By acknowledging that animals have emotions, nobody is saying that they feel or experience them as we do. Even among humans, the range and expression of emotions vary widely. Grief isn’t experienced the same way in all cultures and from person to person. Even if the chimps above will probably be eating or having sex within minutes, it’s not enough to completely dismiss that they are experiencing a form of grief at that moment.

There are still debates whether human infants feel pain and emotions. Their expressions are still often written off as unconcious reflexes up to a certain age, probably because they can’t talk therefore we see them as sub-human (or pre-human), like little eating/pooping machines, like ‘animals’. Only recently (10-20 years) have serious research been conducted to prove that performing surgery or distressing interventions without anesthetics on infants was actually painful, scary and scarring to the child.

We’re advanced as a species, but we’re also arrogant and make hasty conclusions.

Alex, the famous African Grey parrot, could clearly understand words and use them to synthesize new expressions that had not been taught to him, yet researchers clamored whenever it was suggested that he used ‘language.’ Likewise, when he acted in a way that could best be described as ‘jealousy,’ researchers called it ‘a dominance behavior’ rather than an emotion. But how can we describe jealousy in humans, other than a dominance behavior??

Defining emotion (ha!) – all animals react with fear once they know that being hit with a stick hurts like someone threw a stack of bibbles at you. Fear is an emotion? It seems a fairly deep one in the human persona.

I think we’ve all spent too long agreeing that we’re incredibly smart, when our own failure to prevent war / famine / disease seems to point out the blindingly obvious: we’re not. We’re a little bit smarter and better equipped (read usefully differentiated), but we’re not mega-brainos.

My dog is definitely smarter than some of these commenters, that’s for sure. And my cat could probably manipulate their emotions better than they could.

“… a Nebula Award nominee about a science experiment and a group of fifth-generation sign language chimps. Their intelligence seems almost human at times, but they don’t quite understand what humans are all about. They think of humans as immortal gods, until one day a scientist on the project contracts terminal cancer. Now the other scientists must tell the chimps the truth, with unforeseen consequences…”

Alright – so add the question to your child “is it make believe?” They’ll defend their loved dog’s emotions much more fervently than their teddy.

Although I am liable to believe chimps can feel complex emotions, I hardly think this photograph is rock solid evidence of anything, except a bunch of chimps looking at some humans hauling off a dead chimp.

Here’s a specific account:
http://www.wildwatch.com/sightings/an-elephants-funeral

And a general article:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-399615/Elephants-grieve-lost-relatives.html

Magpies apparently conduct similar “funerals” :
http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1221754/Magpies-grieve-dead-turn-funerals.html

This picture is very tender and poignant. After spending a good part of 40 years with her fellow chimps, I’m sure there is curiosity on their part, but also sadness, too.

We are foolish if we think animals don’t have emotions.

Chimps are very close to us both in evolutionary and morphological terms. They are also in the very exclusive club of animals that can pass the mirror test of self recognition that includes the great apes, some cetaceans, a couple of birds, elephants and us. If you ever get the chance to work with chimps, it is uncannily like working with human children that can’t speak (and that can rip your arm off).

The differences are in degree, not in kind. Of course they have emotions.

@walterbillington: If you draw faces on balloons, children can detect or perceive emotion. It doesn’t mean balloons have emotion. It does say we are wired to be able to perceive emotions tho….

I remember weeping inconsolably one night about a love affair that ended against my wishes. Presto got upset: he cried and meowed, almost in anger; paced around my feet; ran out of the room, ran back. Finally, he bit me on the toe — good and hard, not a love nip but something more ferocious.

Come to think of it, he did much the same thing earlier in the love affair, one time when my beloved was in my arms, just after a shower. Bit me on the toe, the little scamp.

Here’s a neat test: can your children detect or perceive emotions in animals? If so, wouldn’t you agree animals have emotions?

Errrm, why? Kids say things like “that tree looks really sad.” That doesn’t mean that the tree is actually sad. It just means that we humans are incredibly good and reading emotions, so much that we tend to over-read them even when they aren’t there.

I certainly believe that chimps have emotions, attachment and probably grief, although of course this photo has got absolutely zero ziltch evidence for that.

C’mon. Look at the chimps’ faces. They’re grieving. If you have to deny it to make yourself feel special and different from them, all you have done has shown the paucity of your own capacity for feelings.

We probably don’t have the innate ability to recognize how wild mammals mainfest their emotions. So, we don’t see most mammals as having recognizable emotions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Ball

–Philip H.