We like to see ourselves as special, but whatever the difference between humans and animals may be, it is unlikely to be found in the emotional domain. — Frans de Waal, “Your Dog Feels as Guilty as She Looks”

I have learned that anthropomorphism is a deeply suspect word, used to defend cruelty to creatures unable to speak and defend themselves against human exploitation. — Sir Brian May, founding member of Queen and the Save Me Trust

In the past two decades there has been an explosion of comparative studies centering on the emotional lives and sentience of a wide array of nonhuman animals (animals). Much of this research is summarized in the new edition of my book, The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy—and Why They Matter to which approximately 300 new references have been added since the first edition was published in 2007.1 In the first edition I wrote, “Twenty years from now, our understandings and explanations will be richer, more accurate, and possibly different.” I had no idea I’d ever be writing a second edition, but 17 years later, my prediction is accurate. The real question at hand is why animal emotions have evolved, not if they have. We are well beyond making vacuous claims such as that other animals are merely acting "as if" they have feelings.1

Family-living prairie dogs, who many people write off as “merely rodents,” also grieve. A few years ago while riding my bike north of Boulder, I observed a moving interaction between an adult black-tailed prairie dog, who looked to be a female, and a youngster, most likely her child, who had been killed by a car. It looked like the accident had occurred a few minutes before I happened on the sorrowful scene, and I stopped and dictated some notes into my phone to document what I saw: Five times, the adult prairie dog tried to retrieve the carcass of the smaller prairie dog off the road. She clearly was trying to remove the carcass from the road, and eventually, the cars stopped and allowed her to finish. She dragged the carcass about ten feet away, looked at me and looked at the carcass, and then went back to the carcass and touched it lightly with her........

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