I’m a Scientist is like school science lessons meet the X Factor! School students choose which scientist gets a prize of $1000 to communicate their work.
Scientists and students talk on this website. They both break down barriers, have fun and learn. But only the students get to vote.
This zone is the Disease Zone. It has scientists studying the causes and processes of illness . Who gets the prize? YOU decide!
Yes, I think animals certainly have feelings. There are many stories I heard of such but I will tell you a story of cat’s revenge which my niece told me. Oneday, her friend’s mother mistreated her cat. Next day, that cat brought a dead mouse and placed it on top of the dinning table where foods were ready to be served. Don’t you think that proves cat has feelings?
Next question about telepathical communication between man and animal; I am tempted to say “Yes, in special occasion maybe, but not generally”. Once in Korean TV, an animal communicator named Heidi Wright was introduced. However I don’t have solid example or story to relate to this telepathy between human and animal. I should say I do not know for sure.
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Can animals speak to us telepathically? Well, there’s no evidence of this (and it has been studied, believe it or not). So for now, I have to say ‘no’, unless someone finds evidence of this in the future. There’s no reason to expect that they could, though. When we investigate things like this in science, one of the questions that we ask is ‘is there a plausible way for this to happen’? Let’s assume for a minute that telepathy was useful to, say, your pet cat. Even if this made sense – what use is telepathy to your cat? You already do everything it wants! – we know a lot about animal brains, and there’s no bit of their brain that looks like a ‘telepathy neuron’. We’re always open to new evidence, of course, because that’s part of what being a scientist is about, but until then I feel comfortable saying that animals don’t have telepathy.
Whether they have feelings, though, is a more more complicated question and the answer isn’t anywhere near as clear-cut. Whether animals have emotions like fear, anger, joy, etc. is hard to answer because we don’t know quite what these emotions would look like in animals, and so we don’t always know how to look for them. I’m going to answer your question in broad terms, but I need you to know that the answer here is glossing over a *lot* of controversy, and if you ask other biologists you’re likely to get answers that differ from mine.
My answer, then: the best evidence for emotion in animals, in my opinion, comes from primates and dolphins. The famous anthropologist Jane Goodall, who has spent her life studying primates (mostly chimpanzees) in Africa, has said that she has observed chimpanzees mourning their dead and showing grief, which a group in England also found a couple of years ago in their captive chimps. Chimps and bonobos also do things like play and (it seems) laugh, which suggests happiness, as well as showing anger and frustration. Dolphins also seem to do these things; there is evidence of them playing, though I don’t know what a dolphin laugh would look like, and some have claimed that they mourn their dead too.
Evidence outside of the primates and dolphins is scarcer, though. I suspect that some of the more complex mammals like cats and dogs experience emotion, but the evidence of this is sketchy. Birds have also been reported to experience emotion, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the more complex birds like parrots showed signs of this. Horses, cows, sheep? Maybe. The big cats, like lions? Possibly. Elephants? Probably; they’re very smart, and they show signs of society, but I can’t find much written about their emotion (I’m not an expert on this by any means, though).
This is a really big topic, and I can’t do justice to it here without writing a *lot*. If you want things to read, let me know and I’ll see if I can find you something appropriate to read.
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Yes, I know animals have feelings! I have had many pets in my life (cats, dogs, horses) and they all show feelings. They can be annoyed with me (when I want to ride my horse but the horse doesn’t want to), happy to see me (my dog and cats) etc.
I don’t think they can speak to us telepathically, because they don’t speak our language. But we can learn to understand their language and I know animals learn to understand our language (just ask a dog if he wants to go for a walk, he’ll understand!)
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I can’t say I’ve ever considered it, but after doing a bit of research I don’t think that animals can communicate telepathically, until someone can prove otherwise (and for this I am eternally thankful, my dog would never leave me alone!).
As for animals having emotions, this is a little trickier. I am inclined to say yes, purely based on my own experiences with pets (that same dog), and some reading I have done in the past on the work of Jane Goodall and her study of primates. It is a controversial issue, especially among biologists but I think there is definitely something to it. If you are interested a good start is this wiki page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion_in_animals which is a very broad overview
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So far, there hasn’t been any evidence of animals speaking to humans telepathically. Could you imagine it if they did? Think about a dog begging for food or to throw a tennis ball, or a cat circling your legs demanding attention. Imagine that being beamed directly into your head, Yikes! We can communicate with animals though, through learning signals from each other. If you have a dog, they’ve probably already taught you that pawing at the door means they want to go out!
Whether or not animals have feelings is a more complicated question, and one that lots of people disagree on. The idea that animals have human emotions is called anthropomorphism. Some emotions it is easy to see: animals that know or feel that they are in danger might become skittish or defensive (think of dogs that have been hit a lot by their owners). Others might show signs we would associate with anger, like cats whipping their tail, or dogs growling when you try to take away a bone. Elephants, dolphins and primates are thought to grieve, play, and other things we associate with emotions seen in humans. Gee, that telepathy would come in handy to research that!
I treat animals as if they had the same feelings and emotions as humans, because we simply can’t know for sure, and it’s more fun to think my canine best friend really does love me as much as I love him!
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