Do animals feel love?

Life has never existed without love.

3,500 million years ago, the first unicellular microorganism cried desperately to find someone in the world to join with him. The first instinct of love had sprung up in the world. Love is the first emotion, older than consciousness or sex.

Until a few decades ago, knowledge about and  studies of love and emotions belonged to the fields of  philosophy and psychology. The mind was separated from the brain. Even today, the mechanisms of which brain activity controls consciousness and thought are not clear. But, in the second half of the 20th century, scientific advances in the neurological sciences and the development of sophisticated techniques such as MNR (magnetic nuclear resonance) and CAT (computerized axial tomography) revealed that there three different parts of the brain are responsible for emotional reactions.

In 1949, Dr. MacLean discovered that the brain's structure has three parts. The first is the reptilian brain; the second, called the lymbic system, developed when mammals appeared in the world; this brain continued developing to create the third part, the  neocortex or primate brain. The three parts are closely related; depending on different life situations, there are many neuronal circuits that connect the three of them.

 

The reptilian brain is responsible for  mobility and  automatic responses to external stimuli  such as struggle, escape, looking for food; it refers to the survival instinct.

The lymbic system (the thalamus, hypothalamus,  hippocampus, and amygdala) is responsible for emotions. There are seven emotions: rage, contempt, repugnance, fear, sadness, surprise and pleasure; these are called “basic emotions” because we share them with primates.

 These emotions triggered physiological changes like tachycardia, shivers, increased body temperature, and different facial and body expressions such as furrowing the brow or wrinkling the nose to show one's state of mind. The lymbic system is also responsible for memories of emotional reactions (pain, pleasure) throughout our life.

The neocortex or primate brain is basically related to the abilities of planning, working memory, motivation and attention. The evolution of the neocortex from the primate period to the hominid period has developed and increased abilities in the neocortex (“the rational brain”).

MNR and CAT have revealed cerebral structures and chemical substances that are common in mammals, reptiles and birds, and so all of these animals can feel.

After this brief scientific introduction, here are some different examples of emotions in animals:

• If you  stroke a mouse,  its cardiac rhythm and body temperature increased  just like a human being.
• Dolphins help each other up to the surface to breathe when they are sick. 
• One October 2006, a herd of elephants went into a little village in India and destroyed it totally. The elephants were looking for a female elephant that had drowned in a river near the village. They felt rage and sadness. Scientists have studied elephants’ brain images and have discovered that the hyppocampus is extremely large; this is the part related to emotions and memories. They have also discovered that the most aggressive elephants in a herd are the adolescents. Perhaps this is  because these elephants have seen how hunters killed their mothers. This type of behaviour is very common in mammals that live in herds.

Animal love is  evident,  when animals are separated from their mates. If a mate dies or disappears, all the members of the herd feel sorrow. Primates have an intense emotional life. Several species of primates give up eating for periods of time. Infant chimpanzees or gorillas that have been taken from their mothers develop aggressive behaviour due to the lack of love.

I'm sure that in our daily life, we have all seen expressions of love with our pets. It seems that dogs love people. They are sad when their owners die or disappear. There are many examples of dogs risking their lives to save a person. All of these examples show us that animals have different feelings of love.

But, can animals really love? It is very difficult to argue about the emotional world of animals. Animals can't say what they are feeling, so we must rely on measurements, observations and experiments. We can  only observe their behaviour and hypothesize about their emotions. If analyzing human emotions is very difficult, it is even more difficult to understand animal emotions. 

Is there any correlation between animal and human emotions? We still don't know how the human brain works exactly, and so there are  many questions to answer.

It looks like love, but we'll never know.....

If you're interested in the world of emotions, I recommend you to read National Geographic (special edition about the brain and emotions) 2012.

You could also watch the film "Eight Below", inspired by a true story. It is an exciting action adventure about loyalty and the bonds of friendship in the extreme wilderness of Antarctica.

                    A leopard and a baboon

                                                      The Life Sailor