Can dogs love and feel emotion?

Question

i have a golden retriever and i think it can sense my emotions because whenever i frown its tail goes down and whenever i smile it wags its tail.

and whenever i am depressed it comes to me and puts its head on my leg and just sits there and whenever i am happy it wags its tail and gives me its toy. and it follows me around the house all day!

i think they can.

.....but is there any proof?

Answer 1

A growing number of scientists agree that animals are conscious and capable of experiencing basic emotions, such as happiness, sadness, boredom or depression. A few scientists even see the possibility for higher animal emotions like love, jealousy and spite.

Scientific literature, dating back to Charles Darwin, is dotted with examples of animals loving life, but rarely does the scientific community allow such musings. In fact, only one scientist is looking at the eat-or-be-eaten animal kingdom as a place where fun and mischief define the in-the-moment lifestyle of most animals.

Five years ago behaviorist and animal-rights activist Dr. Jonathan Balcombe stood on a Virginia hotel balcony watching two crows intimately groom each other in the comfort of an abandoned billboard. He felt that the birds liked what they were doing, even if engaged in a natural, beneficial act, such as picking parasites off the other's feathers. That moment changed the way he would view animals forever.

Disagreement

Some scientists do not share Balcombe's vision of a freewheeling, happy-go-lucky animal kingdom.

"I know of no anecdotal evidence of higher emotions in animals below great apes," says University of Washington associate professor Jim Ha.

He admits that there is little scientific study on higher emotions in animals because it is difficult to measure and harder to fund. "It's as elusive as measuring dreams in animals," says the primate-, killer-whale- and crow-researcher. Ha wonders how Balcombe can presume to know what animals enjoy.

Ha concedes that "to a degree" scientists can see animal brains respond the same way human brains respond in similar situations. But high-resolution brain scans only capture simple, physiological emotions that involve the release of specific brain chemicals. Without brain scans, most field researchers rely on observed behavior and sometimes that can be misleading.

People smile when they are happy, but chimpanzees grin when they are anxious or under stress. So human interpretation of how animals respond in pleasurable situations is becoming the subject of much debate.

"We know that what makes a dog happy won't necessarily work for a cat," says Thea Brabb, attending veterinarian for the University of Washington.

Most of the time, bona fide scientific research omits interpretations of what the observer thinks the animal is feeling. That is called anthropomorphism and is usually taboo because it requires projecting human emotions onto an animal without really understanding the true nature of the behavior. It's just a guess based on what is already known. Scientists steer clear of this practice, unless it promotes science.

Dr. Jaak Panksepp, a researcher at Washington State University, studies the positive feelings of rats. Recently, he discovered that rats "enjoy" being tickled.

Panksepp measured ultrasonic squeals associated with tickling and petting. He found the rats squealed seven times more while being tickled. Though well beyond the range of human hearing, he noted that other rats reacted positively to the high-pitched sounds. He also discovered that they learned to recognize when they were about to be tickled and ran across the cage faster in anticipation.

Let's talk about s*x

Some pleasure-seeking — especially involving nonprocreative s*x — will undoubtedly shock some zoo patrons. Balcombe takes examples from a Seattle biologist's book to build his argument that s*x is pleasurable. Biologist and author Bruce Bagemihl surveyed the Zoological Record (1978-1997), which contains more than a million documents from more than 6,000 scientific journals. His book, "Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity," was published in 1999 and started the discussion about sexuality in the animal kingdom.

"To peruse Bagemihl's masterpiece is to meet evidence of pleasure-generating sexual behavior on practically every page," Balcombe says.

If animals have s*x only to propagate their species, they would not spend time or waste energy on sexual activity when there is no hope of producing viable offspring. Yet they do.

Answer 2

Yep all living things have emotions even a fly.  

Answer 3

I dont know about proof but my common sense and observation tells me dogs do love and feel emotion, I can tell when mine are sad, happy or glad to see me. They do add a lot of joy to ones life.

Answer 4

i think they can too, and everything you just said is proof enough for me :)

Answer 5

Both of my dogs (standard poodles the size of a large shepherd) experience emotions. They do the same thing that your dog does - if I feel depressed, they put their heads in my lap and look up at me with soulful eyes. When I smile or laugh, they wag their tails and put their paws up on my chest or leg. If I pick up their food dish, and jump around saying, "Want dinner?", they twist themselves inside out with excitement. I have seen both of them dream as well - they twitch and kick their leg, whine softly, and their heads move in different directions. One night while watching a nature show with a herd of elk running across the screen (they were watching) and when the animals disappeared off the screen, they both ran around to the back of the TV to see where the elk went! They went back and forth for at least 10 mins, wondering why the elk disappeared. It was hilarious!

I don't know about any scientific proof, but I know for a fact that animals experience emotions and have the ability to dream. I have two large black "doggies" the size of a small bear to prove it!  

Answer 6

I'm not totally sure on the scientific evidence- but it is true. My dogs always know when I'm sick, sad...and my cat died recently of very old age, and my dogs knew- they just sat about 20 ft away from my family while we buried our cat. Normally they would be running around and acting hyper, following us wherever we turned, but they just sense human emotion, and they know- they just do.

Answer 7

Reread what you wrote about your own dog, he clearly loves you and responds emotionally to you moods and actions, what more proof do you need?