- Do animals have emotions?
Of course they do. I don't think anybody ever denied that. Everybody has seen an animal being afraid.
- Do animals have emotions like us?
As in emotions as complex as Homo Sapiens? Depends on the animal. Most, probably don't, as they don't physically have certain necessary brain structures. Some come extremely close and might be on par. But it could be hard to ever pinpoint exactly, which animals do.
I don't see any hypocrisy here.
But it could be hard to ever pinpoint exactly, which animals do.
So that's why we should err on the side of caution, assume that animals who act like they have emotions actually have emotions, and give them the respect and rights they deserve as fellow thinking feeling beings?
Oh wait, no, let's torture, kill, and eat them because we can't "prove", to whatever arbitrary "scientific" standard, they have the same intellectual and emotional capacities we do.
That escalated quickly, and completely deviated from the subject of the comic.
“The Psychologist Who Wouldn’t Do Awful Things to Rats”, by James Tiptree / Alice Sheldon, is a fairly good and fairly strange short story related to this exact topic.
