Consciousness of Animals

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As a scientist who’s studied animal emotions for more than 30 years, I consider myself very fortunate. Whenever I observe or work with animals, I get to contribute to science and develop social relationships at the same time, and to me, there’s no conflict between the two. While stories about animal emotions abound, there are many lines of scientific support (what I call “science sense”) about the nature of animal emotions that are rapidly accumulating from behavioral and neurobiological studies (from the emerging field called social neuroscience). Common sense and intuition also feed into and support science sense and the obvious conclusion is that mammals, at the very least, experience rich and deep emotional lives, feeling passions from pure and contagious joy during play, to deep grief and pain. Recent data also shows that birds and fish are sentient and experience pain and suffering. Prestigious scientific journals regularly publish essays on joy in rats, grief in elephants and empathy in mice.

The bottom line is that we know more about animal passions then we often admit, and we can no longer ignore the pain and suffering of other beings. Many people in higher education are faced with difficult questions about the use of animals in their classrooms and research laboratories and today we must accept that there are compelling reasons stemming from scientific research to limit and perhaps stop using animals in lieu of the numerous highly effective non-animal alternatives that are readily available.

In scientific research there are always surprises. Just when we think we’ve seen it all, new scientific data appear that force us to rethink what we know and to revise our stereotypes. For example, spindle cells, which were long thought to exist only in humans and other great apes, have recently been discovered in humpback whales, fin whales, killer whales and sperm whales in the same area of their brains as spindle cells in human brains. This brain region is linked with social organization, empathy and intuition about the feelings of others, as well as rapid gut reactions. Spindle cells are important in processing emotions. It’s likely that if we seek the presence of spindle cells in other animals we will find them. Speaking of whales, there’s also a story about a humpback whale who, after being untangled from a net in which she was caught, swam up to each of the rescuers and winked at them before swimming off. The rescuers all agreed that she was expressing gratitude.

Neuroscientific research has also shown, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), that elephants have a huge hippocampus, a brain structure in the limbic system that’s important in processing emotions. We now know that elephants suffer from psychological flashbacks and likely experience the equivalent of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Furthermore, all mammals (including humans) share neuroanatomical structures (for example, the amygdala and hippocampus) and neurochemical pathways in the limbic system that are tied to feelings

And who would have imagined that laboratory mice are actually empathic? But we now know they are. Research has shown that mice react more strongly to painful stimuli after they observe other mice in pain, and it turns out that they are fun loving as well...

Originally posted by ashamedamerican
The reason I kept my dog outside was because he was a 95% pure Siberian Husky and I was told by my veterinarian that it wasn't good to keep a dog that pure indoors.

This wasn't a fully domesticated dog, or I should probably say that his breed wasn't fully domesticated. I even spoke with other Husky owners and they all confirmed what the vet told me, that a dog like him shouldn't be kept indoors.