Over the past couple of years, I've stumbled over, actively pursued and devoured several books on the topic of animal behaviour and cognition. It's a field that seems to be spoken about more frequently in books, which can be passed off as extended opinion pieces, rather than in factual, objective, scientific papers. Perhaps that's also because most long-time behaviourists find it easier to put their thoughts out into the larger, more accepting public than have them critiqued in the cautious world of scientific journals. The primary reason for this discouragement of juicy, emotional material in the academic world is one giant, taboo word - anthropomorphism.
I've wanted to write about this for nearly two years, but haven't because I was constantly reminded of the several unread, cognition-based books lying on my shelf that could change my mind about the topic. What I've found instead, with more reading, is nothing but mounting evidence for why the constant cautiousness regarding anthropomorphism may be unneeded. I received a final push to support the 'Of Course Animals Have Emotions!' team after reading what Carl Safina had to say about the matter.
"Evidence and logic can be trustworthy guides. In fact, one term for evidence+logic is: 'science'."
This is the stance that seems to be lacking in the community of behaviour scientists who look solely at descriptive ways of recording behaviour and actions without attempting to interpret them. It is widely accepted to say, "The elephant approached her dead calf, ran her trunk over him slowly, and stayed with its carcass for three days before joining her herd that had moved on" but not to say, "The elephant was experiencing grief". By fearing that one is anthropomorphising an animal in doing so, one is being all the more anthropocentric.
I've finally learned that there is a wealth of undeniable evidence, from a cumulative of several hundred years of observations, of intelligence and emotion in the animal kingdom. This, combined with the logic that any scientist (or layman) who has been exposed to certain species for several years possesses, could come together to produce wonderful science, finally laying the foundation literature that better understanding of animal cognition must rest upon. An unnamed scientist once loosely mentioned, "I have no way of knowing if that elephant is any more conscious than this bush". I feel compelled to point out that elephants are known to make decisions, care for their offspring and, perhaps even more interestingly, share nearly the same nervous and hormonal systems as human beings. This is just one of many cases of ignoring hard evidence in the hope of remaining an objective, well-reputed researcher.
One of the reasons why most scientists only tell stories and write articles or books about their evidences for feeling and emotion in animals is that such 'stories' or 'anecdotes' fail to fit the scientific framework of collecting empirical data, analyzing it, and producing statistical evidence for or against their hypotheses. But, quoting an eloquent professor of mine, "there's no such thing as anecdotal data". This is further substantiated by an uncomfortably small niche of literature like this one. If more behaviourists or ecologists began publishing isolated instances of interesting behaviour, even if purely descriptive and non-inferential in nature, these so-called anecdotes could potentially collect over time to produce the statistical support needed to validate them within that very scientific realm. The collective support of past researchers who took the effort to inform the world about their chance anecdotes could encourage others to look closer for similar (or identical) behaviours, together building upon the subject and enriching it.
From Jane Goodall who speaks of emotion in chimpanzees to Rick McIntyre who studied wolves, multiple researchers and authors have passionately advocated for the recognition of emotion in the animal kingdom. A recent book, 'The Hidden Life of Trees', speaks of how trees, too, communicate and feel. The fact that animals perceive and respond to others around them and feel fundamentally physiological emotions like pleasure and grief, or feel the need to play and relax may be more readily accepted among the pet-owner community. I highly doubt that anyone who's known a dog, cat, pig, bird or any other (hopefully non-exotic) pet disagrees with the fact that animals can make bonds with other living beings and emote in ways that we can, at least partially, understand. Whining dogs or spitting cats are understood by their owners, behaviourists or not.
To truly understand an animal, we must delve into topics like consciousness, awareness, intelligence and emotion. None of these, however, have any standard definitions. Each of these could mean different things based on the fields we come from, and so, sentience - an amalgamation of all of these - remains undefined as well. We distance ourselves from these topics, trying to have an objective, outsider view of things, but this seems to me like losing valuable data. We are already on the inside. We share so much of the physiology that a plethora of other animals have, that we ought to be using our knowledge of how emotions manifest in our minds to better understand that of other beings.
Our evolutionary relationship with animals is sadly misinterpreted due to years of convincing ourselves that "humans" and "animals" are two completely separate categories. It's us versus them. Although we train animals to work for us, share diseases and living space, it's near impossible to believe or even imagine that we fall into the same bracket of beings. Our insecurities as a species are beginning to creep into our science and hinder it from progressing.
So sure, we may be one of the only species to feel sadness, happiness, love or pain in the poetic sense. But it's time we realized and acknowledged that these emotions do exist in other species that we've spent decades studying. Even if their grief is different from ours, it still exists. Truly comprehending the nature of these emotions is a huge task which will probably require the use of future advancements in science, but admitting that they exist is the first step towards it - one that we should have taken a long time ago.
Cynthia Moss, who spent over 50 years studying elephants in Amboseli National Park, had this to say:
"I'm interested in them as elephants. Comparing elephants to people - I don't find it helpful. I find it much more interesting trying to understand an animal as itself. How does a bird like a crow, say, with so small a brain, make the amazing decisions it makes? Comparing it to a three-year-old child - that doesn't interest me."
This is our biggest clue to overcome our ingrained fear of objectivity in studying animal cognition. We need make inferences about the animals we study without bringing to them our own emotional baggages and insecurities. Anthropocentrism, if not dealt with soon, could plague our research for good. The qualities and characteristics that we so staunchly believe are purely human, like friendship, compassion, sorrow, happiness did not suddenly come into existence with the evolutionary step into a world of Homo sapiens. These are deep-rooted in times that predate mankind. Our brain's origin is inseparable from that of other species'. Just like our mind.
