Cows and chickens will seek out humans, but just for food handouts I think. Neither species seems much smarter than the average carrot, and I don’t think either experiences or displays “love.”
Hogs, on the other hand, will seek out their human friends just for a good belly-scratching, or to go for a walk. They really seem to enjoy the companionship, in just the same way as dogs.
I had a pet pig when I was a kid, and I could step out on the porch and say, “Let’s go for a walk!” and she would start running around in circles and squealing with excitement.
If I were standing in the yard, she would sidle up to me and lean hard against me until she either knocked me over or I caved in to her demand for affection and scratched her belly.
I never saw those sorts of behaviors from cows or chickens, though I had “pets” of those species, too.
There is nothing whatsoever special about love. “Love” is what humans call a chemical response of the body to millions of years of reproductive urge. Just because we can verbalize and categorize what we feel doesn’t make it any less a physical issue. Dogs can be loyal to their pack and have an attachment to their pack, but to call it “love” is nonsense.
I would disagree as I said, the lady I know with the chickens, she just comes out and sits down and the chickens run up to her and try to sit in her lap. They like to be petted. Granted she had pick them up and put them in her lap originally but now they seek her out.
She’ll pet one and the other hens wait by her legs and when she puts it back down another one’ll hop up.
My experience interacting with animals would indicate otherwise to me. For example: whenever I visit my bookkeeper, her three dogs all vie for my attention and affection and shower me with kisses. As far as they know, I do nothing for them but that. Humans have communication tools that animals do not, but there is no logical reason to believe that animals cannot experience a full range of emotions and can even figure out things that are not obvious. Complex mental tasks, no, but feeling and caring are obvious traits of animals.
I’ll bet she trained them to do this by feeding them. And if so, they are simply trained, and not genuinely affectionate. I had a big rooster who used to come up and peck me on the leg to get my attention. He would allow me to pat him on the back, but he was really just looking for corn, and if all I did was pat him, he would get impatient and go back to pecking me.
A friend of mine works in a milking shed and says out of the three hundred cows, there are three or four that ‘love’ her. They seek her out and seem to enjoy her petting. They will hold off crapping if she walks behind them (tail already raised). Conversely there are about the same number that ‘hate’ her. They will shove her out of their way, attempt to stand on her feet and will projectile crap on her from metres away.
There’s a turkey at the sanctuary that will eagerly climb into your lap for petting whether you have treats or not. She’ll sit there until you get up, letting you stroke her feathers.
We had a parrot when I was younger that adored my mom. Could have been because she was the one that fed him and cleaned his cage, but he was mean as shit to everyone else in the house regardless of how many treats we plied him with. My parents had to rehome the bird with another family member, and more than a year after he went to his new home my mom was there for a family function. He remembered her and called her name. Maybe love? Maybe just a good memory?
mr. bot has a Border Collie that worships the ground he walks on. The two of them are inseperable. The BC pouts and goes into a grand funk if mr. bot dares leave the house without her. Her reaction to his return can only be described as “joy.” She will literally run over me to get to him. She loffs him.
As for me, I have a Morgan gelding that is attached to my hip. He follows me everywhere, unhaltered and unbidden. He will come up behind me and look over my shoulder to see what I’m doing. When I groom him he will rest his head on my shoulder and nearly doze off. When he sees me coming, he nickers loudly and starts trotting and throwing his head with “joy.” Yes, he loffs me. To everyone else, he’s very pushy.
We also have two large Ragdoll cats. One of them is a typical kittie, he acts as though he despises us and is rather stand-offish. His brother is just the opposite. He will climb into our laps and groom us. If I’m stretched out on the couch, he loves to plop down on top of me and purr like a jet engine. He loffs us.
I have no trouble believing that of a parrot. They are very smart birds. I understand crows (also very smart) can be quite affectionate, too, when tamed.
How do we know what “love” is to an animal? If you ask 1,000 people what “love” is, you’ll get 1,000 answers. When I could barely walk before my back surgery a few years ago, my dog Auggie wouldn’t leave my side. When I went to let him out, he went out, pottied, and came back in. No running around, no trying to get me to play. Why is that not love, to a dog? I had a bad, painful case of pleuresy in Jan- Feb of this year. Auggie, who never slept in our room, suddenly was sleeping there all the time. Love? Why not?
My 2 cats want to be wherever I am. They are sisters, they have each other. But if they are snuggled up and happy, and I go into another room, they follow me and snuggle up with me. How do I know that’s not love to a cat?
I think that they love us in the best way that they can. Which, in my opinion, is perfect.
I don’t know about love (who does?), but animals are smart enough to seek comfort and pleasure. My neighbor’s cat runs up a flight of stairs to greet me when she sees me walk out the door. I’ve never fed her, but I always stop and least scratch her behind the ears. I can’t see any other reason for that behavior than as a desire to interact with me in a way that the cat finds worthwhile.
Who said anything about sentience? Since when are sentience and emotion correlated at all?
No one’s offered any scientific cites at all in this thread (on either side), so all I have to go on personal experience. Which says that I’ve seen animals of all descriptions past a certain level of sophistication exhibit emotions in general, and love in particular.
Agree with every word plus pack wolves make a point of showing a great deal of affection to each other individually before going on a hunt.
(Cite The World of Mammals BBC documentary narrated by D.Attenborough.