This week’s question takes me alllll the way back to grade 10 Religion class, where my teacher at the time tried to convince us, her students, that dogs and cats didn’t have souls, therefore couldn’t experience emotions like laughter and sadness, and therefore couldn’t make it into heaven. Now the heaven discussion can be saved for another day (perhaps next weeks question) but I read an article yesterday which got my juices flowing again about the much discussed issue of whether animals can experience some of the same feelings that humans can.

Case in point: Last week the Internet and more European news outlets were flooded with distressing images of Gana, an 11-year-old gorilla at the Munster Zoo in Germany, holding up the body of her dead baby, Claudio, and pursing her lips towards his lifeless fingers. Claudio died at the age of 3 months of an apparent heart defect, and for days Gana refused to surrender his corpse to zookeepers, a saga that provoked among her a crowd of human onlookers admiring with compassion and utter sorrow.

Now it’s hard to say what exact emotions were running through Gana’s head as she held her infact baby, but the gesture itself speaks wonders about the nuturing capabilities that apes have. Obviously, apes are the closet animals to human beings so it would make sense that out of the entire animal kingdom apes would be the most likely to experience emotions. That doesn’t necessarily mean that other species of animals can’t feel sadness or happiness or pain.

Therefore, I wanna challenge everyone who reads this post to pay extra attention the next time they are around an animal, whether it be a dog, cat, horse, hamster, etc., and see if you can notice any indications of emotional competence….you may yet be surprised!

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