With that def, I would maintain dogs do not experience it.
I might go even further, and suspect dogs have a sense of what is acceptable behavior, and are aware of when they transgress it. But is that shame, guilt, fear of punishment, regret …? I think it is something simpler, likely combining aspects of all of the above and more. But whatever is going on in the dog’s mind, it is uniquely doglike, and to characterize it in terms of human emotions is - at best - a distortion of some degree.
If cats feel shame, why do they throw up on the rug right in front of me, even though the entire house has hardwood floors? Malicious, shamless little shits.
The reverse is also true: to charactrize the reactions of a dog as unique to the species may be to overstate how special humans are. The issue to my mind is this: are the emotions of dogs and like animals different in kind to what humans experience, so that we are species incapable of actual communication of emotions (and what we take for communication is merely us fooling ourselves a la “Clever Hans” the counting horse), or are their emotions merely different in a matter of degree - less developed, less sophisticated, less concious certainly, but still recognizable?
To my mind at least the answer is not clear-cut. Certainly I believe that animals experience emotions - or, at least, there is no reason to believe that their displays of fear, rage, and pleasure don’t actually represent external displays of internal emotional states. The exact content of these emotions are of course not available to us, but again to my mind the fact that they are recognizable to humans indicates that there is a certain, as it were, family resemblence between us an animals.
Though things like “shame” are of course more complex than “fear”.
We are definitely close if not exactly on the same page. I wonder how long of a “short-list” of “primal” emotions we might agree to attribute to dogs? Fear, rage, and pleasure are a good start. And maybe some form of desire?
One other aspect is whether or not we humans are leden with so much cultural “baggage” that we are limited in our ability to perceive such “basic” emotions.
There may be a time element as well. Our bodies may experience an instantaneous “fight or flight” reaction, but just about as soon as we become intellectually aware of it, we start to analyze it in ways that are (I submit) uniquely human.
I certainly do not want to suggest that dogs (or cats - tho I know less about them) are automatons. But what they may or may not think or feel is way more complicated than can be summed up in a simple question of whether they experience “guilt.” In order to respond equally briefly, my default response tends towards “no.”
My dog will happily and publicly lick her own anus (or anyone else’s, given the opportunity). She is smart enough to know to simulate remorse when I catch on the bed (where she’s not permitted), but cross-species shame is alien to her.
I asked this question to our cat Louie, who does the same thing.
He didn’t say anything. He’s a cat.
But I think the answer is something to the effect of “I throw up wherever I happen to be, which is usually the carpet because it’s more comfortable to me. And I have you, the human, trained to clean up after me. Sucker.”
Tis why I threw the ingrate from my car window in the dead of a Minnesota January. No, no, I make ha-ha. I have since parted ways with that cat, along with the boyfriend who owned it. I have no idea if the cat still refuses to throw up on the hardwood or not. Maybe the damned thing is nicer now that I’m gone.
Anecdotally (long-time, multi-species pet owner) I say yes, they do. But of course, since we don’t really know what they’re thinking (and they can’t tell us) it would be hard to say definitively.
I get a puppy or maybe a cat. Everytime they need to go, they get put outside to do their business. They are generally well behaved and rarely if ever get scolding for anything. They have never had an accident in the house. They have learned outside is where you go. They grow up this way.
Then one day I get home a bit late. I walk in the door. The pet behaves rather oddly from the moment I get home. I do not yet know that the pet couldn’t wait any longer and has done their business in the back bedroom.
Would that not be something along the lines of an emotional guilt/shame response?
While I have not personally observed exactly such a scenario, I have seen similiar such things and heard similiar stories from others.
When we were kids, we inherited a poodle, we would take it out to play in the greenbelt with us every day. As it’s hair grew longer it would pick up burrs and stuff and eventually my Mom would notice and take the thing off to the groomer.
There was only one poodle cut, in those days, it was very puffy on the head and ankles, end of the tail, short everywhere else. It was so, well, gay! It even came back with black velvet bows on it’s ears and with blinding white fur. Poor creature.
It was clearly humiliated by this haircut, even as children we could see that. It would go and hide, not want to be seen. It appeared to be very ashamed. Us too, we didn’t want to be seen with the thing when it was freshly cut.
(We soon learned to take it to the basement, after playing, and do a little creative snipping out, of burrs and bits. Thereby delaying the inevitable horrid hair cut. It looked a little scruffy but not embarrassingly gay!)
I also sat in someone’s backyard watching a family of raccoons climbing through some branches and onto a shed. It was fun. We were just commenting on how agile they were when one slipped and fell, thump, onto the patio before us. We were as surprised as it was! We all agreed it looked distinctly ashamed in those few moments before it got it’s bearings and tore off.
Maybe he’s sick, and that’s why he’s behaving oddly. Maybe you are stressed by work, and that’s why he’s behaving oddly. Maybe he hears something that sounds weird to him, and that’s why he’s behaving oddly.
There are plenty of explanations for canine behavior that do not require us to extrapolate human behavior onto canine psychology. I recommend The Culture Clash to anyone interested in a fascinating look into Why Dogs Do What They Do.
And maybe he is feeling some primitive form of shame/guilt?
Alternate explanations are just that. Alternate explanations.
If we as humans stuggle to even define what constitutes emotions and intelligence in ourselves we sure as heck can’t definitely claim certain animals don’t have it, cause we can’t even pin down what “it” is. Its not like taking an xray, having a look, and declaring it is or isnt there.
I do not know if it was an emotion, shame or not, but we had a dog that we took in because someone had dumped him along the road; one day I was opening the coop where we kept mallard ducks,one flew out the door and the dog grabbed it and ran through the corn field, I hollered at him, but he just kept going. Later in the day he came back home with his head down and his tail between his legs like he figured, well, I have no where else to go so I better go home and face the music.
In my mind that’s the default position. We *are *different. And we can’t communicate very well with each other, at least not on a very in depth level. So an assumption that we feel the same emotions is the assertion that needs to be supported.
Here’s a real life example of dogs being substantially different. I adopted my dog when she was about two years old. She was living in a good situation; it’s just that her owner was a breeder who was no longer going to use her for that purpose. However, it wasn’t a puppy mill. Far from it. She had free run of a 60 acre horse farm, and lived inside the house with a couple of other dogs and a human family. Most folks would say she loved it there, and loved her human family.
Then one day this guy comes along, puts her in a crate, drives her a hundred miles away from the only home she’s ever known and suddenly she’s dealing with a whole new reality. It took her about a week to adjust. Now she “loves” me.
Would that be true of any human who loves you, even in the slightest?
My late and fondly remembered Garfield would sometimes lie on his back and get ‘relaxed’ to the point where his weenie would project.
Once I looked at him and said “Garfield! What have you got there?”
Immediately he looked mortified and started to lick himself roughly, which caused the offending appendage to go back into hiding. He then rolled over, sat on his brisket, tucked all his feet under him and refused to look at me.
I’m not sure if it was shame or if he thought I had exhibited bad manners by noticing. Call it what you will.
