‘In July 1932, a rhesus monkey at the recently opened Chester Zoo was seen by visitors gnawing at a length of rope. After tying one end to a branch, he made the other into a noose. He put it over his head and jumped, dying instantly'(Barkham, 2014).
Was it an accident or deliberate? Does it look like he committed suicide? Why a monkey would chose self-destruction? Is the origin of suicide self-awareness or it is instinctual? Mainstream belief is humans are unique in that they are the only rational species who can cognitively think about situations and enforce them. According to this view, we can say all of the animal species act based on instinct. They are robots and auto machines and they do what they programed, this belief allows them to do what they want to them such as killing, using for entertainment activities, etc.
However, it seems, animal demonstrate that not only they feel emotional conditions, but also they consciously behave according to conditions. There are many ways to distinguish that an animal has feeling and self-awareness; as a stringent survey on animal’s brain is difficult we must look at evaluations. We can survey their behavior and emotions and also compare them to humans. For the first time, Charles Darwin used the comparative method between animal and human to study of the emotional expression which helps to survey and categorize emotions. The first step in this study should be to create a general agreement on the definition of emotion and self-awareness.
127 our experts are availableright now
We have not had measurable success in studying animal emotions due to the lack of census on what causes various emotions. One definition as Marc Bekoff states in his article ANIMAL EMOTIONS is “emotions be defined in terms of their adaptive and integrative functions rather than their general input and output characteristics. It is important to extend our research beyond the underlying physiological mechanisms that mask the richness of the emotional lives of many animals and learn more about how emotions serve them as they go about their daily activities’ (Bekoff, 2000). Emotion is categorized in primary and secondary emotion and can be defined as the complex of psychological behavior in the reaction of situations such as fear, embarrassment, love, joy, etc.
Dr. Bekoff defines primary emotion as “Primary emotions, considered to be basic inborn emotions, include generalized rapid, reflex-like (“automatic” or hard-wired) fear and fight-or-flight responses to stimuli that represent a danger'(Bekoff, 2000). This type of emotion is the instinct that is necessary and vital to find food or avoid danger for surviving. Primary feeling in creatures can be diagnosed by their face, eyes size, and shape, muscles tones, the tone of their sound even by ordinary people. In other words, every person who has a pet or observes an animal has seen how they react emotionally to certain events. For example, when kittens feel starvation they start making specific noises to prompt their mother to feed them, or when dogs are excited they start to rapidly move their tail, showing their willingness to interact with their peers or people, or whereas prey animals realized presentence of a hunter animal they feel fear and they immediately try to hide or run based on their instinct.
Dr. Bekoff also mentions that ‘Secondary emotions are those that are experienced or felt, evaluated, and reflected on. Secondary emotions involve higher brain centers in the cerebral cortex. Consciousness allows an individual to make connections between feelings and action and allows for variability and flexibility in behavior'(Bekoff, 2000). In other words, when the creature is involved in a mental experiment, they display consciousness because they can decide to do something according to their experience that gain from the previous time. Furthermore, they tend to perform actions base on the non-instinct subject such as love, join and grief like human.
One of the clear examples of this similarity is getting enjoyment out of play. Most animals prefer to play in the group but according to the situation, but when their potential partner rejects them they can change their plan to individual entertainment, for example cats can spend a lot of time playing with a ball. These days the internet is full of the pictures of dead animals that the other animals gather around the body. They do this because the animal can feel sadness when they face tough situations like a human when they lost some thing or someone. For instance, a child chimpanzee left his group and stop feeding until he died just because he observed the death of his mother (Bekoff, 2000). Falling in love is the other example that be observed a lot among the animal that has many similarities with the human. Some of them tend to a long-term relationship and the other one inverse also in some case falling in love slowly happened, it seems they try to know each other better.
Bernd Würsig described his observation on southern right whales in Argentina to show deep love between two whales, ‘While courting, Aphro (female) and Butch (male) continuously touched flippers, began a slow caressing motion with them, rolled towards each other, briefly locked both sets of flippers as in a hug, and then rolled back up, lying side-by-side. They then swam off, side-by-side, touching, surfacing, and diving in unison. Würsig followed Butch and Aphro for about an hour, during which they continued their tight travel. Würsig believes that Aphro and Butch became powerfully attracted to each other, and had at least a feeling of “after-glow” as they swam off'(Bekoff, 2000). There are many other examples such as embarrassment and empathy that illustrate human and animal have a lot of emotions in common that can prove animal do base on consciousness same as human just do it.
In2015, safina said on his speech, “Octopuses use tools, as well as do most apes and they recognize human faces. How do we celebrate the ape-like intelligence of this invertebrate?
Mostly boiled. Although some researchers discuss that the word ’emotion’ is too general and it is hard to prove animal self-awareness at the laboratory, At least there is agreement that it is real and remarkable. Obviously who observe them can recognize they have consciousness. Some humans pretend animals are not aware of their surrounding environment because it makes easier to do something with the animal rather than we know they are suffering or sad and depressed. They do base on instinct (primary emotions) like a human to survive, also they have action and reaction relevant with conditions and situations (secondary emotion); they fall in love, joy, grief as human do.
References
- Barkham, P. (2014, November 13). Do animals have emotions? Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/nov/13/if-only-they-could-talk-
- Bekoff, M. (2000). Animal Emotions: Exploring Passionate Natures. BioScience,50(10), 861. doi:10.1641/0006-3568(2000)050[0861:aeepn]2.0.co; 2
- Safina, C. (2015, October). What are animal thinking and feeling? Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/carl_safina_what_are_animals_thinking_and_feeling/transcrip t#t-681913
- Worrall, S. (2015, July 15). Yes, Animals Think And Feel. Here’s How We Know. Retrieved from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/07/150714-animal-dog-thinking- feelings-brain-science/
