From Salthaven Wildlife Rehab Center
What if animals feel more than we ever realized?
Animals feel emotions just like we do-joy, fear, love, grief, and everything in between. From a dog’s wagging tail to a grieving Orca, the emotional intelligence of animals is undeniable. At Salthaven, we see firsthand how wildlife express their feelings and how respecting those emotions strengthens our bond with them.
Want to learn more about how animals experience emotions and why it matters? Read our latest blog post!
There’s been a spate of “science indicates bugs (or fish) may have feelings” articles lately and I’m not sure why.
Firstly, I wasn’t aware people didn’t know this. Secondly, somehow science is going to reveal the obvious to us.
Thirdly, Screechers rule.
I know that some animals can feel, but not to which degree and if all of them can. Bugs and fish being certified to have feelings on par with or even more… extreme? in-depth? not sure what word to use—would be news to me.
This community is probably weighted towards people with high empathy for non-human creatures, people who might be more likely to seek out information about the emotional capabilities of such creatures. This is not a bad thing, but it would explain how people do not seem to know what you seem to deem obvious.
Back in Ye Olden Tymes, I took a course in which we were shown a film about communications in animals. In the film, an orca mother was separated from her calf and swam around bonking her head on the walls of the tank.
I shit thee not, the film asked the question, “what could the animal be doing?” And no, gentle reader, it was not asked ironically. Afterwards the professor professed that animals do not communicate as we do, and there are good reasons to believe they do not have the emotions we do.
Reader, I say unto y’all, that be some bullshit. But apparently the group mind is still not up to speed such that science showing fish have preferences is considered headline-making.
Exactly. We can tell our pets miss us when we go away for a bit, but to what degree? What do they understand about us coming and going? They can like and dislike things, but can they love or hate something?
And after thinking about this a bit more, we’ll get impressed with cetaceans and primates fairly universally, attributing them basic levels of early human intelligence. A smaller group will recognize things like pigs, octopuses, or corvids being pretty darn smart.
Learning more about how their minds work will hopefully improve our relationships with these animals in the future, and anything we learn is a good thing.
We can’t even get everyone to empathize with their fellow humans, let alone to see fish as something worth their respect. It also means we start to think about the cost of our own existence to other creatures, or how we treat the ones we encounter or don’t bother to notice.
Not a likely situation maybe for regulars here, but I’ve definitely met people that only see animals inconsequentially.
But even for those of us with high regard for animals, it’s good to see confirmation of what we believe. I think, perhaps not at this current moment, but in the future, this will lead to better treatment of animals and our planet as a whole. It needs to be a “duh” topic for everyone before we will see concrete action taken from these studies.
And Screechies are darn fine birds!
Seconded on “confirmation of what we believe”—science has proved some folk wisdom credible, but some of it nonsense. That is why it is good to test “common knowledge”.
It does help with the stubborn “citation needed” people!