I've wanted to write about this for nearly two years, but haven't because I was constantly reminded of the several unread, cognition-based books lying on my shelf that could change my mind about the topic. What I've found instead, with more reading, is nothing but mounting evidence for why the constant cautiousness regarding anthropomorphism may be unneeded. I received a final push to support the 'Of Course Animals Have Emotions!' team after reading what Carl Safina had to say about the matter.
"Evidence and logic can be trustworthy guides. In fact, one term for evidence+logic is: 'science'."
This is the stance that seems to be lacking in the community of behaviour scientists who look solely at descriptive ways of recording behaviour and actions without attempting to interpret them. It is widely accepted to say, "The elephant approached her dead calf, ran her trunk over him slowly, and stayed with its carcass for three days before joining her herd that had moved on" but not to say, "The elephant was experiencing grief". By fearing that one is anthropomorphising an animal in doing so, one is being all the more anthropocentric.
I've finally learned that there is a wealth of undeniable evidence, from a cumulative of several hundred years of observations, of intelligence and emotion in the animal kingdom. This, combined with the logic that any scientist (or layman) who has been exposed to certain species for several years possesses, could come together to produce wonderful science, finally laying the foundation literature that better understanding of animal cognition must rest upon. An unnamed scientist once loosely mentioned, "I have no way of knowing if that elephant is any more conscious than this bush". I feel compelled to point out that elephants are known to make decisions, care for their offspring and, perhaps even more interestingly, share nearly the same nervous and hormonal systems as human beings. This is just one of many cases of ignoring hard evidence in the hope of remaining an objective, well-reputed researcher.
One of the reasons why most scientists only tell stories and write articles or books about their evidences for feeling and emotion in animals is that such 'stories' or 'anecdotes' fail to fit the scientific framework of collecting empirical data, analyzing it, and producing statistical evidence for or against their hypotheses. But, quoting an eloquent professor of mine, "there's no such thing as anecdotal data". This is further substantiated by an uncomfortably small niche of literature like this one. If more behaviourists or ecologists began publishing isolated instances of interesting behaviour, even if purely descriptive and non-inferential in nature, these so-called anecdotes could potentially collect over time to produce the statistical support needed to validate them within that very scientific realm. The collective support of past researchers who took the effort to inform the world about their chance anecdotes could encourage others to look closer for similar (or identical) behaviours, together building upon the subject and enriching it.
From Jane Goodall who speaks of emotion in chimpanzees to Rick McIntyre who studied wolves, multiple researchers and authors have passionately advocated for the recognition of emotion in the animal kingdom. A recent book, 'The Hidden Life of Trees', speaks of how trees, too, communicate and feel. The fact that animals perceive and respond to others around them and feel fundamentally physiological emotions like pleasure and grief, or feel the need to play and relax may be more readily accepted among the pet-owner community. I highly doubt that anyone who's known a dog, cat, pig, bird or any other (hopefully non-exotic) pet disagrees with the fact that animals can make bonds with other living beings and emote in ways that we can, at least partially, understand. Whining dogs or spitting cats are understood by their owners, behaviourists or not.
To truly understand an animal, we must delve into topics like consciousness, awareness, intelligence and emotion. None of these, however, have any standard definitions. Each of these could mean different things based on the fields we come from, and so, sentience - an amalgamation of all of these - remains undefined as well. We distance ourselves from these topics, trying to have an objective, outsider view of things, but this seems to me like losing valuable data. We are already on the inside. We share so much of the physiology that a plethora of other animals have, that we ought to be using our knowledge of how emotions manifest in our minds to better understand that of other beings.
Our evolutionary relationship with animals is sadly misinterpreted due to years of convincing ourselves that "humans" and "animals" are two completely separate categories. It's us versus them. Although we train animals to work for us, share diseases and living space, it's near impossible to believe or even imagine that we fall into the same bracket of beings. Our insecurities as a species are beginning to creep into our science and hinder it from progressing.
So sure, we may be one of the only species to feel sadness, happiness, love or pain in the poetic sense. But it's time we realized and acknowledged that these emotions do exist in other species that we've spent decades studying. Even if their grief is different from ours, it still exists. Truly comprehending the nature of these emotions is a huge task which will probably require the use of future advancements in science, but admitting that they exist is the first step towards it - one that we should have taken a long time ago.
Cynthia Moss, who spent over 50 years studying elephants in Amboseli National Park, had this to say:
"I'm interested in them as elephants. Comparing elephants to people - I don't find it helpful. I find it much more interesting trying to understand an animal as itself. How does a bird like a crow, say, with so small a brain, make the amazing decisions it makes? Comparing it to a three-year-old child - that doesn't interest me."
This is our biggest clue to overcome our ingrained fear of objectivity in studying animal cognition. We need make inferences about the animals we study without bringing to them our own emotional baggages and insecurities. Anthropocentrism, if not dealt with soon, could plague our research for good. The qualities and characteristics that we so staunchly believe are purely human, like friendship, compassion, sorrow, happiness did not suddenly come into existence with the evolutionary step into a world of Homo sapiens. These are deep-rooted in times that predate mankind. Our brain's origin is inseparable from that of other species'. Just like our mind.
