Wednesday 22 November 2017

Animals do have emotions

and they do feel pain.
Apparently there was a vote in the UK parliament recently which denied these facts.
A couple of days ago I observed something very interesting. I was out with the rest of the family and we went to a venue which has, among other things, two alpacas on the property. They were just sitting there when we arrived. They looked at us and at the other visitors from behind the fence of their enclosure. They were I suppose "interested". At very least they were "aware". 
Some time later a small child, playing around as small children do, got herself caught on a low tree branch and couldn't get free.  There was some almost immediate and panicky crying.
The two alpacas were up in an instant. They rushed to the fence and stood there watching until an adult came along and freed the child. Then they went and sat down again in their former positions but they watched the child. Wherever she went their heads turned  - until she was finally led off for lunch.
I was reminded of another interesting event in this house. When two of my nephews were aged around perhaps not quite four and not quite two a former neighbour came in. He loathed cats. My nephews were playing on the floor and the cats had been nowhere in sight. On the appearance of the neighbour suddenly there were two cats between him and my nephews. He went to crouch down and talk to the older boy. No way! The fur of both cats was up. They hissed and crouched ready to spring at him. 
He had the sense to back off. 
We didn't think too much of it at the time. It was just a freak coincidence - or so we thought. But, the behaviour persisted. That neighbour could not get anywhere near the two small boys if the cats were around - and they seemed to know when he was there. 
When the Senior Cat was recovering from surgery the same cats spent hours apparently just asleep in the same room. It wasn't somewhere they normally slept. When he recovered they went back to their usual spots. 
There are thousands upon thousands of similar incidents which have been well documented.  All of them suggest some sort of thought processes and "awareness" rather than simply "being".
I have no idea what those alpacas or the cats were "thinking" - and I suspect their thoughts and memories are in images rather than words but I believe quite strongly that to suggest other animals cannot feel pain or a range of emotions is absolutely mistaken on our part.

2 comments:

Adelaide Dupont said...

Alpacas do know these things.

They have gentle and nurturing natures.

And yes, this was beyond instinct.

There's a difference between animals being sentinent and this being recognised in law so that they can have the rights accorded to personhood/whatever is appropriate for their species and relationship to humans.

I saw the Guardian live feed that day...

Anonymous said...

Of course animals "know" things and feel pain. It isn't just "instinct" or they wouldn't survive! Bob C-S