The Extent of Animals Feeling Various Things

[Bugaboo]

Do you think animals can feel emotions? Experience pain? Have a certain level of sentience? Have personalities?
I personally think all animals have emotions to a degree depending on the species you're dealing with. More complex animals like dogs, parrots, primapes and whales seem to be able to feel a wide range of emotions. But then more "simple" animals like the tarantula seem to only feel 2 emotions: contentment and stress. Most invertibrates seem to only have these 2 states of mind but I have seen hermit crabs display fear, excitement, anger and stress but I'm totally biased as to hermit crabs being the best animals ever.

 

[OtterParty]

Is delicious a feeling because animals are made of meat and meat feels delicious

 

[AnimuGinger]

Depends on the animal. Some primates, dolphins, and other animals have a sense of self, so it wouldn't be unheard of to assume they have complex emotions as well.

 

[autisticdragonkin]

I am not sure exactly but I would say that likely https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euarchontoglires have all human emotions but not necessarily the same triggers and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epitheria have close enough emotions to be called completely recognizable to humans, I would say that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euornithes probably have similar but not exactly the same emotions due to independent evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euornithes and that amphibians and ray finned fish likely display about the same feeling as an infant

I would say that certain fish display higher intelligence as well as certain cephalopods but I wouldn't know how to rank them

I think that likely all jawless chordates and arthropods display a fetuses feeling with the possible exception of some extinct insects which had a larger oxygen supply and thus could sustain larger brains (insect respiration is terribly inefficient and subject to the square cube law very quickly)

likely eusocial invertebrates display something more but not nearly as much as people would think

 

[TowinKarz]

It's a question that's a real puzzler, where does the stimulus-response effect stop and what we'd call "emotion" take over?

Did the dog just bring me a ball because he's feeling understmulated and knows that if he brings it to me, I'll throw it for him to fetch, and problem solved? Or is he just interrested in "having fun"?

 

[Bugaboo]

Pufferfish are really smart and cute and I think they are amongst the smartest and highly evolved of all the fish. I think if any fish could experience more complex emotions it would be them

 

[autisticdragonkin]

highly evolved of all the fish

all organisms are equally evolved assuming that life began only once

 

[Pumpkin]

Well, rats and other animals can apparently feel empathy - http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/empathic_rats
Elephants are well known to have a huge range of emotions, including grief

So it really just depends on the animals. It seems most predators are more intelligent that prey which makes sense. It takes more brains to figure out how to catch and kill something than it does to simply run away from danger. Predators tend to engage in play activities, and animals like ravens have been shown to have incredible problem solving skills - http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2007/04/09/just-how-smart-are-ravens/

It would make sense for a clever animal to have more "sophisticated" emotions

 

[Bugaboo]

all organisms are equally evolved assuming that life began only once

I don't know how evolution works because I'm a person who pretends to know what they're talking about

 

[Roger Rabbit]

All cats feel is disgust.

 

[ZehnBoat]

Do you think animals can feel emotions?

the problem with this question is that you lump all emotions together and all animals.
it's all in layers

It's a question that's a real puzzler, where does the stimulus-response effect stop and what we'd call "emotion" take over?

instinct is the trigger for emotion.
emotion is the outcome of instinct.
all emotions for each person though different, are easy to make happen if you know how.
emotion itself isn't that complex, but for humans, there are so many emotions it makes a web.

All cats feel is disgust.

as someone who lived with cats, this is true.

 

[Bugaboo]

When one of my guinea pigs died suddenly from heart failure or whatever (he was like, 6 and he just dropped dead after happily squealing for vegetables we were preparing in the kictchen) the other guinea pig literally had a grieving period and you could tell he knew what happened by his behavior. He got over it in a week but it still happened.

 

[Marvin]

People lie to themselves to justify hurting animals, ALL the time. I'm fairly certain that just about any animal knows pain, and the more social ones who live in groups or form communities probably know more complex emotions as well.

The debate is about the level of consciousness animals have. Most animals can feel pain, of course, but is there a consciousness in them suffering that pain? If they aren't conscious, then it's comparable to pushing down on a seesaw and watching the other end go up. It's purely mechanical in that situation.

With animals like cows and pigs, it's somewhere in the middle. They've above insects, sentience-wise, but they're not at human level. I'm OK with killing these animals. You can't cause them needless pain, but killing and eating them is OK. They're not smart enough to the point where they're philosophizing about the nature of existence. We can give them a long, happy life and when we kill them, they won't see it coming, so they won't be stressed out or anything like that.

Also, something to keep in mind, is that people frequently ascribe human characteristics to animals. If you can make an animal look cute, people drastically overestimate its intelligence.

