Dude, this sounds like 90% of my relationships!
Got me beat by a mile. Now gimmie a sanwich or I’ll pee in your living room.
I do not believe that is possible. Anthropomorphizing involves giving human characteristics to something that is not human. So, “anthropomorphizing humans” is impossible by definition.
I understand that newly born ducklings can fix on a human as their mother and follow that person around.
This looks like love, but is just reflex behaviour.
Similarly dogs can accept you as a pack leader and enjoy the way you run things (walks, feeding, secure home), but it’s not love in the way humans think of it.
Re Hamsters- I don’t know about love but mine had total trust in me. Of course, I totally earned it. He’d lie in my hand, curl up & sleep. He’d ride in my shirt pocket. We’d watch TV & dose off together when I got home from school. He was very friendly to everyone in my family, including the dog who was probably 200x his size & wanted nothing to do with him. (He’d follow her around in his plastic running ball. Of course, he could have been teasing her also.:D)
It’s been 30 years & I still miss that little guy, and just haven’t had the heart to get another because I doubt any other hamster could be that sweet.
Emotions are not unique to humans in the animal world. There’s no way to really tell if there is an emotion behind any behavior, even in humans.
I knew a lady that kept chickens as pets. She started out with 2 hens and a rooster now she has 10 chickens. Anyway, she would put the chickens on her lap and pet them. Now when she sits down the hens all run over to her and fight to see who will sit in her lap so she can pet them.
I know, I was just using the term loosely, as a way to say that maybe we’re giving ‘human characteristics’ to ourselves that exist only in our imagination.
I.e. In humans its “Love”, but in the lesser beasts its “prosurvivalistic behavior which we interpret as affection”, or “simply pack behavior”.
From personal experience: dogs, for sure, and by extension other canids which have been raised as pets.
Cats, and also by extension tame individuals of their wild kin as well
Budgerigars and cockateils, because I’ve had both and been the recipient of their friendly/affectionate gestures; other psittacines as well.
Tame rats.
A friend of mine used to keep ferrets, and they certainly seemed affectionate.
From much reading and discussion about animals, I am pretty certain that tame primates and elephants can also feel love for their human keepers, as well as perhaps raccoons and kinkajous and bears.
This might also be true of swine raised as pets rather than impersonally for feed, but I have no experience there.
NB: I don’t totally accept the concept of “anthropomorphism” as fallacious; the psyches and emotions of the “higher” animals are more like those of humans than many humans are willing to admit. Anyone who has actually lived with and interacted with certain creatures on a friendly basis is apt to realize this, all the naysayings of science aside.
Not really. And when I do, it isn’t usually reading the comments. Am I missing anything much?
Absolutely not. Imagine if Great Debates was overrun by people from /b/.
Damn those scientists with all their tests and observations!
An owner dies in a house with his loving dog at his side. Nobody finds him for a month. What do you think the dog will survive on? Do you think he’ll regret his choice? Do you really think “love” will enter into the picture at all?
How do you explain a problem dog (snarling, biting, etc.) suddenly turning into a “loving” animal after a trainer gets done teaching the humans how to be the alpha animal? It’s not love, it’s law of the pack. Your dog will respect your position as leader until you give it up in some fashion, and will show you that respect by licking your hand and rolling onto its back and exposing its throat. It has nothing to do with “love”.
Just because a dog will let survival instincts override emotion doesn’t mean the emotion isn’t there at all.
Is it your position that no emotion exists in animals?
Actually that’s an interesting question. Given that they evolved their more sophisticated brain functions separately from mammals, they probably don’t exactly feel “love” in the same way we or another mammal would. They might feel “bird love” ( and if they don’t a species of avian that’s evolved more emotional complexity certainly could ); but it’s questionable how much if at all “bird love” would feel like what we call love.
Aren’t dogs known for being reluctant to eat their dead owners ? And it’s not like humans wouldn’t do the same if trapped.
How do you know ? You seem to be assuming that dogs can only have one emotion at at time, or one motivation for a behavior. And plenty of dogs go well beyond simple obedience to a leader. Maybe it’s love; maybe it’s loyalty; there’s no way to be sure as far as I know, without better understanding of the brain.
And what’s so special about love that claiming an animal can have it is unthinkable ?
At the farmed animal sanctuary I volunteer at there’s at least one animal of every species there that seeks out and enjoys human contact. That includes turkeys, hens and roosters, farm pigs (bred for food before being rescued) and pot bellied pigs, horses, cows (both “dairy” cows and “beef” cows), goats and sheep.
Whether they love us or not I can’t say, but they sure seem to like having us around and show us affection. Considering that many of the animals are abuse cases, I think the fact that they trust humans at all is astounding.
I think my dog and cats love me, or whatever the dog and cat version of love is.
By the same token, humans raised in institutions often display antisocial behavior. If the same human can then be transferred early enough to a structured environment with a competent and caring pack leader (parent) the child can be trained to relate with empathy and respect in human society.
I recognize when my dogs show submission. Sometimes they do this to get a piece of food, and sometimes to get affection from me. The subission they show and the stroking I give them reinforces the pack hierarchy and gives them a sense of security. When a parent to holds their child, or a person hugs another person, this also fosters a feeling of security. Most people crave security and intimacy. Isn’t our need for love driven by instinct, the same as the dog’s desire to know their place in the pack hierarchy? Isn’t what we call “love” actually our own “law of the pack”?
I’m not emphasizing that humans are only animals, but that my dogs feel the same emotions that I do, and for much the same reasons.
Seriously? I don’t care how hungry I was, I just don’t think I could eat another human being. After a month it would be too rotten and, prior to that, I don’t think my teeth would be sharp enough to do the trick. Logistics aside, I literally don’t think that I could stomach it, so to speak. I really don’t.
What is the difference?
I’m pretty sure that anyone who doesn’t believe that animals have emotions hasn’t spent much time around them. Intelligence, yes, but since when has the ability to feel an emotion been linked to intelligence? There are tons of severely mentally disabled people in the world who feel love just as strongly as geniuses.
Actually, I haven’t seen any science around this at all. Do you have any cites for tests showing that animals don’t have emotions? How do/would they measure such a thing in a way that outweighs the observations laypeople make?
Neither do I, emotionally. But judging from people who have actually starved, we probably would.
I suppose to make the analogy fit better we’d have to presume a situation where the body was preserved; like being trapped in Arctic conditions.
I’d call it for lack of a better term “de-anthropomorphication”. Pretending that animals have LESS in common with humans than they do; in this case by using an abstract, emotionless sounding phrase to refer to emotions. The difference between “the animal, due to past positive tactile stimuli shows a pattern of following the subject”, and “You petted him and he’s following you around because he likes it.”