Dr. Jaak Panksepp is a neuroscientist and psychobiologist, and the Chair of Animal Well-Being Science for the Dept of Veterinary and Comparative Anatomy, Pharmacology, and Physiology at Washington State University's College of Veterinary Medicine. As if that wasn't impressive sounding enough, he's contributed a lot to the modern knowledge we have of base emotions, which all animals feel, and our understanding of the pathways emotions have through the brain (of all mammals, not just humans).
His research is astounding. His studies have found that there are seven genetic emotional systems. They are:
- SEEKING (sensation of being curious/trying to make sense of surroundings)
- RAGE (self-explanatory)
- FEAR (fear for social/physical/mental survival)
- LUST (also self-explanatory)
- CARE (typically maternal)
- PANIC (also grief, having to do with separation distress)
- PLAY (joyful)
His research helped us determine how best to interact with animals, and it's turning some of our original ideas on it's head. For instance animals can laugh. While it doesn't sound like our laughter, when you tickle rats, they chirp and are more likely to act favorably towards you. When chimps play with each other they pant. Science has traditionally thought that animals don't get happy or sad, but this is view is slowly changing.
Some of his research has been shanghaied by others, to attempt to understand the basic emotional needs of animals, in order to make pet ownership easier, and living in captivity easier for the animals. If you want to hear Dr. Jaak Panksepp's research in words a non-scientist can understand, I encourage you to check out any book by Dr. Temple Grandin, an animal advocate whose autism allowed her deeper insight into the minds of animals. She is a truly remarkable woman, and she explains the science of it so much better than I ever could.
Dr. Grandin answers the question asked in the title of this blog in her book Animals Make Us Human, where she argues that in order to make our animal feel emotionally secure, as well as physically secure, we must try to keep our animals from feeling the RAGE, FEAR, and PANIC emotions that Dr. Panksepp describes, and make sure the animals feels all of the positive emotions: SEEKING, LUST, CARE, and PLAY.
For a more in depth look at animal emotion, you might try to watch the documentary Animal Emotion: Why Dogs Smile and Chimpanzees Cry. It's fairly old, and I cannot find a link to a version that I wouldn't get in trouble for posting, but I'm certain you intelligent readers can find it on the Internet somewhere!
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