In Mama’s last hug, Frans De Waal talked about his field experiences as a primatologist, in particular, the drama of the social life of chimpanzees and other monkeys. The experiments mentioned in the book involved rating and testing a range of cognitive capabilities that traditionally deemed to be human exclusive, such as momories, thoughts, shame and guilt, self-control, empathy, and more controversially feelings.
The long standing tradition in the field of animal behaviour favors downplaying the role of emotion as a functional byproduct for survival. De Waal pointed out that the deliberate uses of language that strip away any sense of “feelings” or human-like desciprtion potentially keep human superior to other organisms. Granted that even scientists prove that animals has shared neural circuits, brain chemicals when certain emotions arises, they cannot prove that these different organisms experience such emotion in a similar way.
“we can only guess what they feel, but we also can’t rule our any particular feelings”
Thus we human project too much of our feelings and moods on animals; the animal just react to the environment like a machine and these neural-chemical states in the brain only serve one function: survival.
Contrary to this segregating norm between human psychology and animal behaviours, De Waal presented in the book a plethora of studies that show that animals instead possess certain “feelings” that instigate similar behaviour to human. These behaviours include revenges, griefing, cosolation, and even optimism.
However, the available tools bias towards human (i.e. the facial expresion system) are used for measuring these traits on animals, which of course fail bitterly and have been regarded as having an inferior mind. Additionally, using those sanitized description on animal behaviours further put them in a lower realm under mankind and legitimize our explotation to these animals.
Through the book, I learnt about not only chimpanzees, but pigs, birds and even fish and carbs can learn from thier experiences/past, have preferences on friends/peers, actively evaluate their environment and have expectation and hope on future.
Even there were not yet a complete proof on animal being fully capable of all sort of human “feelings”, that shall not be used to deny that they are intelligent and sentient beings.
Reflectig on our treatment on animals, do we treat them (especially farm animals) so poorly by refuse to acknowledge that animals are thinking and “feeling” individuals? Do we ignore these animals’ mental health to trade for our convenience and indulgence on meat, leather, and other accessories?
In that light, the field of animal behaviour and evolutionary psychology are not only addressing important questions about animals, it also raise important philosophical and moral questions about the relationship between us human and other organisms on earth.