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Do Reptiles have emotions?

  • Yes

    Votes: 61 55.0%
  • No

    Votes: 35 31.5%
  • I'm not sure

    Votes: 15 13.5%

  • Total voters
    111
  • Poll closed .
Status
Not open for further replies.
I'm guessing the salty was a juvinile.

I can relate to how he is feeling, I'm sure Lizzy is bromating for winter and will be back in a few months, but I do miss Lizzy's daily visits and his antics.

I believe it was about 5 years old, so just a very young croc. We have a frilled neck lizard in our backyard and many birds in our tree. I love living in this area, out of the way of everything. We visit my uncle in the city and it's so different, you can catch buses and trains to everything down there but it's so hectic, it doesn't have a fresh and pleasant smell to it (talking about the city, not saying his house stinks lol) and the only birds you see are those fat city pigeons.
 
Longirostris
Answer
Humans; being human; would kill the animals
Stuff them with apples
and bake slowly over an open fire
Now that is probably what would happen in reality

I am really not trying to wind anyone up here with my previous post
But as I said I am no philosopher
I understand that part pretty well you just described so well [I think] regarding non repetitive or conditioned learning, puzzle solving, and cognitive learning, but how does that relate to free will??

My last post was about the definition of Free Will and how I believe it could equally apply to animals

If Free Will is the freedom to choose from various alternatives without coercion; why do we call that instinct in animals but free will in people, when the result appears to be exactly the same??
 
Cognition is basically "The process of thought". Instinct or innate behavior is the inherent inclination of a living organism toward a particular behavior. Learned behaviour = that one is pretty obvious. Therefore isn't cognition just a part of learned behaviour?

Unfortunately we cannot just compartmentalise everything and just drop them all in their nice, neat little boxes. Emotions just don't fall within a neat little box, we have them and animals don't. We cannot rationalise that this behaviour in animals is learned or instinct and not apply the same rationale to human behaviour and emotions. Human emotion can be explained as learned or instinct with the same arguments as used against animals.
 
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Ah longqi, clearly you are trying to wind people up. Surely you can see that everyone of these behaviours you have listed could be attributed to instinct or conditioned responses. I come back to what I have said earlier. There are 3 behaviourial responses to any given circumstance or environmental stimuli. The first is instinct. Instinct is a preprogrammed response, it happens without thought, all animals including humans display instinctive reactions to given stimuli. Instinct is clearly the first explanation for most behaviours by all animals including humans.The second is a learned response through observation, this is called conditioned learning. There are a growing number of animals that have demonstrated clearly the capacity to learn through observation and repitition. The third is to think about the response to the stimuli. This is called cognitive learning. Lets present a hypothetical situation so everyone here can grasp the concept.

There are 10 humans and 10 of whatever other animal you wish to choose in 2 seperate locations. There are 2 apple trees at each location with only 5 apples on each tree. Lets assume for arguements sake that the animals we have picked are apple eaters, you could pick any type of food you want to match the animals diet in the discussion. Everybody/animal needs to eat. The first problem that presents is how do we feed everyone when there is not enough food. Well the answer in humans is simple we think through the problem and divide the food up half an apple for each person. In the animals, it will be the strongest and fittest first. There will be some sharing particularly among mothers and siblings but otherwise instinct will prevail and the strongest willeat and the rest will go hungry.

Sorry longqi, unfortunately I acccidently posted so I will have to continue this post on a follow up, not enough time to do a complete edit and I had not finished with my discussion.
I
what about the many various animals that do share meals? for example the wild dogs of africa make sure that everyone of the pack gets a feed, even the old and infirm and the young. male penguins go without food to protect the eggs while their partners go hunt.
 
Longirostrus........Depending on the humans, they will also fight over the apples. No difference.
 
Longqi,

Continuation of earlier thread.

The more important point though in this discussion is why would the animals behave in such a manner when clearly if every animal ate then none needs to starve. In my view the reason is quite simple and that is because that is a cognitive response to a stimuli that the animals are unable to make. They will not and do not think. They react to the given stimuli according to preprogammed instincts or learned responses. People here can put any spin on it they like but in the end thinking is a cognitive response/behaviour that up till now is an entirely human process and has not definatively been demonstrated by any other animals. Although I will concede that there are examples of some animals in certain situations that appear to demonstrate some ability to think in order to solve a problem, the point I made in my post a few days ago that these examples almost always involve food as a reward for the exhibition of the behaviour, which for me demonstrates conditioning. Please, I did not say some animals cannot remember just that they do not think.

