Can Animals Show Emotions?

Suhas Kumar,2007

From beasts we scorn as soulless, In forest, field and den, The cry goes up to witness The soullessness of men.
~M. Frida Hartley
A friend of mine once commented on a write-up by me wherein I had depicted wild animals showing emotions as we humans show. He believed that people often tend to attribute human emotions to animals and err. In his view animals are inferior to humans with only instincts helping them to survive. I was appalled by this opinionated statement and wrote back to him saying this:

My dear Friend, you know that the wild animals of Sariska gather near the artificial waterhole as soon as they hear the clink-clank of a water tanker approaching- they put two and two together and intelligently discern that water is on way. Such intelligent reaction doesnt come from instinct. I find obliged to also say something about how animals behave if they are subjected to continuous and irritating human presence. A tourist friendly tiger- or in your words an 'instinct driven tiger In Bandhavgarh suddenly leaps into a tourist jeep and punishes some tiger hungry and annoying tourists. As anyone would say this type of punishing behaviour is quite unbecoming of wild animals (who are a slave of their instinct incapable showing anger). Unfortunately the most vicious animal on earthMan- has coerced them to imitate human traits that make them angry sometimes.

I think all animals that the Almighty has bestowed with a brain cavity and some amount of grey cells, have feelings and emotions. Some people, including me, even believe that plants, without apparently possessing anything similar to a brain, too, show emotional response to music (tomatoes have been found to grow abnormally bigger in size when subjected to melodious music) . This planet is a strange place and we humans have limited abilities (we can hear only within a range of a wave lengths - beyond which we call them ultra or infra Sonics not audible to human ears, we see up to a certain distance and only in day light or artificially created light. Till recently no body knew that elephants communicate with each other with infrasonic waves that travel several miles. An acacia species that grows in South Africa sends 'scent alarm' signals to other trees down hill whenever someone attacks them with an axe.

My dog throws tantrums if I punish him without any solid reason - he would sulk and

refuse to eat even his most favourite food. My neighbors cat purrs whenever she is fondled and caressed. A dog travels a thousand mile to reach his separated master. Dear friend, we human tend to think that nothing living or dead is superior to humans and therefore we tend to believe that "thinking, feelings and emotions" are prized assets of humans only while other living things are mere 'creature' with instincts. it is quite romantic and poetic (as well as prize winning) to depict animals as unemotional , instinct driven robots created by God but some of us also must remind ourselves to mend our ways and show some respect to wild brethrens for we too were roaming in the woods naked not very far back in time.