semi-domesticated.
With cats and dogs it’s all about the tail from what I’ve observed. They can’t really smile but their wag (dogs) or tail position (cats) convey their feelings. If your cat’s tail sticks straight up when they see you you know they have an affection towards you. Or maybe it’s food. All I know is straight up tail is a happy cat.
If it’s swishing, look out. And a dogs tail stops wagging and goes into like a prone state when they are concerned.
I actually knew a dog whose owner taught him how to smile. He'd come running up to you to greet you at the park with his teeth bared in a friendly way.
This really is the right answer. We dont actually know. We can attempt to translate behaviours and biological mechanisms we know from humans to animals but in the end we cant ask them so we dont know.
If emotions are defined as hormonal responses then we could say "yes", but that would reduce human complexity to basic chemistry which is too simplistic.
Well, they also have very obvious and complex behavioral responses, as well as similar brain activation to humans. It's extremely likely that animals experience emotions.
Sure, we don't really know, but then we're getting into the 'philosophical zombie' question.