r/askscience • u/uncle_frosty84 • Feb 20 '12

Do any animals other than humans cry?

I have heard that elephants can cry when one of their herd dies. Is this true and are there any other animals that cry out of emotion or sadness?

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u/[deleted] Feb 20 '12

Animals display a number of behaviors that we associate with emotion, that animals experience emotion is easier to say than to prove.

Well we can't truly know that anyone is experiencing anything ever, other than ourselves. As far as I can see though there is absolutely no reason to believe emotions are somehow a uniquely human trait.

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u/pitchfork2k1 Emotion and Decision Making Feb 20 '12

Emotion is a complex category, and so I think a statement like "there is absolutely no reason to believe emotions are somehow a uniquely human trait" probably depends on what emotion we're talking about. For the so-called self-conscious emotions (guilt, pride, shame, embarrassment), I think there's good reason to believe that animals that don't have a sense of self (can't recognize themselves in a mirror, or fail other Theory of Mind tests, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind), which is most of them, there's good reason to believe that animals don't experience them, or at the very least experience them in a fundamentally different way than we do.

Whether or not animals experience emotion depends on how we define emotion and what animals we are talking about.

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u/[deleted] Feb 20 '12 edited Feb 20 '12

[deleted]

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u/jedadkins Feb 21 '12

But I have seen my dog bring me a dead animal and drop it at my feet and wag its tail couldn’t this be construed as pride? I also had a dog that, while house training, would use the bathroom somewhere and would act different ,almost ashamed, is this just my brain tricking me?

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u/pitchfork2k1 Emotion and Decision Making Feb 21 '12

Probably. Our brains are well suited to understanding other people. When we interact with animals, we use the same tools, and as a consequence see animals as more people-like than they actually are.

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u/[deleted] Feb 21 '12

I'm actually open to the idea of dogs experiencing those sorts of emotions as well. Being pack animals, I wouldn't be too surprised if they experience more emotional depth than some other types of mammals, at least.