5/18/16 Quote: When animals are no longer colonized and appropriated by us, we can reach out to our evolutionary cousins. Perhaps the ancient hope for a deeper emotional barrier, for closeness and participation in a realm of feelings now beyond our imagination, will be realized -pg 236 Comment: This quote discusses that when humans stop capturing animals and simply stereotyping animals than we will reach a mutual understanding with our animal cousins. The author implies that this could possibly finally reach this comprehension with one another. It could lead to an eventual knowledge of Human History where the participation of emotions and feelings are in the broad category of animals. The author perhaps also gives hints where humans can grow closer or feel more empathetic to their animal relatives. While they also learn how emotions originate from our species and how it affected the animal kingdom. Ultimately this idea could influence scientist thinking of emotion and help humans understand their complex feelings of their fellow animal cousins. Connection: This arguments challenge many notions of denial of animal emotions against their opponents. Clearly asking these possible questions help open up activists and scientist notion of feelings strikes back against these beliefs of its denial. The research being done with animal intelligence among crows, rats, parrots and dogs is getting scientist to question the possibility of these animals displaying complex emotions. Like in my previous entry the Orcas biggest section of the brain being the one associated with emotion provide a hint that these animal experience much more complex emotions than us. Ultimately is powerful because it questions our ideology and perspectives. It challenges the way the scientific community looks at animal emotions and it brings humanity to rival the old concept of humans having the superior emotions compared to other earth species. Even though with research it provides evidence that whales have more complex emotions and other animals are also being explored to have similar emotions as us. Hopefully these discoveries and research could help scientist provide real evidence that animals have much more complicated emotions than us and help us learn more about the complexity of animal feelings. Question: There is not a lot of questions I have for the book, since that was the last quote from the book. Maybe if there is still research being done whether animals exhibit emotions? How do orcas and whales emotion different from humans. These are the few questions that pop up in my brain. Overall, I think this book was awesome and I hope they make a follow up. 5/1/16 Quote: Maybe the fox is gaining information about hyenas power, useful when fox snatches bite from hyena’s kills. Maybe the fox is accustoming the hyena to its presence, also useful when pillaging kills. This gives a practical explanation for why such behavior persists, but it doesn’t explain how fox feels. Why should the fox not feel mischievousness that has been imputed to the species over centuries.(Pg 128) Comment: This quote reflects how the fox may have the feelings of mischievousness, which is compatible to most human interpretations of foxes and our similar feelings as well. It is still a scientist best conclusion to keep distance from foxes having this emotion, but there is no evidence to quickly deny how the fox feels itself. Also the author include why the fox is observing hyenas stealing their kills, For example, he discusses possibilities of why the hyena keep persisting on stealing the hyena kill because it understands the animal is powerful. Thus it uses tactics that involves stealing the hyena food as a way to get food, instead of hunting itself. Yet the author concludes that this study does not prove how the fox feels in this situation and why humans quickly denounce that this animal have no emotions. However, the author does not understand that scientists do not want to make assumptions this could ultimately fail for the fox objective and so they keep emotional distance from their research. It does not mean they do not believe the fox have human like feelings, but they have no evidence that supports that it does feel mischievous or have particular feelings when it steals food from the hyena. Connection: The quote reflects how scientist do not necessarily question themselves about animal emotions and give an anthropomorphic assumption of this particular event. However, we humans may not always understand animal emotions and maybe even animals do not fully understand people as well. We understand ourselves from our language, writing and communication with one another. Our communication with animals are limited and we are given few social cues. So it is our best interest to try to learn much about animals as we possibly can. However, we can not always make accurate analysis of animals emotions if we only a small portion of evidence to support how they feel about this particular event or occurrence. There are scientists that are finding evidence to elephant emotions and exploring whale and chimpanzee emotions as well. So far we are questioning our original thought of animals possessing no emotions and we slowly finding evidence that animals have complex and unique deep rooted feelings as humans. I think this book may not provide the best facts, but is introducing the innovations behind the origin of human emotion by studying modern day animals. Question: What if there is evidence to support that foxes do not have emotions when stealing hyena kills, will this prove the author's theory wrong? Or what if brain scans show that fox feel self pity for the hyena, will this change people's attitude of foxes being mischievous? What if some animals posse emotions we humans can not relate to and how do we describe these emotions? What if some animals do not have emotions and there are only few who can have deep feelings with one another? 4/9/16 Quote: In animals it may not be an emotion, however, thus while dictionaries call fear an emotion, animal behaviorists may prefer the definition of fear that appears in the Oxford companion to animal behavior- “A state of motivation which is aroused by certain specific stimuli and normally give rise to defensive behavior or escape Comment: This quote is significant because this theme appear from previous chapters the idea that scientists try to deny emotion from animals to interfere with their scientific work. Not to mention scientist do not want to quickly come to the conclusion that animals have similar emotions like human because this could lead to confusion around the idea that animals feel the same way as human. In the Oxford Companion it uses scientific vocabulary that “stimuli” as a way to describe the situation logically instead of giving an emotional emphasis of fear itself. The author main reason to include this passage to his book to describe how some scientists are going against jumping to the conclusion by quickly generalizing that animals fear is a sense of motivation instead of a concrete emotion. This idea of thinking may justify lab experiments and other cruelty animal face in human history. However, scientists prefer to have concrete evidence to support the reasoning of animals emotions and being able to have that substance scientist can classify that animals do exhibit emotions. Connection: The quote reflects some scientist ignorance or denial of animal emotions and quickly try to further the idea animals even have emotions. This quote will continue to disprove these quick thinking and have evidence that help support animals having human like emotions. However, over time scientists are slowly finding evidence for animals having emotions like elephants exhibiting empathy for other animals. Orcas having a bigger emotional capacity compared to humans, and slowly the