So “love” is some higher emotion that only big brains can grasp?
Dogs were suited to being human companions because they are pack animals. Nature has programmed certain traits into pack animals that are useful. Whatever combination of traits adds up to a “feeling” of love is almost certainly present in dogs as well as humans. It makes sense, it has a survival advantage and would be selected for.
Does a dog interpret those feelings like a human does? Almost certainly not. To the animal it just “is”. Not a thing to be questioned or pondered as we might.
Other “feelings” we see dogs express are certainly there and unmistakable. I am not anthropomorphizing when I see my dog express joy (as an example). It is unmistakable and I am not misinterpreting anything. My dog thoroughly enjoys some things, you can’t miss it, can’t miss her eagerness, her joy is every bit as real as a human feeling joy.
I’ve seen video of an Elephant upset over the death of its baby. I’ve seen elephants stroking the bones of long dead elephants. Pretty odd behavior unless something a bit more is going on in their heads.
Our dog thinks that I’m the pack leader. When he was younger he used to like to howl, but he’d only begin after I did. He made his wishes very clear though. But he loves my wife far more than he loves me. When she leave the house, he lies by the door until she comes back, and in the morning when I get up first he lies by the kitchen door.
Love isn’t intellectual, as anyone falling in love with his or her new baby knows.
Our Golden is a slut - she snuggles up to practically anybody almost immediately. But there are a few people she loves more, and squeaks when she sees them. So there are even levels of love in some dogs.
Yes. Love sprang into existence in all its glory in humans – in 1946 I believe. It did not pass into us from previous species – uniquely, among all the other traits we have, which we did inherit from ancestor species.
Sure, animals exactly replicate the appearance and behavior of love, but that’s like when poor people or immigrants act like they feel human emotions – it’s just anthropomorphizing to mistake that for the real love only we special ones feel.
What’s the difference, really? I’m quite convinced my puppy know what to do to elicit scratches and cookies from me, the devilish bitch, but it only makes me love her more.
Not to get too flaky, but if dogs can’t truly love humans back, they can at the very least be credited with teaching some humans how to love at all, reciprocal or not.
There is no doubt in my mind that my eldest dog loves me. However, I certainly don’t think that all dogs love their owners or that it is a given that if treated right they will. I really do think it depends on the personality of owner and animal.
Currently I have two dogs. Maxwell and Samual. I wouldn’t say Sam particularly loves me other than as his master and food source. He is excited when I get home, he sleeps with me and remains in the room I am in. I find that typical for the master-dog behavior.
Max was ill when he was a pup. It was during that bad dog food period a few years ago and he was touch and go for a while. I think that is when his attachment started although I don’t know if it would have been the same had he not gotten so sick and I had not cared for him 24 hours a day for three or four days. Max cries when I get home at night. If I do not pick him up within five minutes, he has a breathing attack. He will never be more than two feet away from me in the house and never more than five outside. There are four members of my family. Every other will be greeted with a bark when they come home. Max has never barked at me. He listens for my car and waits at the door until I come in. I have been told that he mopes around and whimpers all day when I am gone but I have never seen this.
I think his love is similar to any person’s love for a family member and wouldn’t believe it if anyone said differently.
I think it reflects poorly (and rather ludicrously) on Homo sapiens for its members to assume they a mammalian* monopoly on love.
Until they come up with a molecular test to determine the capability to love, I’ll have to rely on on observation and experience (involving my own dogs and those of others), and it’s obvious that dogs love their owners/caretakers. This was borne home to me at an early age when I witnessed a reunion between my piano teacher and his dog (they’d been separated for several weeks while the teacher was on vacation). I’ve never seen, before or since, a dog go so berserk with joy. And there were no treats being offered, just mutual affection.
I see the “question” of whether dogs love humans typically come up in two contexts - one, in the case of people who are offended that anything is compared (at least in their minds) to love between humans. The second context is never stated, but you get the feeling that there are people who do not receive enough affection in their lives from others, and think that the love and attention lavished on pets is somehow preventing lovelorn humans from getting what they need. Pretty silly, really.
*this will probably offend those who have invertebrates for pets, but I doubt that love comes into the equation, at least as far as the pets are concerned. Yes, your reptile may love you…on a plate. :dubious:
Or you could say that you’re caninpomorphizing your children and wife by viewing what they feel towards you as love. Same diff, really.
I think anthropomizing does a disservice is only in those cases where it’s not correct. That is, one shouldn’t assume a dog would hate being in a cage because (most) humans do. That’s anthropomorphizing - attributing human traits to an animal that doesn’t share them. Recognizing that humans aren’t the only animals to love isn’t anthropomorphizing, it’s humility and rational thought. “Animals” feel love - at least one specific species, homo sapiens sapiens does. It’s not improbable that others do, and so whatever we do that signals love to an outside observer (service, cuddles, long gazes, lowered blood pressure and heart rate and increased nonviolent muscular activity and physical contact in the restored company of certain individuals after a long absence) might as well be called “love” when others do it.
