Content
- Do animals have feelings?
- Dog Feelings: Scientific Explanation
- So, dog has feeling?
- How to know if my dog loves me
When you look into your best friend's eyes, you're certainly incapable of denying that dogs have feelings, aren't you? In our day to day, we build a mutual bond of friendship and trust with our furry friends. Each shared moment seems to be evidence that dogs are able to experience various emotions and express them through body language or different vocalizations.
As a tutor, you learn to interpret our furry's facial expressions, postures and behaviors to communicate with them, and over time, you are able to quickly identify when your dog is happy, sad, scared or trying to ask you for something . But does that mean dogs have feelings and reasoning? Or is it humans who tend to reflect the feelings in dogs, giving them human characteristics and faculties?
In this PeritoAnimal article, we'll explain what science says about whether dog has feeling in relation to humans, to other dogs and animals. Read on to discover the emotions and feelings of dogs!
Do animals have feelings?
Advances in science and technology have made it possible to identify that various animals, especially mammals, experience basic emotions similar to those of human beings. This is because they have the same brain structures as us, and they process emotions in very deep regions of the brain that make up the limbic system.
Emotions are understood as a wide range of hormonal and neurochemical responses that are associated with the limbic system of the brain, and that predispose an individual to react in a certain way when perceiving an external stimulus with their senses, interpreting it through the neuronal activity. This interpretation process allows humans and many other animal species to experience emotions in different ways.
If you look at animals in their habitat, or your dog at home, you will clearly see that they react very differently to positive emotions such as joy and negative emotions such as fear. It is also clear that animals are sentient beings that can develop affective bonds with humans and other animals, in addition to feeling pain and stress when subjected to a negative environment, abuse or neglect.
But is this enough to say that animals have feelings? Below, we'll better explain the difference between emotions and feelings in scientific terms, focusing on the key question of this article, which is whether dogs have feelings.
Dog Feelings: Scientific Explanation
Many people wonder if dogs have feelings or instincts, but the truth is that these are two very different things. Instinct can be defined, very briefly and simply, as the natural and innate motor that makes a living being react to various stimuli. It is something inherent in the nature of animals, transmitted from generation to generation through genes, like a adaptive capacity that allows for their survival.
Despite having gone through a long process of domestication, dogs also maintain various instinctive behaviors, such as the hierarchical instinct (also known as "pack instinct"), the hunting instinct and the "habit" of marking territory. But that doesn't mean they are unable to feel or experience different emotions. O instinct is an inherent part of canine nature., and the ability to have emotions or feelings is not impaired by the preservation of instinct. Humans themselves also retain some behaviors associated with the survival instinct, which could be considered the most basic and fundamental instinct of all species.
So, dog has feeling?
Not exactly. Let's go in parts to better understand why the claim that dogs have feelings is so incomplete.As we saw earlier, the dogs have emotions (like many other animals) and experience them in a very similar way to humans. One of the most important studies for this discovery was carried out by neuroscientistGregory Berns, from Emory University, who decided to train several dogs to adapt to the magnetic resonance machine (functional magnetic resonance), which allows capturing images of brain activity. Why can't we say dogs have feelings?
well because psychology traditionally differentiates emotions from feelings. As we have seen, emotions consist mainly of neuronal, chemical, and hormonal responses that predispose an individual to act in a certain way when faced with a certain stimulus. For example, joy is an emotion that can make a dog smile in response to its owner's arrival at home.
In turn, feelings are also associated with the limbic system, but involve a conscious evaluation, in addition to a spontaneous predisposition to certain responses. It is not possible to think of feelings as emotions, as they would derive precisely from a conscious and general reflection on emotions, mainly considering the subjective experience of each individual (how each individual experiences their own emotions).
So, the main problem we have today is to state that animals have feelings (including dogs) is that our knowledge of cognitive system of them has not yet allowed us to verify if they make conscious reflections on their own emotions. That is, we still don't have scientific evidence to show that dogs and other animals are able to connect the specific emotions they experience in certain contexts with complex thoughts about that experience.
Let's say that to say that dogs have feelings beyond emotions, your furry would need reflect on the joy how he feels when he sees you coming home, to come to the conclusion that his spontaneous reaction to vigorously wagging his tail or smiling is due to his affection for you. But to date, science and technology have not been able to demonstrate this type of complex and reflective thinking in dogs.
So while we know that animals and dogs have emotions, we still cannot say on scientific grounds that they also have feelings. And also for that reason, dogs are not considered to have feelings of guilt, because, to feel guilty, they would need to reflect on something they did that is considered negative or undesirable in our culture.
How to know if my dog loves me
The organism of dogs also generates the oxytocin, More known as "love hormone". Another great observation from Dr. Berns' aforementioned research is that the most positive neuronal response in all the dogs occurred when they realized the smell of your "favorite human being", stimulating a region of the brain known as the caudate nucleus, which is associated with love in both dogs and people.
When the dog perceives the scent of its guardian and, consequently, also of its home, this leads to an increase in the production and segregation of oxytocin, and is what allows its furry to look like happy and excited when he sees you or shares good times with you.
In addition, a study by psychologist Andrea Beetz revealed that dogs and humans experience a very similar increase in oxytocin levels after sharing an approximately ten-minute cuddling session. Then, both receive benefits this interaction, and dogs enjoy as much as humans to be in the company of those who do them good.
However, in addition to occasionally experiencing an excitement or feeling of well-being when they are with their guardians, dogs also have a excellent affective memory, which is also associated with well-developed senses. That's why a dog can be very happy to be reunited with a person or another dog, even if it's been months or years since they last saw each other.
Of course, dogs don't express their affection in the same way as humans do, as dogs' social behavior and body language are guided by different codes. That's why your dog probably doesn't feel comfortable with a hug, but it shows affection in a totally spontaneous way, mainly through its unconditional loyalty.
If you want to read more articles similar to Have a dog feeling?, we recommend that you enter our Curiosities section of the animal world.