scientific community will prove that animals have emotion that of humans. It is intriguing to find science ever changing over the progress of human history. There is a possibility we humans could improve our social and technological progress we could understand animals and even possible atoms that go beyond our own comprehension. Yet science still have a lot of bad intentions like animal, nuclear and dangerous biological testing. Personally I hope that humanity will be able to progress positively and continue to further advance human understanding. Question: What research is going on that proves animal have emotions neurologically in the book? Do some scientist still believe in this thinking? When will scientists fully feel comfortable with the ideas of animals having emotions? Will the author imply that he went on serious study about emotions or will he state others are still continuing their research? Do we view animals having emotions as us as a way to interact with animals? Do some animals have bigger emotional capacities than humans like Orcas or is it for a selected few animals? Do insects, amphibians and reptiles exhibit emotions as well to their offspring 3/5/16 Quote: “Human beings have evolved in the most highly social creatures the world has ever seen. Their social relationship have a depth, a complexity and a biological importance to them, which no other animal relationship come near” Comment: This quote represents the reason why we humans dismiss animals emotions because we associate our emotions as deep and complexity compared to any other species. This quote seems to advocate human superiority towards animals and how we humans have look down at animals for so long. In biology there is no evidence to support this claim and it is important to remain skeptical to the reliance of this quote relation to a factual evidence to support that humans are the highly socialized species in the world. I found this quote intriguing how we worship ourselves as higher and intellectual beings, but we are all animals. We eat, breed, territories and live in groups and communicate among each other. It begs the question if this superiority complex is an obstacle for us to consider the notion that animals have emotions. Connection: The quote connects to the earlier ideas of the book that we humans disassociate anthropomorphism because we view ourselves as clearly intelligent and often advance to other types of animals. Not to mention that there is evidence out there to support that elephants and even killer whales have higher emotional connections than we do and have a bigger empathetic relationship. It seems as we advance we learn more about each other as well as other species. If you read any article or news there are evidence that are leaning towards to some animals having human like emotions or even a wider emotional capacity than humans. This quote provides evidence that supports our position on why humans are in the defense of stating that animals do not have emotions and that we still struggle to think about animals having human like characteristics. Eventually with the increase evidence of animal neurological behaviors exhibiting complex emotions this could change the scientific community and people understanding of animals. In the near future we can associate animals emotions being similar to us and our evolution of understanding. Other than that I think this quote was an old world idea and thinking and that as we progress as human we further updated and improved ideas of the world around us. Question: Is there evidence to support this claim, and how does this disapprove animals emotions? What was the culture like to help further this ideology? Does this help support the scientific notion or inspire the idea that animals do not have human like emotions? Does this show human superiority or pride that quickly disassociates animals as inferior beings? Does this statement have value in our real world context and do people strongly believe in this position? Do we humans often think of ourselves as godlike or advance creatures that even animals do not even compare to us? How will this book help disapprove this idea and help us recognize that animals do have emotions similar to us or is the author's argument not valuable? 2/26/16 Quote:What data is there on animals emotion comes not from laboratory work but from field studies. Some of the most esteemed animal researchers of our day, from Jane Goodall to Frans de Waal, from time to time to defy orthodoxy and from their position to eminence within their fields use words like "love" and "suffering" to describe animals Comment: The quote reflects that the major breakthrough that explores the idea of animals having emotions comes from field research studies and not from laboratory work. While also discussing animal researchers break the concrete mold of science by adding personal and emotional effort behind their work. Science is often the subject based off of facts and experimentation. It often distance itself from emotional or personal anecdotes, instead science based their evidence on facts and research. The quote essential purpose is to explain that the data behind animals having emotion must not entirely be based off on laboratory research, but on the field studies where scientist interact and observe animal behavior and understand animals fundamental emotions. The quote reflects that scientists like Jane Goodall and Frans de Waal go beyond science expectation help define the best information about the emotional and personal lives in animals, instead of clearly giving an explanation of their behavior. Connection: This quote connects to the idea that the scientific research and analysis on animals emotions have not been taking into serious research in the scientific community. Also it criticizes the lack of scientists dismissing animals emotions as a mere human conscious or anthropomorphism. This is one of the most prevalent themes in this book is providing evidence to support the idea that animals have emotions and human like feelings. We humans try to ignore these animal emotions because we think highly of ourselves and assume that animals did not have the high intellect like us. However, the author challenges our notion of animals and makes us think about how we tend to forgot about how emotion and intelligence differ from themselves. The best way to connect these ideas would be the idea of morality and science. Is it okay for a scientist to experiment on animals, in order to advance our understanding of diseases, cells or if a product is safe for human consumption? Or do we use our morality and state that animal testing is inhumane; therefore this testing is morally wrong. These conflicting ideas help define how we humans grow as a civilization and a race. Is it essential for we humans do everything to advance our technology and our understanding of complex concepts or do we move forward as an ethical and caring species. There is some parallel to our discussion in class about if it was morally right for scientists to take peoples cells without their permission to help improve our knowledge behind cell growth. Personally I think this quote questions my perspective on how science should look into animals psychology, while also reconfigure on how scientist will view their research in the near future. Question: I want to know how these field researchers help support the notions that animals have emotions? Is this information is enough to provide evidence that animals do have emotions? What are some counter arguments to not having emotions or human like qualities? Is the supporting evidence reliable or does the author use personal anecdotes to support his argument? How does all the accounts will lead up to the evidence that supports that animals have emotions?
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