This suggests that they recognise different emotional expressions. Chimpanzees, for example, have different mean heart rates, depending on whether they’re shown pictures of aggressive, friendly or unfamiliar chimps.
Heart rate also provides insights into the cognitive abilities of animals.
This suggests that their emotional states are synchronised, despite belonging to different species. A study found that heart rate in dogs increases when it increases in their owners, and that this effect was stronger the longer the human had owned the dog. Pain is more than a physical process – now a study in mice suggests it may even be socially transferableĪ similar effect has even been observed in dogs and their owners. This suggests that greylag geese are capable of what’s called emotional contagion – when an individual is affected by the emotions of other individuals. Most remarkably, my research has shown that geese’s heart rate increased more when their partner or a family member was involved in aggressive encounters, compared to unrelated individuals. This heart rate increase reflects emotional arousal, not physical activity. This might be simply explained by an increase in physical activity during fights, except that we see the same effect in geese that are merely observing events in their environment, for example when they’re watching other geese fighting. When geese fight, their heart rate increases. By measuring how animal heart rates fluctuate in response to different situations, we’re getting closer to understanding how and when animals feel. Perhaps poetically, researchers have turned to animals’ hearts to learn more about their emotions, as detailed in my recent paper. Understanding what makes them stressed or unhappy can inform how we approach animal welfare in zoos, sea life centres and farms, as well as helping us treat our pets with more compassion. Learning how animals perceive emotions is important. That’s because we tend to anthropomorphise animals, seeing in them human expressions and emotions which cloud our understanding of how they’re really feeling. In his 1872 book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin described a range of “innate” and “evolved” emotions in dogs, cats, chimpanzees, swans and other non-human animals.īut animals can’t verbally report their emotions, and humans often misread how an animal’s feeling, which can lead us to make them feel worse despite the best of intentions.
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