I’d say it’s pretty normal. I mean, it’s super weird, but also, a lot of people feel this way.
Personally, I want to eat my boyfriend. Like, literally consume him. He is just so adorable! Sometimes I play bite his neck; it really freaks him out. It’s an urge I cannot explain, but there it is… People often feel that way (wanting to eat) about cute animals or babies as well. I don’t know what the fuck it is, but it’s pretty common.
I would try to work on toning it down a little. I think the animals you “harass” probably enjoy the play at first, but you go too far. Work on slowing down and watching the animal’s body language so you don’t get out of hand. And if you do go too far, cuddles and treats make up for most of that. I will absolutely agree animals have emotions, but one thing they don’t do, in my experience, is hold a grudge.
I will do my best from now on not to get too carried away with upsetting my pets, or any other animals! Not that I don’t USUALLY try… but I am gonna try extra hard
And no, my thoughts are not so violent or horrid that they cause me great durress, nor do they ever cause the animals any physical harm or whatever.
Anyhow, I’m going to be extra, extra nice and if I feel the urge to be mean I’m just going to walk away and lock myself away from their cute, cute little faces.
It doesn’t necessarily make you a freak. My mother’s constantly going on about how much she wants to pinch cute things, but she refrains, so it’s cool. It does make me wonder if some people just get overwhelmed by cuteness and don’t know what to do with the emotion.
As for animals having emotions, it seems a little human-centric and ignorant of evolutionary biology to say they don’t. All our old bits of brain are involved in that instinctive, fight or flight, motivating, nurturing crap. That’s not what separates us from beasts. It’s the fancy, rational new bits that are most different.
Learned helplessness in rats is biochemically similar to human depression, and you can model things like addiction and aggression very neatly in them, also. It’s not that stuff that makes us human; it’s the reasoning that allows us to transcend it.
Feeling overwhelmed by the cuteness is an apt description of how I feel sometimes, and not knowing how to deal with it.
I also agree that rationality and logic is what mostly separates humans from other species. Although I do believe that certain parrots and perhaps gorillas are capable of explaining their actions or reasons for doing something, as well as logically thinking through puzzles. Obviously not to the extent that we can do it, but I don’t believe that rationality/logic are entirely unique to humans either.
Yeah, it’s a sliding scale, but I was mostly trying to argue that if there’s anything that makes humanity unique, emotions are a poor candidate. Of course, a more complex understanding of a situation alters the emotional response, but that doesn’t need to change the emotions themselves.
Agreed. I don’t understand people who honestly believe emotions are unique to humanity. Why would they be? As you pointed out, it doesn’t make sense from an evolutionary perspective that emotion could have come about in just one species and no others.
The only one that I might even make the argument for, is that no other organism on the planet is capable of love. I honestly do not believe that dogs or cats love their owners. Attached? Definitely. Happy to be around? For sure. But love??? I don’t know about that. Like you said, it’s a sliding scale… but since most humans can’t even really adequately describe, explain or otherwise articulate the feeling that love is, it seems to be sufficiently complex enough that only the human brain is really capable of experiencing it. Animals of high intelligence may have many of the sub-emotions that are a part of the love equation, but not the overall package.
That being said, if any other animals are capable of love, I’m pretty sure it’s limited only to primates, dolphins, and elephants. Unless there are some other bizarely intelligent animals I am unaware of. Cats and dogs have the intelligence of very small children, according to most of what I’ve heard, and small kids haven’t got a clue what love is.
