Whether some animals experience emotions to a lesser or to a
greater extent in intensity compared to humans could depend upon the type of
emotion involved. Animals without doubt feel pity towards one another,
sometimes even crossing beyond the species barrier, but it seems unlikely,
although not impossible, that they feel emotions as complex or as intensely as
human beings do. For example, it is questionable that the dolphins care about
humans slaughtering one another as several humans care about the killing of
dolphins by some humans. But this may only be owed to the fact they don't have
similar access to information that mankind do. Perhaps they are aware and have
principles of noninterference in human affairs. Perhaps they rightfully are
neutral, or take a more farsighted view.
There are several emotions, on that humans may feel less
intensely than several animals. Many people experienced the feeling, in some
cases, that several animals appear to show happiness. One of the reasons for
the popularity of observing birds is the pleasure of listening to birdsongs,
which appear as joyful. As Julian Huxley, describing the courting ritual of
herons twining their graceful necks together, wrote: "Of this I can only
say that it seemed to bring such a pitch of emotion that I could have wished to
be a heron that I might experience it."
The intensity of emotions in some animals is one recurring
source of human envy. Emotional support animals are even valued in the medical
and domestic environments. Joseph Wood Krutch states: "It is difficult to
see how one can deny that the dog, apparently beside himself at the prospect of
a walk with his master, is feeling a joy the intensity of which it is beyond
our power to think much less to share. In the same manner his dejection can at
least seem to be no less bottomless. Maybe the kind of thought of which we're
capable dims both at the same time that it causes us less victims of either.
Was any man, one wonders, ever as dejected as a lost dog? Probably certain of
the animals can be both more elated and more utterly desolate than any man ever
was."
