My Fear Is Not, and Never Will Be, Your Fear: On Emotions and Feelings in Animals

Abstract

Do nonhuman animals (henceforth, animals) have emotions, and if so, are these similar to ours? This opinion piece aims to add to the recent debate about this question and provides a critical re-evaluation of what can be concluded about animal and human emotions. Emotions, and their cognitive interpretation, i.e., feelings, serve important survival functions. Emotions, we believe, can exist without feelings and are unconsciously influencing our behavior more than we think, and possibly more so than feelings do. Given that emotions are expressed in body and brain, they can be inferred from these measures. We view feelings primarily as private states, which may be similar across closely related species but remain mostly inaccessible to science. Still, combining data acquired through behavioral observation with data obtained from noninvasive techniques (e.g., eyetracking, thermography, hormonal samples) and from cognitive tasks (e.g., decision-making paradigms, cognitive bias, attentional bias) provides new information about the inner states of animals, and possibly about their feelings as well. Given that many other species show behavioral, neurophysiological, hormonal, and cognitive responses to valenced stimuli equivalent to human responses, it seems logical to speak of animal emotions and sometimes even of animal feelings. At the very least, the contemporary multi-method approach allows us to get closer than ever before. We conclude with recommendations on how the field should move forward.

Bridging the Gap: Human Emotions and Animal Emotions

“…We end by briefly considering whether emotional states that we measure in animals are consciously felt. Whilst feelings remain inaccessible to direct scientific investigation, we agree with recent papers by de Waal and Andrews (2022) and Kret et al (2022) that it is unreasonable to assume that only humans consciously experience emotions, and that indirect evidence is accumulating for sentience in a growing range of species. We discuss this in the last section of the paper.…”

Going Deeper than Tracking: a Survey of Computer-Vision Based Recognition of Animal Pain and Affective States

“…The pressing need for these assessments, be it pain, stress or positive emotions in animal health and welfare evaluations, has therefore made researchers resort to addressing measurements of physiological, behavioral, and cognitive components of affective states, which can be measured objectively, and even in many cases automatically [7,54]. This involves physiological (such as heart rate, hormone levels, body temperature) and behavioral parameters (vocalisations, facial expressions, body postures).…”

“…There is no common agreement on what constitutes animal emotions (see [6,7] for comprehensive reviews). However, emotions are often described as internal states which are expressed in physiological, cognitive and behavioral changes [8].…”

Going Deeper than Tracking: A Survey of Computer-Vision Based Recognition of Animal Pain and Emotions

“…The assessment of pain and emotions in mammals is much less explored than in the human domain, due to the difficulties regarding ground truth and subsequent lack of large databases mentioned above. The pressing need for these assessments in animal health and welfare evaluations, has therefore made researchers resort to addressing measurements of physiological, behavioral, and cognitive components of affective states, which can be measured objectively, and even in many cases automatically (Paul et al, 2005;Kret et al, 2022). This involves physiological (such as heart rate, hormone levels, body temperature) and behavioral parameters (vocalisations, facial expressions, body postures).…”

“…There is no common agreement on what constitutes animal emotions (see Paul & Mendl, 2018, Kret et al, 2022 for comprehensive reviews). However, emotions are often described as internal states which are expressed in physiological, cognitive and behavioral changes (Anderson & Adolphs, 2014).…”