Do Animals Have Emotions?
Understanding animals’ emotions can be difficult but there have been several studies that have examined heart rates which have shown clear indicators of their emotional world.
And when we learn how animals perceive emotions we gain insights into new approaches to animal welfare. Analysing the heart rate of certain species is especially helpful when dealing with animals that do not exhibit behavioural responses to express their emotions.
There were some interesting findings in the study done by Claudia Wascher https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2020.0479
The heart rate of animals increases rapidly when they have aggressive encounters such as fights and decreases during friendly interactions such as grooming.
The heart rate of greylag geese increases when they are interacting with a more dominant opponent, showing that geese are more emotionally aroused during a confrontation they’re more likely to lose. Research also showed that their heart rate increased more when their partner or a family member was involved in aggressive encounters, compared to unrelated individuals.
Chimpanzees exhibit varying heart rates when presented with images of aggressive, friendly, or unfamiliar chimps, indicating their ability to distinguish and respond to different emotional expressions.
A number of species such as goats, horses, cattle and European starlings, showed increased heart rate when engaging in a learning task, revealing that they are emotionally aroused by the task.
American black bears don’t behave differently when drones are flying above them, but their heart rate increases showing that the bears are disturbed, even if they don’t physically show it.
There were some more fascinating findings about dogs and cats. Claudia’s review showed that the heart rate in dogs increases when their owner’s heart rate increases and this effect was stronger the longer the human had the dog. And by observing a cat’s heart rate we could understand which types of strokes they’re most and least fond of.
