And why would they not? What evolutionary force would give us this magic "emotion" that they would not have? Emotions are clearly something very low-level in our OS: not a recent addition.

and as for body language: there's no good reason to scramble body language between species, and many good reasons not to. A threat display should work across species boundaries, for example.

Sorrow behavior, and the care response it gets, must be genetically hardcoded, not learned. So behavioral drift when a species splits needs both parent and child to drift in the same direction.

I nodded my way through these plurks. Exactly so.

Thanks. It's been bugging me. Not that people are studying this, to make sure we're not just projecting: but the naïve assumption that we're just projecting, by people commenting on videos of these behaviors.

Inter-species cooperation (alarm calls; cross-species adoption; dolphins helping humans and whales; bears rescuing crows) relies on inter-species communication.

What surprises me is that there's so little documented inter-species cooperation.

Not everyone is able to read body language even in humans, and I find there is a connection to a lack of empathy. People with more empathic tendencies often communicate better with animals well too. As for

interspecies cooperation, I think it's there, just not documented as an example of that. My mind immediately went to domesticated horses, mules, etc. The masters that beat their work-horses weren't able to

communicate with the animals so they thought they had to force them to work.

Those who were kind to their beasts received harder work in return.

oooh! Cherry picking defined! What about the zillion counter-examples? I stare at a cat because I want to make friends with it; it sees me as a threat because - I'm staring at it!

Simple philosophy but so hard to put into play sometimes.

And then there's that.

Mis-communication.

The behavioural range of animals is physically limited, so much so, that multiple emotions are conveyed by a single response. It would be statistically freaky if there wasn't partial overlap.

To be fair, though, intent staring at someone (human, cat, or otherwise) is often seen as hostile behaviour more than a way to make friends. I don't often feel comfortable talking to someone who's been staring

at me.

heylisa: do you raise your tail when you are happy and contented?

yes

I also purr when I'm happy

yeah; neither are a physiological possibility for humans.

If you stare at a person you'll put them off

when you want to appear happy or friendly you bare your teeth...just like dogs and cats...

Different animals (bipedal, quadrupedal; tailed, taillless; with/without trunks; aquatic/not) do express themselves somewhat differently, as their physiology requires.

now you're nit-picking though. Some people will recognize body language and pick up on the signals, and others won't. It's more than physical attributes.

And we don't have to agree. It means we're on different points of the scale, and that's okay.

And yet, in general, while we might miss the subtleties, we can generally understand the more overt body language even from a dolphin. Happy, sad, angry: the basic emotions.

the thesis was of a universal body-language applicable to all animals - which is a great steaming pile of horse crap, as thirty seconds of thinking about it will demonstrate.

Even those people who "don't understand body language" can understand these basic emotions in humans and other animals. An angry animal is an unmistakeable thing, whether cat or snake.

So the thesis stands, and you have offered no counterevidence. In what situation have you ever been confused about whether an animal was angry?

We do still have vestigial tails, and some can recognize bits of movement from that muscle region. Not the same as raising or wagging an actual tail, but the similarity is there.

farrier: I have no clue how angry or otherwise a goldfish is. And my evidence completely demolishes the thesis.

I think from the point of view of body language, we don't have usable tails.

gambitgirl: No we don't.

I think it's more a matter of musculoskeletal reaction involving nerves and senses than how the skeleton is put together, but maybe I misread. And on that note, I'm going to bow out before my hackles rise.

Good day. And thank you for the interesting discussion.

I didn't say usable.

I never stated that all animals feel all emotion and exhibit all of them in identical ways: you seem to be tilting against a straw windmill, Arbieroo

farrier: nope, just the insanely stupid one in the article.

But it's quite easy to tell when a fish is relaxed vs agitated. Perhaps you just don't watch animals as much?

farrier: bingo! You said it's unmistakeable but now you're saying it requires careful/protracte dobservation.

In a cat it's unmistakeable. In a fish, it's a little more complicated since they have sompletely different environment and body.

Have you ever been confused about whether a cat is angry or relaxed?

But it's still pretty bloody obvious in the fish, to be honest.

actually, all those species are vertebrates; how different species have to be before the problem arises?

I can read cats better than most people but I lived with them daily for over 15 years. On the other hand, I read dogs really badly and often assume they are angry when others say they aren't.

As with humans, so with fish: a relaxed fish swims and moves in a smooth, relaxed manner. An agitated fish swims more jerkily, hiding, cowering, drooping fins...

oh - and I've never lived with a dog...

Hrm - you make a good case there that interspecies comms is a learned behavior. The wiki page on it agrees.

farrier: if you say so - but I wouldn't have a clue. Humans are simply capable of learning to read th ebody language of other species - it's called animal behaviour and it's not trivially identical to

mapping human expressions to other species.

