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The idea that animals do not have feelings. I don't believe complex thought is necessary for emotion. You can take away all our human reasoning, and we would still get mad, or sad, or happy at things.
It's definitely NOT science that animals don't have feelings. Maybe 50 years ago.
Now, there's a concerted effort to discern thoughts and emotions in animals.
I don't think there is a scientific concensus on this. We are constantly finding previously unknown similarities between the minds of other animals and humans. I've put together a small lemmy community on animal communication and digital bioacoustics, it is somewhat related to this stuff.
!digitalbioacoustics@lemmy.world
https://lemmy.world/c/digitalbioacoustics
If anything I think emotional response is the least advanced part of a human mind. However, if we're talking about brains of sharks, small lizards, or ants then I think emotion would be a word with a lot more nuance than whatever it is they do.
The range of what "emotion" can cover is very broad as well. Like feeling good or scared and shame or respect.
I have remind my partner that dogs don't share all of the complex emotions we do or at least it's a lot easier to deal with them if you act like they don't.
I.E. my dog is never going to care if feeding is fair, and they aren't going to listen to you out of respect about it. They will however eat a certain way because the like being obedient and knowing their place in the pact, but that takes repetition, rewards and punishments.
I recently heard someone make the argument that pain is could intense for simpler animals since they need more explicit punishment for doing dangerous things
We don’t have much way of knowing afaik but it seems plausible
that comes from religion not science
Bees play with toys and do happy actions when given toys. I'm of the opinion that some form of internal experience extends at least as far down the brain size scale as at least some bugs, and might extend into single celled organisms and plants.
It's scientifically proven that rats giggle when tickled:
https://youtu.be/78PfGQbL-g0
It's very widely accepted in science that animals feel an array of emotions.