Our pets experience their own set of emotions

When I picked up a toy and shook it, my dog Raven ran around the room in a whirlwind of joyful delight.

However, when Raven crashed into the cat, Henry’s displeasure, with hissing and lashing tail, was plain to see.

When you think about it, we have no problems recognizing animals’ emotions or that many of their emotions are similar to ours. Why then do some people think animals have no feelings or thoughts?

I was reminded of this puzzling question when my colleague Dr. Marty Becker was quoted in a magazine article saying that our dogs love us and received some “interesting” responses from readers, taking him to task for suggesting that dogs were anything more than mindless brutes, functioning on instinct alone, lacking free will, thoughts or emotions.

Any science-minded person would know better, one of the readers concluded.

The history of denying that animals have emotions and thoughts is a long one.

In the 16th century, a scientist named Rene Descartes was trying to get approval from the Catholic Church for the study of biology (not wanting his fellow biologists to suffer the same fate of excommunication as the astronomers of the day). The biologists would study the body, he promised, leaving the mind in the providence of the church, thus creating the artificial mind-body split that still plagues Western medicine today.

He also concluded that animals were mindless robots simply responding to stimuli with no capacity to feel pain.

In the early 20th century, psychologist J.B. Watson said that to study behavior, one could only look at observable effects. What went on in the brain was not observable and thus was considered not important.

Humans can report their thoughts, but since complex brain processes in animals were not observable at the time, it was mistakenly concluded they didn’t occur.

And so, the 16th-century idea persisted that the mind and body are separate and animals have no feelings. And based on a psychologist’s nearly 100-year-old theory, the theory continued that animals have no complex mental abilities.

Recent scientific studies have shown these to be false, but unfortunately long-held beliefs, even bad ones shown to be untrue, die hard.

Of course, any observant pet owner would tell you that these theories were hogwash. Actually, considering animals to be unthinking, unfeeling brutes only shows the lack of our observation and critical thinking skills rather than the lack of these traits in animals.

Though we recognize that animals have feelings and thoughts, it is important to note they don’t always have our feelings and our thoughts. Just like we have different physical abilities – we humans cannot smell scents like a dog or see in low light like a cat – it would be incorrect to assume animals have the same feelings in a particular circumstance as we would have.

Placing human motives onto animals is fraught with potential misunderstanding.

For example, people sometimes conclude that a cat is spraying urine out of “spite” or “revenge,” when actually this behavior has been shown to be an anxiety-related behavior that occurs when a cat is stressed about personal security.

Likewise, dogs are often judged to be “guilty” when they cower when you stand over them chastising them for soiling the carpet. But this is not guilt; this is an expression of fear and submission in reaction to your anger.

Your dog likely doesn’t even connect your anger with its act of natural voiding hours ago. In dog language, your dog is saying: “Please don’t hurt me.”

So while it is an expression of respect to recognize that animals do have emotions and thoughts, it is also an important part of that respect to realize that they may be similar, but not always the same, as ours.

We are coming to learn that the “mind-body” split is a myth. Health and disease affect mental processes, which in turn affect health and disease.

Chronic unresolved anxiety, for example, can harm your pet’s physical health. Likewise, health problems can dramatically affect an animals’ behavior.

Look into their eyes, and you will see what others, blinded by their beliefs, have missed: that animals have emotions as real and significant as our own.

Look into their eyes, and trust the evidence of your sight, and you will see the truth in their shining depths.