Emotion in animals Flashcards
Animal appraisal
Animals respond to suddenness of situation, novelty, predictability and controllability.
More than just thoughtlessly reacting, they take context into account
- Eg Zebrafish who responded to novel tank w exploratory swimming. Habituated after 7 days, reflecting familiarity
Frans de Waal (Rhesus monkey)
Studied emotions in animals. Findings
ToM;
- Documented signs of empathy/perspective-taking.
eg hiding food from other, making up after fight
Facial expressions
- Similarity compared to humans, suggested evolutionary basis. Primates recognized laughter
Anthropomorphism; attribution of human traits/emotions on animals
Anthropodenial;
- Frans de Waals idea, refusal to acknowledge human like characteristics in animals
He argued for a balanced approach
Drosophila
Fruit flies. They show an innate escape/avoidance response, where few shadow passes resulted in freezing behaviour
Multiple resulted in hopping behaviour. The more shadow passes the more hopping
- Dependent on the inter stimulus interval (ISI) the flie increased the magnitude of the response
- Flies summate the influence of of the shadow stimuli to produce an increase in the magnitude of response
Crayfish
When conditioned to be scared of light, they developed a preference for dark zones
Stressed condition rarely explored or rapidly abandoned light arms in the tank, and had increased levels of serotonin.
When injected w a drug against anxiety they entered dark and light areas as similar
Cats
Cats observed/heard both images and sounds of cats and humans displaying positive and negative emotions
- Cats spontaneously looked at the congruent facial expression for longer compared to sound
- Behavioural expression corresponded with level of anger
Flies
P1 neuronal cluster is sufficient to promote an emotion state of aggression
- Male-specific P1 mediates both male flies aggression towards other males and courtship towards females