Perhaps I should be more definitive with the word think. For me in this arguement thinking is the process where baser behaviours (instincts conditioned responses) are set aside so a reasoned response can take place where after examining the stimuli and working through an analytical process an acceptable outcome can be achieved. The outcome can be good or bad and there is no reason why even after the thinking process has taken place the outcome could still be that the strongest eat and the weak do not.

I have read a lot of posts here talking about animals taking flight and being fearful in given situations. Maybe we need to clarify responses and definitions. Fear and fright are not the same thing. They are 2 different behaviours that elicit 2 different responses. A reaction to a fright is instinctive. Fear is learned so it is bought about by conditioning and as a consequence elicits a conditioned response. Emotions are what we "feel" about certain external environmental stimuli. There are many words employed to describe what we feel, such as love, hate, fear, anger, jealousy, bitterness, betrayal, joy, happiness, the list could go on. These words all describe "feelings" we have about a given stimuli. We are conscious of them. We are aware of them. Abstract thought again.

As humans we are always looking for ways to "label" everything in our lives, because it makes us more comfortable with who we are and what our place is and how we can be part of what is going on in the natural world around us. In suggesting our pets in particular reptiles have emotions, we are doing nothing more then looking for and in a lot of peoples opinions finding behaviours in our pets that fit in with our stereotyping of what constitutes emotions and emotional responses.

I keep hundreds of dragons over many species and I have never in 20 years observed any of my animals displaying what I would describe as emotion. I see behaviours that are interesting but they are not in my view emotions and can easily be described as baser behaviours. How many times have I heard people say that their Frilly's are sulking. I use the same description myself when one of my Frilled dragons refuses food or demonstrates some other abnormal behaviour. The truth is that the animal is responding to an unsatisfactory stimuli, not enough variiation in diet, not enough humidity in the enclosure, tempretures not right, stress from competing animals and so on. We don't or at least I hope we don't just pass this condition of with a shrug, consoling ourselves, by saying it's just sad or not happy, no need to worry, it will come good soon enough, without actually looking into what has triggered the behaviour.

We all love our pets, I have a staffy that I swear is human. But I know she is not. I also know that in spite of how smart we think she is she is not capable of an abstract thought. My wife thinks that sissy (our staffy) loves her, the dog will go to her every time in preference to me. The dog sits at her feet when we watch TV, the dog demonstrates every aspect of love that we would see in human behaviour. Devotion, loyalty, etc, (interestring eh, more emotions to describe emotions). Why does our dog behave in this manner. Because my wife walks her everyday feeds her most days includes her on car outings and as a general rule treats her like she is one of the family.

If my wife is not around then what does the dog do. She comes to me in preference to my son and does exactly the same thing. Why because occassionally I will feed her and pat her. This is inspite of the fact that my youngest son will play with her for hours and take her out walking and generally spend much more time with her then me. But he never feeds her. This is clearly a learned response to our family situation. Our dog knows by conditioning that my wife is her number one meal ticket followed by me. Interestingly the dog demonstrates little interest in my youngest soon who plays with her all the time and even less interest in my 19 year old soon who has absolutely nothing to do with her. She wont even come to him when she is called with out serious cajoling.

I am surprised but probably shouldn't have been that this discussion has gone on as long as it has and that so many people really believe that animals are capable of exhibiting emotions. Again, they are behaviours that we misinterpret as emotions because we are trying to find a label for what we see that we are comfortable with and that we want our pets to feel for us. We ourselves are being overly emotional in suggesting our pets have emotions but nontheless understandable because it is human nature to look for reciprication of our feelings about our pets and other things that matter to us in the natural world.

At this point I would love to have some input for someone qualified in neurological sciences that could give us a definative opinion as to whether animals even have a brain function in what ever hemisphere that would allow them to feel anything on an emotional level. Particularly I am looking for the capacity for awareness of emotion for with out the awareness it is a baser response.

We can keep going around and around and we can keep looking at each other even more incredulously but I really think some solid factual input now would be really good. So I am now stepping out of this thread until such time as someone can contribute something that is not emotional and has some basis in scientific fact, whether it be favouring my view or otherwise. And please no more "did you see the WHATEVER ANIMAL on such and such it could do so and so. If anybody has definitive evidence of any animal performing a function that requires abstract thought the condition required to recognise and interpret and label emotions please let me know.

As I final comment I know my view is quite conflicting with a lot of people's view here on this forum. I have not been discourteous, rude or denigrated anybody else's opinion on this topic at a personal level. Please show me the same courtesy. Failure to adhere to this will result in my hunting you down and resoundingly beating you mercilessly to a pulp. Baser response applies, "rage".
 
