Animals DO show emotions

[biggiy05]

I live in a zoo practically. Four dogs over the years, two still living, four cats, one of which is my terrorist, five leopard geckos, two were rescues, one of them is still alive and the other died. Another one died from an unknown illness. Three rats that are brothers and 20 some odd horses.

My mom called me and told me what had happened. I came home from class last night, peeked in the box that he was in and sure enough he was gone. Jak Jak and Stewie tried to bury him in the bottom of the cage with the clean bedding and laid around and on him all day and night. She took him out last night and they huddled together where he was.

They are still mourning today but it just goes to show that animals do show emotions, especially when another animal dies they are close to. They know when something is wrong with you, they know when something isn't right with another animal and they can become depressed from the loss of a friend. In this case it was a brother. I raised all three since they were just shy of a month.


Oh and Glitch don't say a word to your parents about the rats or the shit will hit the fan on my end.

[The_Amaster]

*shrugs* Yeah, I've always believed this.
I mean, just because humans are more intelligent, and one of the few sentients, that doesn't mean that animals don't have emotions.

Emotions are too...primal to have evolved only in humans. They'd have to be older.

[DarkDragoonX]

I've owned cats all my life, and anybody who tried to tell me they have no emotions would quickly be filed under the "raging moron" category. I've seen my cats get jealous, I've seen them go out of their way to be kind... some animals may be more or less empathic than others (I'm reasonably certain that fish don't have much of a thought process beyond "swim, swim, eat"), but to state that all animals are emotionless instinct machines is absurd.

[Russ]

I've never had a pet, but I know that animals do show emotions. That's what makes pets so great.

[Rijuhn]

My mom has told me on occassion that she used to have two cats when she was a child. She told me how when one of them died the other cat would sit under the tree which the dead cat was buried and would wait for it to return. For years apparently. It was sad when my mom told me that.

[rock_nog]

Last fall, when I went back home because I'd been away so long, my family had adopted two new cats. One of them was sweet, but kind of shy. She didn't like people. But for whatever reason, she grew quite fond of me. It got to the point that every night at like 2:00 AM she would come into my room wanting to play (yeah, I could just keep the door closed, but if I did, she'd just stand outside the door and meow until I opened it). If I was asleep, as most normal people are at 2:00 AM, she'd bite my face until I agreed to play with her. It was annoying, and I lost a lot of sleep over it, but it was oddly endearing.

I felt bad when I decided to move back to St. Paul, but what are you supposed to tell a cat? Apparently, ever since I left, she's just become extremely bitter and pretty much just hates the whole family now. Occasionally she'll go back to my room (now my sister's room), see that I'm not there, and just sulk out again. It's enough to make me feel bad about leaving, and that I couldn't take her with me.

[phattonez]

Emotions do not make animals intelligent, but they certainly have them. Anyone who's ever seen the whole process of getting food to your plate would know this (I do this at least once a year when we cook a whole pig, usually for Christmas Eve).

[moocow]

When we had our 19 year old collie/shepherd mix put to sleep last November... our 2 year old golden retriever mourned. She moped around the house, wouldn't eat, slept with Tasha's blanket... We finally got her to eat after a couple of days, but it took at LEAST two weeks to get her back to normal. She wouldn't play or anything. We had a HELL of a time getting her in the car one night... I'm sure she was thinkin, "Fuck this... Tasha got in that car and never came back" lol

[bigjoe]

Emotions do not make animals intelligent, but they certainly have them.

That may be true, but it's usually the intelligent ones that display them. They are smart enough to know something isn't right. A couple of our outside cats had to be put down because they were really sick and one had already passed away from it. :( The ones that were healthy immediately became loud and clingy. The orange male cat would wander the yard meowing loudly. The gray one seemed sad and demanded more affection than usual.

[Breaker]

When we had our 19 year old collie/shepherd mix put to sleep last November... our 2 year old golden retriever mourned. She moped around the house, wouldn't eat, slept with Tasha's blanket... We finally got her to eat after a couple of days, but it took at LEAST two weeks to get her back to normal. She wouldn't play or anything. We had a HELL of a time getting her in the car one night... I'm sure she was thinkin, "Fuck this... Tasha got in that car and never came back" lol

That's incredibly sad. :(

[ShadowTiger]

I'm on a Wii so I can't quite link it, but put in "Lion Hug" into YouTube's search bar, and it's the second link. Pretty awesome.

I personally have never had any pets aside from fish, (Sometimes they do remember you, really. Each one has their own personality, which can change slightly over time.) but my mom had about three dogs when she was a child. One of them, a Golden Retriever named Lady, ... well, they named her quite appropriately. From what I hear, she was the closest thing to a civilized human woman she's seen in an animal. She wouldn't do her business in public, would eat very neatly, sat in chairs, wouldn't bark when others were speaking, would watch TV with the family ... man. I need to get a dog like that.

[biggiy05]

Emotions do not make animals intelligent, but they certainly have them. Anyone who's ever seen the whole process of getting food to your plate would know this (I do this at least once a year when we cook a whole pig, usually for Christmas Eve).

I'm not talking about animals being intelligent or not. If you really want to get into that debate start a new thread and I'll prove you wrong every time.

[phattonez]

Prove me wrong about what? Who cares? They're animals. Besides, I thought that we've already had the argument on this board.

[moocow]

That's incredibly sad. :(

It was :(

[ZTC]

It's heartwrenching to lose somwonw close to you. I know it's hard trying to get over the loss of a pet, especially when they've been closer that some people are to ya. sigh
I'm reminded everyday that animals show emotion, whether knowing that the dogs are happy to see me when I get home from work, or seeing one my my cats cry when he misses me. Hell, two of the cats smile when they get attention. :kitty: