Can a bat or dolphin ever feel disgust at something they’ve echolocated? Would a platypus or shark squirm away from a disgusting electrolocated thing? If disgust is an evolutionary adaptation to keep us away from unhealthy things, and if we can experience it through all our senses, I just wonder if other animals can use their extra ones for the same thing…
I trained dolphins for many years and can say I never saw one that outwardly appeared disgusted, or happy, or sad for that matter, since they don’t have facial expressions. They do, though, have behavior that you can interpret as being happy, or sad or disgusted, I suppose, but I never heard a trainer use that word to describe their behavior.
I’ve seen dolphins spit out a fish we offered them that they didn’t want to eat, but I don’t really know why they didn’t want to eat it. Perhaps they were full, or maybe they were pissed off for some reason, or perhaps they detected the vitamin pill that was hidden inside.
Dolphins will frequently swim towards a fish that’s sinking towards the bottom of the tank, echo-locating directly at it, that they don’t end up eating. Were they disgusted? I have no idea how you could possible tell that.
You might consider a human’s ability to imagine what they’re reading to be a kind of sense, and it can provoke disgust, and it would be a “sense” unique to our species. So, why not for other species?
Maybe inedibly spoiled foods tend to echo differently. They certainly can feel different.
Great, now I’m picturing a gigantic 3D model of Goatse with bats roosting inside it.
I’ve seen dogs that have looked really … negative? … toward smells. They will wrinkle their noses and sneeze and back away.
I couldn’t tell you if this counts as an “extra” sense or not.
Yeah, if a dog doesn’t like it must be really bad. Not necessarily strong, but something that’s really ringing some kind of danger bell. With their incredible noses imagine all the things they’re smelling all the time and then once in a while they hit something that makes them turn away. I can tell you I’d never go check to see what it was.
I gather you’re not asking about whether sharks can be repelled via their electrosense (as seems likely), but something more complex than that?
Bats can apparently be repelled by tiger moths jamming their echolocation, but that is probably confusion, not disgust.
My dog hates the smell of citrus.
I’d first need a description of an animal expressing disgust with their regular senses. I’ve always thought of that as a more complex emotion, and one that you can only read on humans due to facial expressions.
At work one day we had a cold cut & hors-d’oeuvre platter. There were six dogs present. I made them all sit, then treated each with cheese. Then I made them all “down” and treated them with meat.
Then I made them all sit again and gave each a green olive. They all held onto their treat, afraid of another dog taking it away, but they all looked somewhat disgusted.
I don’t have an answer for the OP, but one of my dogs demonstrated the most beautiful and hysterically funny look of disgust once when I offered him some banana. Our female has a sweet tooth and loved bananas, so I assumed he would too. But when he smelled it he did this and actually retched:
My wife’s dog gets disgusted by the sound of a fart.
Like SHE is all high and mighty, she licks her own privates.
(The dog, my wife’s not that flexible.)