Do Animals Exhibit Emotions and Morality?
by Marc Bekoff • Boulder, CO

Do animals have emotions? Of course they do. Just look at them, listen to them, and if you dare, smell the odors that pour out when they interact with friends and foes.

Look at their faces, tails, bodies, and most importantly, dare to look into their eyes. What we see on the outside tells us a lot about what’s happening inside animal’s heads and hearts. Emotions are the gifts of our ancestors. Humans have them and so do animals. No longer do we have to put words like happy or sad in quotation marks when we speak of animal emotions and animal’s inner lives. Animals will always have their mysteries but their emotional lives are public and transparent.

When I began my studies three decades ago asking the question “What does it feel like to be a dog or a wolf?” researchers were almost all skeptics who spent their time wondering if dogs, cats, chimpanzees, and other animals felt anything. Since feelings don’t fit under a microscope, these scientists usually didn’t find any, and, as I like to say, I’m glad I wasn’t their dog! But now there are far fewer skeptics - prestigious scientific journals publish essays on joy in rats, grief in elephants, and empathy in mice - and no one blinks, and the question of real importance is not whether animals have emotions but why animal emotions have evolved. Simply put, emotions have evolved as adaptations in numerous species. They serve as a social glue to bond animals with one another and also catalyze and regulate a wide variety of social encounters among friends and foes.

Emotions permit animals to behave adaptively and flexibly using various behavior patterns in a wide variety of venues. Research has shown that mice are empathic rodents but it turns out they’re fun loving as well. Today, the paradigm has shifted to such an extent that the burden of proof now falls to those who still argue that animals don’t experience emotions.

Anthropomorphism

Many researchers also recognize that we must be anthropomorphic (attribute human traits to animals) when we discuss animal emotions but that if we do it carefully we can still give due consideration to the animal’s point of view. No matter what we call it, researchers agree that animals and humans share many traits including emotions. Thus, we’re not inserting something human into animals, but we’re identifying commonalities and then using human language to communicate what we observe.

Charles Darwin and Evolutionary Continuity

It’s bad biology to argue against the existence of animal emotions. Scientific research in evolutionary biology, cognitive ethology (the study of animal minds), and social neuroscience support the view that numerous and diverse animals have rich and deep emotional lives. Charles Darwin’s well-accepted ideas about evolutionary continuity, that differences among species are differences in degree rather than kind, argue strongly for the presence of animal emotions, empathy, and moral behavior. Continuity allows us to connect the “evolutionary dots” among different species to highlight similarities in evolved traits including individual feelings and passions. All mammals (including humans) share neuroanatomical structures such as the amygdala and neurochemical pathways in the limbic system that are important for feelings.

Spindle cells: A whale of a discovery

In scientific research there are always surprises. For example, spindle cells, which were long thought to exist only in humans and great apes, have been discovered in humpback whales, fin whales, killer whales, and sperm whales in the same area of their brains as spindle cells in human brains. This brain region is linked with social organization, empathy and intuition. Spindle cells are important in processing emotions. There’s the story about a humpback whale who, after being untangled from a net in which she was caught, swam up to each of the rescuers and winked at them before swimming off. The rescuers all agreed that she was expressing gratitude.

Mirror Neurons

Mirror neurons help explain such feelings as empathy. Research on these neurons supports the notion that individuals can feel the feelings of others. Mirror neurons allow us to understand another individual’s behavior by imagining ourselves performing the same behavior and then mentally projecting ourselves into the other individual’s shoes. To what degree various species share this capability remains to be seen, but there is compelling evidence that humans are not alone in possessing it. Diana monkeys and chimpanzees help one another get food and elephants comfort others in distress.

IS THERE A UNIVERSAL MORALITY?

Another big question for which answers are revealed by studying animal passions is “Can animals be moral beings?” I argue that they can be, in my development of the phenomenon that I call “wild justice.” Many animals know right from wrong and live according to a moral code. It’s self-serving anthropocentric speciesism to claim that we’re the only moral beings in the animal kingdom. Social morality, as exhibited during play, is an adaptation that is shared by many animals. Behaving fairly, evolved because it helped young animals acquire social (and other) skills needed as they matured into adults. Being fair is also important for maintaining well-oiled and efficient cooperative groups. There may even be cooperation between different species during group hunts. If we find consistency among different species in terms of how they cooperate and negotiate agreements to be fair, we might discover a universal morality. Such morality might also be important in acquiring, defending, and sharing food, in social grooming, and in the communal care of youngsters.

It’s clear that morality and virtue didn’t suddenly appear in the evolutionary epic beginning with humans. The origins of virtue, egalitarianism, and morality are more ancient than our own species. While fair play in animals may be a rudimentary form of social morality, it still could be a forerunner of more complex and more sophisticated human moral systems. But perhaps most important, if we try to learn more about forgiveness, fairness, trust, and cooperation in animals, maybe we’ll also learn to live more compassionately and cooperatively with one another.


Marc Bekoff is professor emeritus of biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder and cofounder, with Jane Goodall, of Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Based on the book The Emotional Lives of Animals. Copyright © 2007 by Marc Bekoff. Reprinted with permission of New World Library, Novato, CA. www.newworldlibrary.com or 800 972-6657 ext. 52.