Which animals do you perceive as able to feel, potentially even having emotions? How low down the food chain should we be respecting their potential to experience harm and hurt? Should all animals have preventative measures, to remove the potential for us hurting them? Some/all insects etc? Do you garden to prevent any ill-effects occurring? |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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I think our understanding of other animals' feelings and emotions is very undeveloped. I also think the way we currently treat our fellow creatures will be regarded as barbaric by future generations.
To answer your question more specifically, there is certainly a good case to grant our close primate relatives similar rights to those enjoyed by humans. |
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"Anything with a nervous system 'feels'.
But I guess there's limits on actual brain function in terms of what we as humans would term 'feelings' and emotions. "
 Some good answers.
We try to anthropomorphise how animals must feel, despite their nervous systems often being very different to our own, making their experiences likely different.
Octopuses have completely different systems and might almost be alien. Animals such as the octopus, lobsters and others have been observed as being sentient.
Birds and mammals are certainly sentient, with some of them displaying grief, for example. T UK he Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act was first to recognise the sentience of the likes of lobsters, but it only means that law makers have to consider this, when creating laws from now onwards.
Insects are different again. Some have seen animals with nociceptors, as we have, as essential to be classed as feeling. Nociceptors allow us to sense things like heat, pressure, etc which for us is then potentially received and interpreted in our brain and given meaning, whether or not we've had a reactive response, such as pulling our hand off the cooker 
It's very complex and we've had little study of many types of animals. |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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"Anything with a nervous system 'feels'.
But I guess there's limits on actual brain function in terms of what we as humans would term 'feelings' and emotions.
Some good answers.
We try to anthropomorphise how animals must feel, despite their nervous systems often being very different to our own, making their experiences likely different.
Octopuses have completely different systems and might almost be alien. Animals such as the octopus, lobsters and others have been observed as being sentient.
Birds and mammals are certainly sentient, with some of them displaying grief, for example. T UK he Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act was first to recognise the sentience of the likes of lobsters, but it only means that law makers have to consider this, when creating laws from now onwards.
Insects are different again. Some have seen animals with nociceptors, as we have, as essential to be classed as feeling. Nociceptors allow us to sense things like heat, pressure, etc which for us is then potentially received and interpreted in our brain and given meaning, whether or not we've had a reactive response, such as pulling our hand off the cooker
It's very complex and we've had little study of many types of animals. "
Likes of magpies hold funeral rituals. |
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By *rincipessaWoman
over a year ago
your wildest dreams, |
I think it’s generally thought that all creatures feel, but what they feel varies across the species. There is a difference in physical and emotional feelings too. Of course there are things like sponges which dont have a central nervous system. This will prevent them feeling in the same way that we do certainly. |
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I think all animals feel pain, I don't know when they become sentient. Can slugs feel happy, do fleas get depressed are worms inclined to melancholy? I know cats, dogs, horses etc are way more intelligent than people often give them credit for |
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