When you look into your best friend's eyes, surely you can't deny that dogs have feelings, right? In our day to day, we build a bond of mutual friendship and trust with our furry ones. Each shared moment seems to be evidence that dogs are capable of experiencing various emotions and expressing them through their body language or their different vocalizations.
As guardians, we learn to interpret the facial expressions, postures and behaviors of our furry ones to communicate with them, and over time we quickly identify when our dogs are happy, sad, afraid or trying to ask us something. But, Does this mean that dogs have feelings and reason? Or are we the ones who tend to reflect our feelings in our dogs, giving them characteristics and faculties of being human?
In this article on our site, we'll explain what science says about dogs' feelings towards humans, other dogs and animals. Keep reading to discover the emotions and feelings of dogs!
Do animals have feelings?
Advances in science and technology have allowed us to identify that several animals, mainly mammals, experience basic emotions in a similar way to the humans. This is because they have the same brain structures as us and process emotions in very deep regions of their brain that form the limbic system.
Emotions are understood as a wide range of hormonal and neurochemical responses that are associated with the limbic system of the brain, and that predispose a individual to react in a certain way when perceiving with their senses and interpreting through neuronal activity certain external stimulus. This process of interpretation allows both humans and many animal species to experience emotions in different ways.
If we observe animals in their habitat, or our dog at home, we will clearly see that they react very differently to positive emotions, such as joy, than to negative ones, such as fear. It is also clear that animals are sentient beings, who can develop affective ties with both humans and other animals, as well as being victims of pain and stress when they are subjected to a negative environment, abuse or neglect.
But is this enough to say that animals have feelings? Next we will better explain the difference between emotions and feelings in scientific terms, focusing on the key question for this article, which is whether dogs have feelings.
Scientifically, do dogs have feelings?
Many people wonder if dogs have feelings or instincts, but the truth is that they are two very different things. Instinct can be defined, in a very brief and simplified way, as the natural and innate motor that leads a living being to react to various stimuli. It is something inherent to the nature of animals, transmitted from generation to generation through genes, like an adaptive capacity that allows their survival.
Despite having undergone a long process of domestication, dogs also retain several instinctive behaviors, such as the hierarchical instinct (also known as "pack instinct"), the hunting instinct and the "habit" of pointing. But this does not mean that they are incapable of feeling or experiencing different emotions. Instinct is an inherent part of canine nature, and the ability to have emotions or feelings is not disabled by the preservation of instinct. Human beings themselves also retain some behaviors associated with the survival instinct, which could be considered the most basic and fundamental instinct of all species.
So, do dogs have feelings? Not quite. Let's go in parts to better understand why the statement that dogs have feelings is so incomplete:
As we saw earlier, dogs (and many other animals) have emotions and experience them in much the same way as humans. One of the most important studies for this discovery was carried out by the neuroscientist Gregory Berns, from Emory University, who has decided to train several dogs to get them to will be adapted to the MRI machine (functional magnetic resonance imaging), which allows images of brain activity to be obtained. Why can't we say that dogs have feelings?
Well, because psychology has traditionally differentiated between emotions and feelings As we have seen, emotions basically consist of neural, chemical and hormones that predispose the individual to act in a certain way when faced with a certain stimulus. For example, joy is an emotion that can cause the dog to smile in response to her guardian's arrival in the home
In turn, feelings are also associated with the limbic system, but involve a conscious evaluation, in addition to a spontaneous predisposition to certain answers. It is not possible to think of smoothed feelings of emotions, since they would derive precisely from a conscious and general reflection on emotions, mainly considering the subjective experience of each individual (how each individual experiences their own emotions).
So, the main problem we currently have in saying that animals have feelings (including dogs), is that our knowledge about their cognitive systemhas not yet confirmed that they make conscious reflections on their own emotions. In other words, we still do not have scientific evidence to show that dogs and other animals are capable of connecting the specific emotions they experience in certain contexts with complex thoughts about this experience.
Let's say that to affirm that dogs have feelings as well as emotions, your furry should be able to reflect on the joy he feels when seeing you come home, to conclude that his spontaneous reaction of vigorously wagging his tail or smiling is due to his affection for you. But to this day, science and technology have not yet allowed us to demonstrate this kind of complex and reflective thinking in dogs.
So while we know that animals and dogs have emotions, we still can't say with any scientific basis that they also have feelings. And also for this reason Dogs are not considered to have feelings of guilt, since in order to feel guilty they should reflect on something they have done that is considered negative or undesirable in our culture.
Do dogs feel love?
Dogs' bodies also generate oxytocin, better known as the "love hormone" Another great observation from Dr. Berns' aforementioned research was that the most positive neural response in all dogs has occurred when they have perceived the scent of their "favorite human." ", stimulating a brain region known as the caudate nucleus that is associated with love in both dogs and people.
When the dog perceives the smell of its owner and, consequently, also of its home, this leads to an increase in the production and secretion of oxytocin, which allows our furry ones to look sohappy and excited when they see us or share good times with us.
In addition, a study carried out by psychologist Andrea Beetz has revealed that dogs and humans experience a very similar increase in oxytocin levels after sharing a session of caressing and pampering of approximately ten minutes. So they both grasp the benefits of this interaction and enjoy being in the company of those who do it well, just as we do.
But in addition to occasionally experiencing excitement or a feeling of well-being when being with their guardians, dogs also have a great affective memory, which is also associated with their well-developed senses. That is why a dog can be very happy to meet a person or another dog, even when months or years have passed since the last time they saw each other.
Logically, dogs do not express their affection in the same way as us, since their social behavior and their language are oriented according to different codes. That is why your dog probably does not feel comfortable in a hug, but shows his affection completely spontaneously mainly through his unconditional loy alty