 

[TowinKarz]

They're not smart enough to the point where they're philosophizing about the nature of existence. We can give them a long, happy life and when we kill them, they won't see it coming, so they won't be stressed out or anything like that..

That might be the final qualifier to "human-level" intelligence: recognition of your own mortality. Or to put it another way, recognition of your place in time, as opposed to just your place by latitude/longitude/altitude (3d) that animals obviously get.

 

[Cosmos]

Personally, I think it's extremely arrogant to assume that humans are the only beings capable of experiencing emotion and/or sentience. I mean, who are we to dictate how animals experience things when we don't really know if it's true? I feel like a lot of the problem stems from the fact that humans and animals have a limited means to communicate. Like, for example, dogs understand one another just fine but they can have trouble communicating with humans (especially humans who aren't used to dogs).

Also, like @Satan said, people use the "they're just dumb animals" excuse all the time to justify being horrifically violent towards animals. Some people actually acknowledge that animals can and do probably feel fear but don't care because humans are still vastly superior and so can do whatever the fuck they want; in some parts of the world, instead of killing livestock quickly and humanely, butchers intentionally drag the process out because the fear makes the meat "taste better." Regardless of your views on animal cognition, I think we can all agree that that sort of thing is super fucked up.

 

[TowinKarz]

Agreed, if you're going to kill something, kill it. Don't make it suffer, that serves no purpose, especially to something that feels pain.

 

[Cosmos]

Agreed, if you're going to kill something, kill it. Don't make it suffer, that serves no purpose, especially to something that feels pain.

I mean, honestly, even if cows/chickens/pigs do feel a range of emotions, I would still be okay using them for livestock so long as they're treated humanely, allowed to stretch their legs and enjoy the outdoors, and then are killed quickly before they know what's coming. That's far more than they could have ever hoped for in the wild. But causing them needless pain (even if they aren't actually sentient) and deliberately dragging out their suffering is downright evil. There's absolutely no excuse for that shit. We as a species are sentient and we should know better than that.

 

[AnOminous]

Also, something to keep in mind, is that people frequently ascribe human characteristics to animals. If you can make an animal look cute, people drastically overestimate its intelligence.

The higher animals have all the brain structures, like the limbic system, associated with emotions humans feel, as well as the same types of pain receptors. It's ridiculous to think they serve no purpose and the animal is just some kind of automaton like a watch. What they lack is as much of the structures associated with abstract thinking abilities, and they don't have as much of that wrinkly stuff.

Unless all that hardware acts totally differently inside of an animal than it does inside a human, they probably feel pain in much the same way as we do, love their offspring and other animals they've formed bonds with, including humans, and get angry when they feel mistreated and resent it.

What they would lack is the cognitive capacity to suffer, for instance, abstract fear at the concept of inevitable future death.

To the extent they can suffer pain, that is a negative thing and should be reduced, but they don't necessarily have "human" rights, as we recognize the rights of a rational being to self-determination, that is, to have their preferences honored by civil society. At least, so thought Bentham.

 

[Marvin]

Personally, I think it's extremely arrogant to assume that humans are the only beings capable of experiencing emotion and/or sentience. I mean, who are we to dictate how animals experience things when we don't really know if it's true? I feel like a lot of the problem stems from the fact that humans and animals have a limited means to communicate. Like, for example, dogs understand one another just fine but they can have trouble communicating with humans (especially humans who aren't used to dogs).

It's not that arrogant. People don't make claims about animal sentience for no reason. It's not an arbitrary claim. There's lots of study on the topic.

Something to keep in mind is that most animals have no need for complex intelligence. They have precisely the amount of intelligence they need to survive. Usually this consists of not getting killed and maintaining whatever social structures they have.

Like your example with dogs. Dogs don't have complex concepts to express to one another. Because of this, dog language is much simpler than human language.

 

[Marvin]

The higher animals have all the brain structures, like the limbic system, associated with emotions humans feel, as well as the same types of pain receptors. It's ridiculous to think they serve no purpose and the animal is just some kind of automaton like a watch. What they lack is as much of the structures associated with abstract thinking abilities, and they don't have as much of that wrinkly stuff.

Unless all that hardware acts totally differently inside of an animal than it does inside a human, they probably feel pain in much the same way as we do, love their offspring and other animals they've formed bonds with, including humans, and get angry when they feel mistreated and resent it.

Oh, I definitely agree. I just think that these structures are less developed in animals, and thus their capacity for complex thought is reduced. I don't think that's a wild claim.

When I imagine what it must be like to be a dog, I think it probably feels like dreaming. In my dreams, my ability to think is really watered down. Everything feels fuzzy. It's hard to maintain a single line of thought for very long. That's what I imagine being a dog is like.