Current Events > Why do 'people' say dogs don't have emotions?

(+) Yeah! (+)

They get happy and excited about people/things they like.

They get sad or unhappy or hurt at bad things.

They can be afraid, nervous and scared at things. I knew a dog once that was utterly terrified by sisscors. If he even saw a pair he'd run away and hide while shaking.

They (sometimes) get lonely and jealous when alone or other dogs getting attention



I get that they are not as intelligent as humans and their emotions are not as advanced or complex as human ones. I don't think dogs feel love or malice or ambivalence, but they still have emotions.

Even if you don't like dogs, even if you HATE dogs. How can you claim they don't have emotions? They just do
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I once had a religion teacher tell the class animals had no emotions because god never gave them souls. Literally everyone laughed at him.
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*kicks the chicken*

How'd that feel
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People who say this only say it because they have no emotions

Their emotions aren't as complex as ours.
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Literally have never heard anyone say that lol
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Conflict posted...

Nobody says this.

They absolutely do.

Stop being needlessly contrarian about anything I say.

ProbablySkye posted...

People who say this only say it because they have no emotions

I think it bothers them to think that the difference between humans and animals is smaller than they want it to be.

Just like Evolution bothers people

Anarchy_Juiblex posted...

Their emotions aren't as complex as ours.

Agreed but that's a different claim entirely
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Chicken posted...

I once had a religion teacher tell the class animals had no emotions because god never gave them souls. Literally everyone laughed at him.

Yep. Same.
Most big mammals are capable of feeling basic emotion. Hell, fear basically exist in almost every living creatures. I think these things scale with intelligence and the social structure of the species. The smarter the species is, the more emotion you can experience. Simple ones like fear and anger, it is a basic survival tool and almost everything have it. Happiness, safisfaction, are basically behavior trigger theraphy. It ia also a basic survival tool. Whenever you do something that ensue your survival or ensuing to pass our genes, we get a shot of neurochemical that makes us really happy ans feel good. Thats why sex feel good, why eating feels good, etc.

The more complex emotions are like love, loyalty, the sense to want to stick together is also a tool. It encourage sex, being together for safety. Etx, although not much species have it.

And now we have empathy. For the same species, i guess it is to make sure group survival, and the most wonderful thing is inter species empathy. I guess, it probably came from some mutually beneficial relationship, but alot of examples are outside of this. Sometimes a dog just save other animals who are in danger or dolphins rescuing humans drowing. It is a wonderful thing.

Of course, in my point of, emotions are just like your hands and feet, or fangs ans claws for cats. they're evolved quite differently in every species, but you can see alot of parallel because they are tools to continue life, genetic immortality and such. It is basically our behaviour programming commands. They are just a tool to ensue survival. I just think humans are evolved to be smart enough to give them meanings, and gain control of them better than other aninals.

What i dislike is, this special snowflaking humans that think it is special human gift that only human have that makes them different and superior from any other animals. Religions are usually guilty of this. It is simply isnt true and misleading and often used to justify horrible action
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Conflict posted...

Nobody says this.

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apolloooo posted...

Chicken posted...

I once had a religion teacher tell the class animals had no emotions because god never gave them souls. Literally everyone laughed at him.

Yep. Same.
Most big mammals are capable of feeling basic emotion. Hell, fear basically exist in almost every living creatures. I think these things scale with intelligence and the social structure of the species. The smarter the species is, the more emotion you can experience. Simple ones like fear and anger, it is a basic survival tool and almost everything have it. Happiness, safisfaction, are basically behavior trigger theraphy. It ia also a basic survival tool. Whenever you do something that ensue your survival or ensuing to pass our genes, we get a shot of neurochemical that makes us really happy ans feel good. Thats why sex feel good, why eating feels good, etc.

The more complex emotions are like love, loyalty, the sense to want to stick together is also a tool. It encourage sex, being together for safety. Etx, although not much species have it.

And now we have empathy. For the same species, i guess it is to make sure group survival, and the most wonderful thing is inter species empathy. I guess, it probably came from some mutually beneficial relationship, but alot of examples are outside of this. Sometimes a dog just save other animals who are in danger or dolphins rescuing humans drowing. It is a wonderful thing.

Of course, in my point of, emotions are just like your hands and feet, or fangs ans claws fro cats. It is basically our behaviour programming commands. They are just a tool to ensue survival. I just think humans are evolved to be smart enough to give them meanings, and gain control of them better than other aninals.

What i dislike is, this special snowflaking humans that think it is special human gift that only human have that makes them different from any other animals. Religions are usually guilty of this. It is simply isnt true and misleading and ofteb used to justify horrible action

I do think there is a valid argument towards less intelligent species.

You say fear but does a fly or a fish really experience "fear" or just an instinct for survival?


I think that's a valid question.

But when you get intelligent animals. Dogs, pigs, cows, dolphins, bears, elephants. I don't think there is an argument. They feel emotions
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UnfairRepresent posted...

I do think there is a valid argument towards less intelligent species.

You say fear but does a fly or a fish really experience "fear" or just an instinct for survival?


I think that's a valid question.