Saximus....At first it will be nice and civil but as starvation becomes an issue, survival instincts WILL take over and eventually the animals, both human and non human, will even start to eat each other. Really, Longi's original example is probably a bad example.
 
You say survival instincts will take over. Which means you are agreeing that this type of behaviour is instinctual and not emotional then?
 
Longirostris
Answer
Humans; being human; would kill the animals
Stuff them with apples
and bake slowly over an open fire
Now that is probably what would happen in reality

I am really not trying to wind anyone up here with my previous post
But as I said I am no philosopher
I understand that part pretty well you just described so well [I think] regarding non repetitive or conditioned learning, puzzle solving, and cognitive learning, but how does that relate to free will??

My last post was about the definition of Free Will and how I believe it could equally apply to animals

If Free Will is the freedom to choose from various alternatives without coercion; why do we call that instinct in animals but free will in people, when the result appears to be exactly the same??

Sorry Longqi

And a very fair question, I have committed a cardinal sin and jumped into the conversation by actually making an assumption that Recharge actually meant to say something along the lines of free will equates to consciousness. You are quite right to query this and I apologise for jumping in and making the assumption, perhaps we should ask Recharge to explain what he means by free will. I will not put any further words in anybodies mouth

Saximus....At first it will be nice and civil but as starvation becomes an issue, survival instincts WILL take over and eventually the animals, both human and non human, will even start to eat each other. Really, Longi's original example is probably a bad example.

Fugawi,

I agree my example was crude and probably poorly thought out. I was just trying to get people to think of a situation where humans and animals are in the same situation and work through what the various responses to the situation would be from each group. I was trying to demonstrate that as a rule humans will think through the situation, propose and analyse alternatives and in the end come to a pragmatic solution. The animals will not. Longqi's had the best response so far. He says the humans would kill the animals and eat them, which is exactly right and thinking outside the square.

Longqi is almost demonstrating my point. The ability to think of alternatives to a certain situation. The only problem is that he ignored one of my parameters that I established in my poor hypothetical example, that being that the animals and humans were located in 2 different locations. But then the arguement comes from Longqi or someone else, yes but how far apart are those 2 locations and is it possible to still kill the animals so we can not only eat them but we will have 5 extra apples. You get my point, I hope, we are all thinking about how we are going to solve the initial problem of how do we satiate our hunger or need for food.

I am possibly deviating to far away from the crux of the discussion to try and demonstrate consciousness as a critical component of the ability to think and therfore feel and recognise emotions. I am sorry about this. I am not sure that everybody understands the concept of abstract thought. That is the thinking process that allows you to put a label to your feelings and or responses to externmal stimuli and call them emotions in the first place. Without this there is nothing because we would not recognise much less categorise any responses or feeling as anything.

Without consciousness (abstract thought), every response to any stimuli in any environment from any organism is a baser response because it remains unrecognised and therefore uncategorised/labelled. That does not mean that the mother chimp feeding and nurturing her baby is not recognised and even the behaviour understood by either members of the troop. But what it does say is that without a conscious entity in attendance trying to put a label to the behaviour, there is no recognition of the behaviour as an emotion nor would it be categorised as anything other then a baser instinct to procreate and nurture the young of the species. Yet, when we as a conscious entity get involved as observers we not only categorise the behaviour but 9 out of 10 of us would even go so far as to give it an emotional label and call it love.
 
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Longerostis
These posts are great [even if some of them do baffle me a little bit] and please keep dropping things in here
These are valid points that need to be thought about

Abstract thought
So if a baby chimp rolls onto its back as its mother licks it and seems to 'purr' it is reacting to external stimuli?
I think that is correct?
But because we cannot understand exactly what each 'purr' means we say this not an emotional response?
I think that is correct
But if a week old baby snuggles against its human parent we say this is an emotional response??

That is where I get lost
 
Ok, guys and gals, I think I have a good explanation to describe emotions. (It's my personal belief and way up for debate).

We recognise emotions by communications, written, language, posture, facial features. The first two, animals cannot use to communicate to us. The other two we compare to human responses. For example, we grin, showing our teeth, showing happiness. Most other animals would consider that as a threat, including chimps. A chimpanzee bares its teeth as a threat, not a smile. Ergo, different animals show different things in different ways to us. A snake doesn't have the facial muscles to smile when happy, can't write its feelings or speak its feelings in our language and we do not know or recognise the posture of a happy snake so we judge these things, comparing it to human ways of recognising emotions. This is not to say they don't have emotions, just means it is difficult for us to understand the subtle facial features and postures, animals such as reptiles show. The feelings and emotions we humans have are the result of subtle chemical changes within us. We humans communicate this as "feelings" or emotions. If you tickle a beardie under the chin, I would say that a slight chemical change, perhaps euphoric, slowly floods the Beardie and it closes its eyes and lifts its head in response. I therefore would call this "mild euphoric feeling" an emotional response in the same way that to tickle a child or stroking someones hair, can, give humans the same chemical euphoric response that we call joy, happiness etc.

