Animals and Emotions

Human beings are animals. We're apes. Emotion first evolved to help us survive. When we feel love towards other members of the group, we're more likely to go out of our way to make sure they live, and likewise, they are more likely to go out of their way to make sure you live. Emotion became more complex (and arguably unstable) as our brain size increased and we gained intelligence. It has the benefit of getting our brains results very quickly, but at a high margin of error.



I've always thought the way animals interact with each other is the most interesting thing in the fucking world. We're essentially looking into our own past. The coolest thing is that there is not a solid line separating animals "with" emotion and animals "without" it. It's an extremely blurry line. Some animals, such as elephants or whales, are capable of shockingly advanced interactive societies, and other animals like ants are nothing but mindless drones. Very often, our desire for animals to have emotions gets in the way of what's actually going on. Dogs are a great example, owners love projecting emotions onto them when there isn't anything there. When a dog "looks guilty" or "knows what he did," he's actually only being submissive because he perceives the alpha as asserting his dominance. He doesn't have a clue what you're angry about because he's a fucking dog and dogs can't talk to humans. That's not to say dogs don't experience emotion, they can actually be quite bipolar (depression has even been observed). But it's important to know the difference between what only human beings are capable of experiencing, and what is natural animal behavior. This can be very difficult to do, because we still don't know everything about what animals are capable of.

Radiolab spent an entire show interviewing biologists about this very subject, it's really good and everybody should listen to it.