Let me give it a shot…
the difference between hardwired responses and emotions would be Spirit. Hardwired responses, such as reflex, adreniline pumping are things of matter while Emotions are things of Spirit, given to us by god. The chemicals/hormones that seem to follow or coincide with said emotions are only the brains(a thing of matter) attempt of communcating the desires of the spirit to the brain.
Do we, as humans, react to pain in others without their “yelping”?
Say you see a (human) friend having those quills removed, but the doctor has administered novocane and there is no pain. Would you still “feel” your friends pain?
I’ve often seen dogs whimper and lick an injured doggie buddy. They seemed to be very distressed by the other’s suffering.
Peace,
mangeorge
I shudder to imagine the situations under which a vet views a dog’s reactions to other dog’s suffering. I’m not sure I’d be accountable for my response in those situations, either.
Under normal circumstances, both dogs and cats (and a host of other animals, according to “Why Elephants Weep”) respond to suffering in humans and other animals. Anyone who’s had a cat or dog cozy up to them when they’re feeling upset knows this response. It’s not incredibly surprising: what viable band of animals would not be able to take account of the disability of one of its members?
I worked for a vet briefly many years ago and she could have told you that dogs react very empatically to the pain of other dogs. Animals were always removed from the theater before any treatments that involved stress were made. According to her if a dog saw another dog trying to escape the vet, smelled blood, vomit or faeces or heard growling or yelping it would become very anxious, often start whining or howling and if it was an agressive dog very prone to biting if handled. Just the wild movements of a dog trying to avoid being muzzled was enough to trigger the response though of course their may have been scent clues there as well.
Of course that could all be interpreted as simply a response to viewing the veterinarian as a source of pain to be avoided, but the fact remains that the dogs knew that the vet was a potential source of pain without feeling that pain themselves, QED they felt the other animals pain empathically. To say that dogs are oblivious to pain in others is a load of horse feathers. Dogs are very aware of such pain even if their reactions may be more self-serving than a human response to pain in others.
flowbark:
I’m sorry to say that your link doesn’t know what it’s talking about. Dogs generally react very strongly to another dog in distress. It looks like empathizing among other things to me, but it sure as shit ain’t indifference.
The main problem with defining intelligence in animals is that we don’t really know what intelligence is in the first place, and what definitions we have come up with really only describe human behaviour.
If an alien race came to earth, they would no doubt find that humans are intelligent. But what about, say, the trap-door spider? It builds a pretty intricate little device that it uses to catch its prey. A termite mound is structurally more complex than the pyramids. Why is one the work of intelligence and the other isn’t?
Obviously, part of the answer lies in instinctual behaviour. If the termite has no choice but to build what it is programmed to build, it’s hard to see that as intelligent. After all, you can write computer programs that do amazingly powerful things, but as long as its only doing exactly what it was programmed to do, you can’t call it intelligent.
But then what about differences in brain physiology? What about Cetaceans, who have larger brains than ours as a proportion of their body mass, and also have more complex brain structures? What are those brains doing? A lot of their brain power is devoted to echolocation. But at what point do we say that those skills are less important than, say, devoting a good chunk of our brains to operating opposable thumbs?
Scylla, you should especially appreciate this…
I read an article a few weeks ago (sorry, can’t remember where), that claimed that there is evidence that dogs are what allowed us to become successful and intelligent. According to the article I read, we should have lost the genetic race to Neanderthals, who were at the time more advanced than we were. But the big difference was that we had dogs. Our reliance on dogs allowed us to develop our brains towards abstract thought, since dogs were our ears and noses. That’s why we have remarkably poor hearing and smell compared to many other mammals.
Anyway, basically the article said that dogs and humans evolved together, as kind of a team. Our partnership with them allowed us to protect flocks and families against wild animals, which let us settle down and become farmers. And that kicked off civilization. Over time, we’ve gotten so good at this stuff that we no longer need dogs, but our close affinity to them has kept them part of our lives, and we continue to find lots of useful things for them to do.
Now, I don’t know if this theory will hold up, but ever since I read it I look at Lucy our Border Collie with an even greater sense of affection. If the theory is correct, then we owe dogs. Big time.
Well, mitochondrial DNA dating shows that domestic dogs started diverging from wolves roughly around when the earliest Modern Humans developed. To hear we evolved together wouldn’t be surprising.
The views expressed in the link are not necessarily those of flowbark, his managers or the underwriters of this poster. 
Thanks for the info, gang.
I personally think it is some fairly continuous spectrum and that there may not be any firm place where one can draw a cutoff, although clearly toward one extreme it makes more sense to consider the animal as self-aware and toward the other extreme it makes more sense not to.
