CUriosity: Do animals have emotions?
In CUriosity, experts across the CU Boulder campus answer pressing questions about humans, our planet and the universe beyond.
This week, Marc Bekoff, professor emeritus in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at CU Boulder, answers: “Do animals have emotions?”
Pet owners tend to see their animals’ feelings clearly. Dogs wagging their tails when the owners get home? Happiness. Crouching down after being caught raiding the trash? Embarrassment. Barking, and jumping up and down when they see their friends? Excitement.
But what about less cuddly creatures? Do crustaceans and birds have emotions, too?
“Of course they do,” Bekoff said “There's solid science showing very clearly that a wide diversity of animals have emotions, from mammals to all the vertebrates and invertebrates.”
Bekoff has spent decades observing animals from coyotes in the Rocky Mountains to Adélie penguins in Antarctica. He has written multiple books about animal sentience including “The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy—and Why They Matter.”
He said emotions play an important role in helping animals make decisions about how to respond to social situations, such as whether to run from a potential danger or to approach a mate. For group-living animals like coyotes and wolves, having emotions is fundamental to forming packs.
Evidence has shown that mammals—including humans—emit similar brain chemicals during emotional situations. For example, birds secrete dopamine, a chemical that makes humans feel good, when they sing songs to attract a potential mate.
But even invertebrates like insects and crustaceans could experience emotions, according to a growing body of . While scientists can't definitively say lobsters experience happiness the same way as humans do, they certainly avoid painful situations.
Marc Bekoff looking for dingoes in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, Australia. (Credit: Brad Purcell)
“There is a biodiversity of emotions,” Bekoff said. He explained that the feeling of joy varies even between different people, but that doesn’t mean animals like lobsters or ants don’t experience happiness. “It may simply look different than in humans.”
Recognizing all animals have emotions can help people develop more empathy toward wildlife and support wildlife conservation efforts, he added.
In a published earlier this year, Bekoff and his collaborators proposed that treating individual animals as creatures with emotions and personalities, in addition to understanding the species as a whole, could help preserve biodiversity.
For example, people might be more willing to use loud sounds or strong scents to scare away predators they encounter rather than resort to killing.
Bekoff said Colorado could apply these approaches to help manage its wildlife, including grey wolves, which were reintroduced in the state in December following a voter-approved initiative. For social animals like wolves, if the leader dies, it can lead to the dissolution of the entire pack, he said.
“Wolves have very tight bonds with their pack members,” Bekoff said. “Pups have very tight bonds with their mom. Killing any of these individuals will not support a sustainable population.”
In the end, Bekoff says humans shouldn’t be so quick to brush off other animals.
“It's really easy to write off an ant or a lobster or a crayfish, but there's no reason to. My take as a scientist is to keep the door open until we are sure that it is not true.”