If you want to know how song changes the shape of a finch's brain, science can help. If you want to know how learning a song alters genetic patterns, affects mate choice and ultimately influences populations, you can learn that too. But what if you want to know how a singing bird feels?
That, it turns out, is a scientifically uncertain and even controversial question. It's difficult to study animal emotions with formal rigor, and the notion that animals might have rich inner lives was disregarded for much of the 20th century. From the behaviorist perspective pioneered by psychologists like Ivan Pavlov and B.F. Skinner, thinking animals had complex emotions was an unjustified assumption.
But from another perspective, it's as much an assumption to think animals don't have feelings. After all, humans are animals, too, and whether big brains and language are needed to experience happiness and sadness is unknown.
Read more from Jonathan Balcombe about the inner life of animals in an exclusive excerpt from the new book Exultant Ark.Balcombe talked with Wired.com and took us on a photographic tour.
Wired.com: You write that 'existing evidence, and common sense, supports the conclusion that all vertebrate animals are sentient,' capable of feeling pain and pleasure, and of having experiences. 'Common sense' is a red flag, though. Isn't that just another term for gut feeling, or even superstition?
Jonathan Balcombe: Pleasure is a private experience, well nigh impossible to prove, though of course scientists don't like the word 'prove.' And there are good reasons for being skeptical of making assumptions that are difficult to prove. But what I'm getting at is everyday experience: the capacity to be empathic in viewing other animals' experiences and comparing them to our own.
Nobody denies that other humans are sentient, though it's no more possible to prove another human being is sentient than it is to prove an animal's sentience. We don't accept such solipsism. It would be far-fetched. So let's stop drawing this line between humans and all other animals.
We accept, as we should, that we're sentient. Given that as a baseline, we know that sentience and consciousness have evolved. We might talk about where to draw the line taxonomically, but I find it really objectionable when scientists use the solipsist crutch to leave animals outside the circle of moral concern, which is the implication of all this.
Wired.com: But humans can score high on tests designed to measure aspects of sentience. Many animals don't.
Balcombe: Well, humans designed the tests. We sometimes struggle to put ourselves in the place of another animal. But the science has advanced. I really enjoy the ingenuity of scientists testing optimism and pessimism in starlings, episodic memory in scrub jays and meadow voles, joy in rats. These are rigorous studies.
But we shouldn't assume that because an animal does poorly on a test, it doesn't have self-recognition or a theory of mind. It's quite likely we've done a poorly designed experiment. For a long time, people thought chimpanzees weren't good at recognizing faces. Then someone had the bright idea of testing chimps on other chimps' faces, rather than our own.
Wired.com: I think many people would acknowledge the existence of animal pleasure, but that's arguably a very simple experience compared to subjective states like happiness or fulfillment. How can you compare those?
Balcombe:: I can think of a few studies to address that. One, of starlings, concluded that these birds become optimistic or pessimistic based on living conditions. Another showed bereavement in baboons. Pessimism and optimism and bereavement are not fleeting feelings. Studies like these show that animals' emotional states are not just a series of snapshots. They are beings who have long-term emotional states.
Granted, I've only mentioned baboons and starlings, but there you've got a mammalian representative and an avian one. I'd say that's preliminary evidence that many other kinds of birds and mammals are capable.
Wired.com: But how do you know these feelings are truly felt? Couldn't it be like what some researchers have claimed of fish — that they have a physiological response to pain, but don't actually feel it?
Balcombe: That's the challenge. How do you get a starling to tell you that he or she truly feels pessimistic? I agree that birds being less likely to flip a lid on a box containing an ambiguous outcome doesn't necessarily mean they're feeling pessimistic, but it's what you might expect if they were.
Wired.com: How should these insights be applied?
Balcombe: The capacity to feel pleasure and pain have large implications. Pleasure is a huge part of sentience, and sentience is the bedrock of ethics. We have a moral code because others have life that matters. If you want to call others 'humans,' fine: Humans can suffer, they have interests, things can matter to them. But now we're extending that beyond humans. We have to factor that into the calculus.
Wired.com: But wouldn't we need to factor feelings into how we judge animal interaction? I recognize the sentience of the mice outside, and also the sentience of the fox. And the fox eats the mouse.
Balcombe: I don't perceive that the fox has much choice about what he or she gets to eat. Maybe that's an exemption the fox has. Perhaps the fox isn't a moral agent, and cannot reflect on questions of right or wrong. Though that's an interesting frontier in animal behavior: Can animals show virtue, distinguish good from bad acts? It's controversial.
But we can make choices. Maybe that's the burden of being a moral species, of being so intellectual. Intelligence comes with duties. That's where the rubber meets the road, where the science of animal pleasure and sentience meets with how we ought to treat animals.
Above:
Beluga Whale
Dolphins and beluga whales have been seen blowing bubble rings and swimming through them. 'It appears to happen much more commonly in captivity,' said Balcombe. 'That may shed light on why they do it: to relieve boredom. Another theory is that it's play. Those aren't mutually exclusive. My gut feeling is that it's stimulating for them. If you don't see it in the wild, that suggests it's one of the games they come up with in captivity.'
Image: Hiroya Minakuchi/Minden Pictures
See Also:
- Whales Might Be as Much Like People as Apes Are
- Sperm Whales May Have Names
- Chimps: Not Human, But Are They People?
- A Different Take on Great Ape Personhood
- Rudiments of Language Discovered in Monkeys
- To Talk With Aliens, Learn to Speak With Dolphins
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