Consciousness, abstract thought etc are only ways WE communicate and understand these chemical "feelings" and are unnecessary to actually having emotions.
 
Fugawi
I actually understood that without having to think too much
Well put together and hopefully will ignite some more debate
 
I think Longirostris has it in the bag!!!

Many people including myself have put forward similar ideas but I think Longirostris explains it perfectly.
Despite our personal definitions of what constitutes emotion and our subsequent labeling of animal behaviours , it means absolutely diddly squat to the animal in question because it does not recognise it's behaviour as an emotion, therefore it isn't.
 
So if the concept and wording for emotion had never been invented by humans it would be fair to say that what we display and call emotions, are not actually emotions. Given that emotion is an abstract concept invented by humans to label something we really don't understand. We would still more than likely display all the things we consider emotions, they just wouldn't have a label so do they then become instinct.
 
Steve
Do we know that animals cannot recognise their behaviour as emotions??
If we do know this; how do we know it??
Virtually every animal and most insects have means of communication that we are barely beginning to understand??
 
There are 10 humans and 10 of whatever other animal you wish to choose in 2 seperate locations. There are 2 apple trees at each location with only 5 apples on each tree. Lets assume for arguements sake that the animals we have picked are apple eaters, you could pick any type of food you want to match the animals diet in the discussion. Everybody/animal needs to eat. The first problem that presents is how do we feed everyone when there is not enough food. Well the answer in humans is simple we think through the problem and divide the food up half an apple for each person. In the animals, it will be the strongest and fittest first. There will be some sharing particularly among mothers and siblings but otherwise instinct will prevail and the strongest will eat and the rest will go hungry.

Sorry longqi, unfortunately I acccidently posted so I will have to continue this post on a follow up, not enough time to do a complete edit and I had not finished with my discussion.
This is arguably still an instinct. Humans simply have some instinct to form a social group and assist each other. There's plenty of other animals that live in packs or hives and display similar seemingly altruistic behavior.

It's hard to even say if humans are even capable of completely altruistic actions since they will inevitably feel some reward or pleasure from helping another.
 
Longerostis
These posts are great [even if some of them do baffle me a little bit] and please keep dropping things in here
These are valid points that need to be thought about

Abstract thought
So if a baby chimp rolls onto its back as its mother licks it and seems to 'purr' it is reacting to external stimuli?
I think that is correct?
But because we cannot understand exactly what each 'purr' means we say this not an emotional response?
I think that is correct
But if a week old baby snuggles against its human parent we say this is an emotional response??

That is where I get lost

Ah Longqi, good point and very succinctly put. My short response would be no it is not an emotional response. It is only an emotional response to the observer otherwise it is a perfect example of a baser response from the baby looking for comfort (more likely food) from its mother. In this scenario the mother is demonstrating a baser response also, the instinct in nurturing/protecting her baby. The mother would be aware of a physical feeling of pleasantness even euphoria brought about by the release of certain chemicals into her brain that comes with this nurturing process that she would give a label to as joy, happiness, love etc.

The baby would be pretty much devoid of any feeling other then security from the physical presence of its mother. The baby would certainly not experience any emotional response as it has not yet formed any bond. The observers are the ones that try to categorise the behaviour as emotional by giving it a label usually "motherly love". I am pretty sure the mother does not really care about what is happening she just knows it is good. The interesting thing in this is that if I take the baby away from its natural mother and place it in an uncaring environment where the interaction with its peers is only as required to survive, the child is likely to grow up with minimal if any understanding of love, goodness, happiness, etc.

Interesting arguement though Longqi amd it highlights the need for me to make a qualifing/clarifying statement as far as my previous comments are concerned. The 3 responses that I have referred to are not necessarily mutually exclusive. By that I mean you can have all three elements in a response to a stimuli. In fact I would argue that in every situation or stimuli there is virtually always an instinctive reaction initially and from there comes either the conditioned or cognitive response, very often both.
 
So steve, because an animal cannot communicate these chemical reactions we call feelings, in written or audible language that we understand, therefore they are not feelings. ( Not said nastily, just debating with reason:)).
 
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