But I argue that if they were completely alien, we would not be able to communicate in an interspecies way. A cat "smiles" with a slow blink; we smile with our mouths and eye-crinkles.

Americans frown with their mouths; brits with their brows.

farrier: which is not a 1:1 mapping; case closed.

But they are trivially mappable. OR, and I'll admit this may be the case: perhaps it only feels trivial to me because I've spent most of my life watching animals carefully.

farrier: most people have no clue about cat blinks indicating non-aggression.

I confess, on thinking about it, that I've seen people acting in ways I've felt obviously inappropriate to animals' mood, which they seemed completely oblivious.

I've always thought of that as stupid obliviousness, but it may've just been a lack of experience on their part.

and baring teeth; human, friendly; many quadruped mammals; snarl. OK humans can and do snarl, but th equadrupeds don't smile.

farrier: I can read dogs much better now than 20 years ago, because I've been around them more and made an effort.

nod I think we could probably find quite a few others, too - the human open-handed hand-wave, for example, could be threatening, but is just about universal for greeting passively in humans.

people spend entire careers deciphering animal behaviour.

So thanks for that: I think I'm going to have to rephrase my original statement, then!

How's about: I feel the evidence is quite overwhelming that many animals clearly experience the same emotions, and use comparable body language to express them, as we do.

I think we have this fundamental agreement, though: anything with a brain worth the name experiences emotion. I don't think we differ on that a all.

yeah, I think that's a defensible position.

Oh that's good. Because the windmill I was tilting at was "animals don't feel emotion until we've proven it!" which seems often to be the attitude taught in textbooks.

actually, could one argue that vocal expression is merely an extension of body language?

Probably - it's all communication, after all. A growl is an extension of the bared teeth.

that textbook position just leads down the mind/body philosophical rabbit hole from which there is no return, I think.

seems ridiculous to impute emotion in other humans and then not in other species.

that wiki page says there're species (mostly similar; two simian species, or two birds) which understand the nuances of each others' alarm calls, but in general, that understanding is learned.

so I think you're right about animal body language: I've just picked up a lot of the lingo, like someone living in a foreign country...

but it's only when I think about it (cat-blinks! tail movements!) that I see it's not obvious at all, really.

farrier: e.g. different alarms for different threats?

Yup, exactly.

But the calls are only learned in the cases where they see the threat after hearing the call, so they can make the association.

which is exactly how we learn body language, too. Makes me wonder how much is instinctual and how much is learned, even intra-species.

the crying thing - there's a physiological stress relief with an obvious outward effect, which makes it a bit different from "body language" per se possibly.

I was surprised to find that frowning is learned.

one might actully be able to develop an evolutionary theory of body language based on physiological differences to some extent but I'm not sure how far you could push it.

e.g. dogs and cats have very similar body plans and are both mammals; how close is their body language?

Or rather, in the UK, we call a frown that thing when your brows move together; in the US, it's when your mouth is

I'm thinking about parents and babies; don't parents spend ages making faces at babies and aren't babies somewhat fixated on people's faces?

The above is a frown in the US, and verymuch not a frown in the UK.

Yup. So maybe even that young, they learn to use a completely different set of muscles to frown!

or rather, to express the emotions that a frown would convey.

also that old thing about "inscrutable orientals" which I personally don't get at all; my experience is I can read "orientals" as well as anybody else on the average.

Hrm. Yeah. Have their expressions changed over the years as media has got global? Or have we been exposed to them more, so have no problem? Or were they just deadpan at outsiders?

aren't humans' faces one of the most "expressive" and primates in general more so than most mammals.

farrier: I think "poker-face" had a lot to do with it when foreigners were around. Also maybe cultural repression of emotion, like Brits!

I wonder if that's because of the loss of tails (and possibly that tree-climbing used up a lot of limbs, so we had to use the head).

True - stiff upper lip, jolly good, what ho!

farrier: dunno; interesting hypothesis, though.

I'm gonna have to look out for angry goldfish...

My grandma hypothesised that we kept eyebrows for expressive signalling after becoming aquatic.

I'm not sure I've ever seen anything I'd lavel anger in a goldfish. Agitation, yes. But... how would you even make a goldfish angry? Insult its castle?

don't they functionally help a lot against snow blindness?

eyebrows, or eyelashes?

Those fighting fish might be able to do a good "angry".

brows - lashes have several functions, which is of course most likely true of brows, as well.

I can't even see my eyebrows, so I don't think they'd help - but eyelashes help a hell of a lot against short-sightedness, fersure. Also against crap getting in my eyes.

And I imagine they'd help against snowblindness, but I've never experienced that, thankfully.

it's incredibly painful by all accounts but I've never had it.

...gotta go now, but interesting discussion.

Seeya - and thanks for a fun argument!

I love any argument where I have to change my opinions in the face of good points.

farrier: me, too!