Do animals really experience love?
Do animals really experience love?
Pets do not get tired day after dayto prove to a person their devotion and love, they save their masters and sometimes do it even sacrificing their own lives. Everyone knows the monogamous species of animals who find themselves a couple who remain faithful for life. Nevertheless, people still doubt whether animals are capable of such a feeling as love.
Do animals have feelings?
Man, so it was, all alongthe existence of a humanistic civilization considers itself the crown of creation. Pain, love, hope, emotions and feelings are believed to be accessible only to man. Rene Descartes also believed that animals can not even feel the pain of pain: he conducted experiments on unfortunate animals, intentionally torturing them, and said that the screams and squeals of the distraught experimental subjects are roughly the same as the noise of a broken mechanism. Nevertheless, any person who communicates constantly with animals, knows perfectly well how strong and deep feelings they are able to experience. Perhaps in ancient times people understood this a little better, because it's not for nothing that animals symbolize different human qualities of character. Animals have repeatedly argued that they are capable of experiencing true love and devotion to the master. Everyone knows cases when cats and dogs died without owners from melancholy, just stop eating. Seeing such examples of the manifestation of genuine feelings, one can only doubt whether a person is capable of experiencing true love. Observations of animal groups confirm that they are similarly attached to each other, just like humans. This is especially noticeable in the case of monkeys, whose behavior can usually be easily interpreted by people.Scientists were shocked by the case in the Cameroonian zoo: one of the chimps, named Dorothy, died of a heart attack. Then the rest of the monkeys embraced, comforting each other and showing bitter experiences.Even in the life of those animals that show theirfeelings are not the most humanly understandable way, love and affection plays an equally important role. Experiments have shown that when meeting friends, people relax, and their heartbeats slow. The same happens with other social animals, for example, it is especially evident in cows who feel better next to friends in the herd.
What neurobiology says on this score
To prove that the nature of feelings in animals is notdiffers from human, can be cited as an example of the study of "hormones of love": oxytocin and dopamine. These hormones regulate feelings and social behavior in animals in the same way as in humans. Under the influence of oxytocin, people become kinder and more attentive, but only to those whom they consider "their own." The results of the studies confirmed that in animals the effect of this hormone is absolutely similar.To recognize that animals are capable of experiencing the same love as people, the latter is only hindered by arrogance.And here for a conjugal love the hormone answers a hormoneDopamine. In the brain of both partners under the influence of this hormone, changes occur, after which they react to their "second half" in a special way, not being interested in any other individuals. The mechanism of dopamine, as the neurobiological basis of love, is the same for animals and humans.
