Non-human animals, referred to below as animals, also feel emotions. They become recognizable to scientists by observing facial expressions or by measuring physiological parameters.
In animals, emotions as cognitive and subjective interpretations are difficult or impossible to access using measurement methods. However, this does not exclude their existence. In order to be able to feel emotions, animals would need corresponding cognitive and conscious parts. If we assume that similarly constructed species have comparable perceptions, then we can infer the existence of feelings in other species on the basis of sensory similarities.
It is postulated that it is highly unreasonable to exclude subjective experiences of emotions in other animals. It is important to note that subjective experiences probably differ between species and also between individuals within a species. Each species has evolved under specific environmental selection pressures and has a body and brain that are unique in their form. However, some species, such as chimpanzees and humans, are relatively similar because they share a long evolutionary history. The way emotions are manifested in humans and apes is also very similar, including homologous facial expressions.
As for emotions, we know introspectively that we experience them ourselves. However, this is the only direct evidence we have. Emotions are not visible from the outside, which is why they are often denied in non-verbal organisms.
Feelings are most likely similar when evolutionary pathways overlap. Similar to the unique evolutionary pathways of different species, individuals within a species all have their own developmental pathways that shape the body and brain in form and performance. We therefore expect intraspecific differences in the way emotions manifest. We will never know what it is like to be a bat, but neither will we know exactly what it is like to be our neighbor. Feelings are difficult to detect in other species because they cannot verbally communicate their inner states. However, it would be naïve to believe that humans always know what they are feeling. Many people see a therapist to find out. Also, people are likely to react in ways they consider socially desirable, which makes it difficult to measure the actual feelings people experience.
It has not yet been scientifically proven whether all animals with a spinal cord have feelings. But the involvement of such structures, which are highly conserved in vertebrates, casts doubt on the emphasis on the uniqueness of humans. The human brain is hardly categorically different from other brains. Nevertheless, we do not deny that the human brain has features that other species lack and that these unique structures can alter emotional experiences. At the same time, this is also true for other species as all species have unique brains.
If you want to draw conclusions about emotions or feelings in animals, there are various approaches such as measuring the emotional facial expressions of animals, body expressions and physiological arousal, which can be measured using thermography, pupillometry, heart rate measurements, hormone levels and the like. Emotions can thus be scientifically investigated. At present, we are still unable to measure emotions in humans and animals. Investigating visible emotions makes it easier to compare humans and other species and leads us away from the unreliability of introspection.
Perhaps it should not always be a question of whether the postulated variables are known. Nor does one ask an astronomer to explain gravity, which is invisible, in order to explain planetary motion. Science is full of postulated intervening variables to give meaning to observed phenomena. The invisibility of animal feelings is not a good argument against them.
If we take a typically human phenomenon and ask the question whether it also occurs in chimpanzees, for example, it is more likely that this behaviour characterizes us better than them. The literature on animal behavior is full of examples where we have misjudged animals based on human test preferences. In doing so, we overlook the uniqueness of other species. Perhaps we should also take more of an animal perspective when asking questions[1].
[1] Vgl. Kret et al. (2022) My Fear Is Not, and Never Will Be, Your Fear: On Emotions and Feelings in Animals, Affect Sci 3(1):182-189.
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