Somehow, I don’t think the bacteria in my gut dance with glee to see me again after a bout of diarrhea. Nor, despite my consumption of yogurt after antibiotics, do I emotionally pain for them when they’re gone. If I make the environment unsuitable for them, they won’t stick around out of emotional attachment or hopes that things will get better, they leave and find a new host. They’re symbiotes. Dogs love.
Hmm. Kinda busy at the moment and will post more later, but I think I would say behavior only rises to the level of “love” when one has the mental capacity to intellectually choose between options, and be cognizant of the implications of one’s choices and actions.
So what dogs and other species may do is sort of a base requirement for love, but not the whole enchilada. I believe love - and other human emotions - have a significant instinctual element, but that instinct alone does not equate with what I think of the emotion.
In that case, I can’t say for sure if you’re capable of love. All I have to go on is your words, which are themselves a behavior, and possibly only there because you’ve figured out you put the words I, love, and you together, you…what was it again? “Because that has proven successful in getting [your wife] to feed and care for [you].”
But dogs do make choices that are clearly not in their immediate best interest. Choices they would not make for just any schmo on the street.
There are countless anecdotes of dogs saving humans at peril to themselves. Or dogs refusing to leave an injured owner. Or the dog above going to the train to meet its human daily for 10 years despite the human being dead.
Their thinking on the full range of implications of their actions may be a lot simpler than a human’s but they do override what would be an instinct for self preservation or their immediate interest in favor of doing something for their human.
As noted dogs can and do choose favorites in their own household too. Even picking someone other than the one who feeds them and such. So there is more to it than, “That human feeds me, I better suck up to that person.”
But I know a lot of humans that do stuff as well simply because it benefits them and people read that as love. Babies do things because adults pay them attention, but does a baby LOVE his mother, or would he do that to any female that provided him the same amout of attention.
Before you can really answer the question you have to figure out what love means.
Also babies are genetically programmed to be cute so that mothers will be more likely to do stuff for them, even on very little sleep and after baby has driven them crazy. Sort of like dogs knowing how to make people give them food/belly rubs/etc.
I love my parents and I never chose to. They were my primary caregivers and I was dependant on them. I was no more capable of “using” them for food and shelter than a dog is. That dependancy created an emotional bond. I’m not sure love has a better definition than that. Sure, as an adult I could rationally conclude that my mother has personality traits that bug me and maybe not visit her that much, but I can’t stop caring about her completely. Dogs can’t make those kinds of distinctions, so they’re left with a base emotional connection with their owner which I believe would qualify as love.
We do have a tendency to anthropomorphize selectively.
“See how Fido looks at me? He loves me!”
“Fido woke me up with his barking, and I found a gas leak. He’s a hero!”
but
“Fido didn’t mean to bite your child, kill your cat and crap on your prized begonias. Dogs just act by instinct! They’re incapable of evil!”
On the one hand, it’s less of a logical leap to say, “I’m human so it’s reasonable to think that other members of the species experience the world similarly” than it is to say “Members of a different zoological order experience the world the same way I do.”
On the other hand, it seems to me the harm of wrongly assuming that animals don’t have emotional lives outweighs the harm of wrongly ascribing too much emotional life to them.
I’ve met a good number of humans who aren’t smart enough to do that, and I’m not talking about people who are developmentally disabled. Hell, I can think of half a dozen marriages that would never have happened if the people involved were cognizant of the implications of their choices and actions, and not just acting because they were in “love.”
I don’t buy that at all. My parents are big dog people, and they have a house with a nice yard, so they often dog sit for their friends. They tend to pamper the animals far more than their owners do, giving them lots of treats, and taking them on frequent and lengthy walks. But the dogs always maintain loyalty to their real owners - they become noticably depressed the longer they’re left with my parents, and are always ecstatic when their owners come back, and eager to return home. If love was just an act to secure food and care, wouldn’t they make my parents the focus of the act, given that they receive superior food and care at their house?
I think we must begin by discussing whether dogs feel any emotion. Can they feel fear or guilt? I believe so, because the vast majority of dogs are punished as a part of training, and as a result, exhibit reactions consistent with both emotions. Then why is is so hard to believe they also feel love? We seem to attach a special significance to love, but it is fundamentally no different from fear, guilt, anger, or sadness, which I have also seen my dog exhibit, as well as joy, boredom, excitement, anxiety, curiosity, and confusion. Why would love be any different?
