{"id":538484,"date":"2025-01-14T13:49:25","date_gmt":"2025-01-14T16:49:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=538484"},"modified":"2025-01-14T13:51:08","modified_gmt":"2025-01-14T16:51:08","slug":"the-challenge-of-understanding-what-animals-feel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/the-challenge-of-understanding-what-animals-feel\/","title":{"rendered":"The challenge of understanding what animals feel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do animals have the same emotions as humans? Psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett, a researcher at Northeastern University, in the United States, and author of the book How emotions are made <\/em>(Pan Macmillan, 2018), says that this question has continued to baffle the science community. When a human being thinks that an animal is experiencing an emotion, this may say more about the human brain than the animal\u2019s behavior, explains Berrett. As examples, she cites a fly\u2019s reaction to the threatening movement of a fly swatter (it rubs its legs together rapidly), a rat\u2019s behavior when it hears a sound that it was trained to associate with a painful shock (it freezes in place), and a human being\u2019s reaction when followed by a stranger on a dark road (wide eyes and accelerated heart rate).<\/p>\n

See more:<\/strong>
\n– Care and empathy for animals<\/a><\/div>\n

A casual observer, says the psychologist, would conclude that all three are exposed to a threat and, therefore, experience a state of fear. \u201cBut here\u2019s the curious thing: the three examples have virtually nothing in common physically. They involve different kinds of brains in different situations, moving different kinds of bodies in different ways,\u201d wrote Barrett in an article published in 2022 by The Guardian<\/em>. It is the observer\u2019s brain that tends to associate fear with the three situations. According to Barrett, it would be more scientifically useful to observe animals according to their characteristics. \u201cDogs can smell things we cannot.\u00a0Birds can see colors we cannot. So maybe they can also feel things we cannot,\u201d she wrote. \u201cWhen one elephant stands by the body of another for days, clearly something is happening, but why must it be a primitive version of human grief? The idea that other animals share our emotions is compelling and intuitive, but the answers we provide may reveal more about us than about them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Appearances can be deceiving. \u201cWhen we see [adult horses] play in captivity, it isn\u2019t necessarily a good sign,\u201d as stated on the website Science News <\/em>by animal scientist Martine Hausberger, of the University of Rennes in France. According to her, in nature, adult horses rarely play and this behavior is more common among those in captivity. \u201cThey may exhibit play, and at that precise moment they may be happier, [but] animals that are feeling well all the time don\u2019t need this to get rid of the stress.\u201d<\/p>\n

It can be difficult to interpret animals\u2019 emotions, but there is plenty of evidence that they lead complex mental and emotional lives. Researchers at the Research Institute for Farm Animal Biology (FBN), in Germany, recently demonstrated that pigs show signs of empathy. In an experiment, piglets were placed in a pen in the middle of which was a large box with a door and a window. At a certain point, the door of the box closes and the pigs inside are trapped. Eighty-five percent of the time, the animals figured out how to open the box and freed their trapped companion within 20 minutes. When no piglets were trapped inside, they were still able to open the box, but the frequency was much lower than when a pig was trapped inside. \u201cWe believe that helping behavior is based on some understanding of the other\u2019s needs,\u201d said Liza Moscovice, an FBN ethologist, when talking to Science <\/em>journal. \u201cThis is a critical component of empathy.\u201d<\/p>\n

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L\u00e9o Ramos Chaves \/Revista Pesquisa FAPESP<\/span>The app VetPain helps evaluate pain levels in petsL\u00e9o Ramos Chaves \/Revista Pesquisa FAPESP<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

The FBN is one of the few reference centers for studies on cognition as it relates to livestock, such as pigs, goats, and cattle. Another study compared goats and dogs in a set of cognitive tests. Goats subjected to an experiment known as the \u201cimpossible task\u201d are exposed to a bowl of food they cannot access to feed themselves. Although they do not have a history of coevolution with humans, the goats resorted to the same expedient used by the dogs: they lunged at the nearby human as if they were asking for help.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we don\u2019t understand how these animals think, then we won\u2019t understand what they need. And if we don\u2019t understand what they need, then we can\u2019t design better environments for them,\u201d said Jan Langbein, also an FBN ethologist, in speaking to Science<\/em>. In another experiment, which is still ongoing, he evaluates affinity among cows. Pairs of female cattle were placed in an open arena and their interactions were observed, namely: some head-butted one another, others displayed cooperative behavior. Now, researchers are evaluating stress levels in cows that are \u201cfriends\u201d when separated after a certain amount of time being together. One of the objectives is to learn if it is worth keeping animals that show a certain affinity towards one another together when confined in order to improve their well-being. \u201cThese are not dumb creatures. They have a rich emotional life and personality,\u201d said Langbein to Science<\/em>.<\/p>\n

While emotions are difficult to dissect, there are objective ways of knowing when animals feel pain or discomfort. \u201cWe can make this kind of assessment by analyzing behavior and creating pain scales,\u201d explains Stelio Pacca Loureiro Luna, a researcher at the Botucatu campus of UNESP\u2019s College of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Sciences. Luna coordinated a project supported by FAPESP and completed last year, in which he validated this methodology for all domesticated species and livestock, such as cats, cattle, and horses. The scales, he explains, are created by analyzing hundreds of hours of animal footage. Images are recorded prior to a surgery and soon after, when postoperative pain reaches its peak. They continue recording images when the animal receives painkillers and 24 hours later, when the effects have worn off. \u201cWe analyze these videos and note which behaviors have changed \u2014 if, for example, the animal wagged its tail, laid prostrate, or changed its expression \u2014 and how long and how often this happened,\u201d describes Luna.<\/p>\n

The project gave rise to an app, VetPain, launched last year and available for Android and iOS operating systems. The app helps veterinarians and owners assess pain levels in all pets. The user must answer questions to assess characteristic signs of pain in behaviors such as posture, activity level, and reaction to being touched in the affected area. Each response corresponds to a score on a pain scale and the app indicates whether or not the animal needs pain killers (see <\/em>Pesquisa FAPESP issue n\u00ba 328<\/em><\/a>). According to Luna, other methods have been developed. He mentions the Qualitative Behavior Assessment, whereby animal behavior is interpreted by human observers, such as their owners, and expressed in words. A statistical analysis of the use of specific expressions is used to pinpoint patterns that identify behaviors. \u201cIt\u2019s an approach that must still be validated,\u201d notes Luna.<\/p>\n

Project<\/strong>
\nPain and quality of life in animals (n\u00ba 17\/12815-0<\/a>); Grant Mechanism<\/strong> Thematic Project; Principal Investigator<\/strong> Stelio Pacca Loureiro Luna (UNESP); Investment<\/strong> R$835,253.16.<\/p>\n

Scientific articles
\n<\/strong>FEIGHLSTEIN M. et al<\/em>. Automated recognition of pain in cats<\/a>. Scientific Reports.<\/strong> june 2022.
\n<\/strong>BRONDANI, J. T. et al<\/em>. Validation of the English version of the Unesp-Botucatu multidimensional composite pain scale for assessing postoperative pain in cats<\/a>. BMC Veterinary Research.<\/strong> july 2013.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Strategies created to measure pain and try to decipher animals\u2019 emotions","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":538399,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[156,159],"tags":[218,243,2413],"coauthors":[98],"class_list":["post-538484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cover","category-science","tag-ethology","tag-innovation","tag-technology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538484"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":540742,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538484\/revisions\/540742"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/538399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538484"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=538484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}