Animals and Feelings

Dolphins have a paralimbic lobe that the human brain does not possess, an area associated with the capacity for elaborate social communication and emotions relating to maternal feelings and separation anxiety. Emotional responses become more limited in simpler animals. Most researchers, for example limit nonhuman mammalian emotions to anger, fear, loneliness, and joy. Among reptilian species, emotions seem limited to primitive fight-or flight reactions. According to the author of If Dogs Could Talk, many animals that humans eat on Memorial or Remembrance Day, Xmas, and other national holidays, are capable of feeling anger, sadness, depression, and affection.