But when you get intelligent animals. Dogs, pigs, cows, dolphins, bears, elephants. I don't think there is an argument. They feel emotions

depend on what you define by fear. do fish and lizards interpret fear like we do? no. it is basically an instinct, but at the very basic, yours and mine is an instinct too. but to some degree, what you said is true.

if you look at the brain, and i take this popular theory the triune brain model:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/files/2012/09/TriuneBrainUpdate-8.9.2012.jpg

as you can see the green part, aka lizard brain exist in most animals. it control fear, flight or fight reaction in living beings. outside of that, it control basic stuff, unconscious stuff like heartbeat, breathe, etc. it is the most basic instinct. as brain layers evolve and become more complex. it grows the brown part, and then the blue part, which are so far unique to humans and maybe several other animals that we can count with our fingers.

this is what they do:

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/5d/3d/b6/5d3db6412d5552b818c5940bfe1de8c6.jpg

so basically the part of the brain that makes you feel/experience fear exist and it is the same in the fish's and ours. the part that makes fish run away when they see a predator is the same as the part that makes you run when you see someone approaching you in dark alley holding a knife. the the outer part, the one that allow us to interpret fear more than flight or fight, like real distress exist only in mammals.

and the part that allow us to give meaning to that fear, interpret it, imagining fear, etc, only a handful of species can do it. for example, we can remember a scary moment in our lives, and felt fear, or we can watch a horror movie, and you are scared by the monstrous abomination on the screen, but you don't run away from the theater because we justify and control our fear with the knowledge that the movie isn't real, etc. the capability to imagine is probably the biggest barrier between them and us.
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UnfairRepresent posted...

Stop being needlessly contrarian about anything I say.

Well done. I laughed at an UR post.
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Conflict posted...

Funkydog posted...

UnfairRepresent posted...

Stop being needlessly contrarian about anything I say.

Well done. I laughed at an UR post.

Yeah that's hysterically lacking in self-awareness

I mean. It is obvious he said it on purpose :p
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I've honestly never heard anyone say animals don't have emotions.
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Anteaterking posted...

I've honestly never heard anyone say animals don't have emotions.

I'm starting to think it's an age thing.

The younger users have never heard people say it. The older ones have
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UnfairRepresent posted...

I don't think dogs feel love

You monster.

I don't know why anyone would say this, you can look at the dogs eyes and see emotions
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Uncle_Drew posted...

I don't know why anyone would say this, you can look at the dogs eyes and see emotions

They say it's transference
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UnfairRepresent posted...

Anteaterking posted...

I've honestly never heard anyone say animals don't have emotions.

I'm starting to think it's an age thing.

The younger users have never heard people say it. The older ones have

How old are you?
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Whenever I was a kid, we had some fire safety lady come in to talk to us about what to do if our house caught on fire, so we got to talking about things to take that cannot be replaced; anyways, some of the things she said to take were:

Family Photos, Money, and Person Records.

I remember one of the kids in our class raised their hand to say pets, and the fire safety lady asked what time and the kid replied "dogs". The fire safety lady then went on to explain to us that Dogs were replaceable, not worth saving, and didn't have any feelings anyways.

We were all like dude what the hell, and our whole class stopped listening to her and trying to engage her in conversation. We got in trouble with our teacher afterwards. We were all in 1st grade.
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Conflict posted...

Nobody says this.

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Perascamin posted...

Whenever I was a kid, we had some fire safety lady come in to talk to us about what to do if our house caught on fire, so we got to talking about things to take that cannot be replaced; anyways, some of the things she said to take were:

Family Photos, Money, and Person Records.

I remember one of the kids in our class raised their hand to say pets, and the fire safety lady asked what time and the kid replied "dogs". The fire safety lady then went on to explain to us that Dogs were replaceable, not worth saving, and didn't have any feelings anyways.

We were all like dude what the hell, and our whole class stopped listening to her and trying to engage her in conversation. We got in trouble with our teacher afterwards. We were all in 1st grade.

Ehh I see where's she coming from

She's supposed to be teaching you fire safety. Would you like it if people were telling your kids to go into fires or stay in fires to try to save a pet?

Adults is one thing but of course she's going to tell kids not to risk their lives.
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UnfairRepresent posted...

Perascamin posted...

Whenever I was a kid, we had some fire safety lady come in to talk to us about what to do if our house caught on fire, so we got to talking about things to take that cannot be replaced; anyways, some of the things she said to take were:

Family Photos, Money, and Person Records.

I remember one of the kids in our class raised their hand to say pets, and the fire safety lady asked what time and the kid replied "dogs". The fire safety lady then went on to explain to us that Dogs were replaceable, not worth saving, and didn't have any feelings anyways.

We were all like dude what the hell, and our whole class stopped listening to her and trying to engage her in conversation. We got in trouble with our teacher afterwards. We were all in 1st grade.

Ehh I see where's she coming from

She's supposed to be teaching you fire safety. Would you like it if people were telling your kids to go into fires or stay in fires to try to save a pet?

Adults is one thing but of course she's going to tell kids not to risk their lives.

She told us to endanger ourselves to save MONEY
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Perascamin posted...

UnfairRepresent posted...

Perascamin posted...

Whenever I was a kid, we had some fire safety lady come in to talk to us about what to do if our house caught on fire, so we got to talking about things to take that cannot be replaced; anyways, some of the things she said to take were:

Family Photos, Money, and Person Records.

I remember one of the kids in our class raised their hand to say pets, and the fire safety lady asked what time and the kid replied "dogs". The fire safety lady then went on to explain to us that Dogs were replaceable, not worth saving, and didn't have any feelings anyways.

We were all like dude what the hell, and our whole class stopped listening to her and trying to engage her in conversation. We got in trouble with our teacher afterwards. We were all in 1st grade.

Ehh I see where's she coming from

She's supposed to be teaching you fire safety. Would you like it if people were telling your kids to go into fires or stay in fires to try to save a pet?

Adults is one thing but of course she's going to tell kids not to risk their lives.

She told us to endanger ourselves to save MONEY

Yeah that;s a weird thing to tell kids.

What kids even have access to (a reasonable amount of) money in the first place?
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