Recently, however, I read an article that tried to argue that the line between “consciousness” and not should be drawn at the point where animals sleep. I.e., this person argued that the reasons sleep is needed (even for humans) are still not well-understood but that the most compelling evidence in the author’s view is that it is necessary for consciousness. I don’t remember what that evidence was said to be, and certainly the argument was merely suggestive at best.
It is sort of funny, but this issue of self-awareness has always been a big one with me. I used to wonder a lot about whether dogs are self-aware and know they are dogs. Now that I am working in a big bureaucratic corporation, I find myself wondering the exact same things about middle and upper management. I.e., my biggest concern is not so much that the decisions are inherently so stupid, but that they even seem to suggest a complete lack of self-awareness. I am told by colleagues it is because “self-awareness” is a trait that is selected out of management, much as breeding of dogs selects for certain traits. An interesting analogy, I think.
I agree with others that this is a great discussion. And it is very heartwarming to read the animal stories from Scylla and others.
I have not seen a dog with a chance to demonstrate sympathy toward another dog, but I have seen empathy or synpathy towards a human. I had a friend call up in distress during a bout of the flu. She was in that overworked-college student-mode and had been pushing herself too hard. When I arrived to drive her to the clinic, she did not answer the door. However, her roommate’s boxer was there, whining and whimpering.( usually, this boxer is a big tough guy. and she just moved recently, they weren’t buddies). I came in the open door, and Mr. boxer started doing the run away/come back and whimper thing. He led me to where she had passed out licked her, licked me and fussed over her till I got her into the car. The dog appeared to be experiencing geniune distress at her state, and seeemed to be trying to comfort her.
(when we got to the clinc, things went fairly routinely until the nurse looked in her and got Real Upset. it took us a moment to realize she had an ear full of boxer spit from his attempts at reviving her. My friend made a full recovery)
And, because this post is long enough already, I won’t even attempt to hijack into bird (parrot) self-awareness issues.
Okay, maybe start a new thread? At one point I was thinking of creating software to teach parrots how to talk. I had to give up when I found out how demanding grays and the other talkers can be.
Since Alex has been on so many TV shows, I’m not surprised more of them are acting like prima donnas.
“Polly wants a REAL Ritz cracker, not that generic &%*$! And take all of the sunflower seeds out of my dish! And Evian, not tap water, jerk!”
I heard one story about a group of researchers investigating gorillas in Africa. They noticed that every day the dominant male would disappear for a number of hours. The researchers assumed that he was looking for food or checking the territory.
One day they decided to follow him.
They found to their surprise that this big male travelled every day to a large waterfall. When there he did nothing more than sit on a large rock and watch the water flow for several hours, until it was time to return home.
This was taken as evidence that not only are apes self-aware but that they value aesthetics!! The male wasn’t gaining anything from his trip other than the pleasure of being there.
Since hearing this, I’ve never since been able to look at a waterfall, stream, sunset or any other naturally beautiful vista in the same way.
pan
I have 2 dogs, they each know their name. When I call one dog, the other one does not come.
Maybe Genghis doesn’t think of himself as “Genghis”, but he does have some concept of self, in that he knows that when I say “Nova”, Nova is to report to me and he is not.
You might also read some self-awareness into the “butt-sniffing” ritual dogs go through when they meet. If you watch closely, most (friendly) dogs kinda offer themselves to be sniffed. Then they go play.
Something’s going on there, because they take it very seriously.
I think that dogs have been part of the human culture so long that they’ve almost become part of the human race.
Peace,
mangeorge
I saw something related, about how gorillas (or was it chimps?) act strangely around dramatic natural events. In one case it was a thunderstorm, when the thunder started getting loud the apes would grab a branch and jump around swinging it and banging it on trees, the ground, whatever. It’s basically the kind of behavior that they normally do to display how big and bad they are but it’s not something a whole group of them will normally do at once, and they’ve also been known to do it near waterfalls. One wonders if it is some kind of rudimentary religion.
Just a few comments on amimal empathy/sympathy.
Recently when my sisters dog Tanner was getting on in years and starting to have health problems (hip dysplagia and possibly cancer). Her other dog Sage seemed to keep vigil over him. Trying to keep my sister kids away from him and such. It seemed she sensed his pain and tried to minimize his discomfort to the point she would even give the kids a warning growl. Something she had never done before and has not done since Tanner died.
Also, during an attack on my sister by a neighbors dog Sage threw herself between the dog and my sister. This could probably viewed as pack behavior (protecting alpha female) but also after the attack Sage stood protectively over her and tried to comfort her.
When I was younger we had two dogs that were raised together. When one of the dogs was hit by a car and killed, The other dog would go down frequently and lay by the grave of his companion. This continued for several months.
Just citing these few personal experiences. I do believe that dogs (at least) have the capacity to feel empathetic/sympathetic toward other dogs and their human companions.