Because of my long-term interest in the emotional lives of animals, I'm always looking for new books on this topic. Vicki Hutton explores this in her book Recognising and Responding to Animal Emotion in a Shared World. The following conversation will be of interest to a wide-ranging audience including biologists, psychologists, ethicists, veterinarians, lawyers, and non-academics who are interested in why we must pay close attention to what other animals are telling us and asking of us as they try to adapt to an increasingly human-dominated world. I often think of animal emotions as a "social glue" that binds "them" (nonhumans) to us, and this idea has been developed in this book.
Marc Bekoff: Why did you write Recognising and Responding to Animal Emotion in a Shared World?
Vicki Hutton: I had two key motivations. First, I wanted to build on the growing consensus that animals have feelings by providing a collection of contemporary evidence-based research, observations, interviews, and anecdotal case studies that also included reptiles, amphibians, fish, and invertebrates, those "awkward" creatures whose feelings are often overlooked.
Second, I wanted to explore what gets in the way of treating all animals with the care and respect they deserve and why it is so hard to change ingrained human behavior in the face of animal suffering. The lives of animals have been irrevocably changed by humans, and this book provides some insight into how this continues and why it needs to stop.
MB: How does your book relate to your background and general areas of interest?
VH: A love of animals has remained a constant throughout my life. Although my career trajectory initially took me in the direction of psychology and working with humans, I never lost the need to connect with animals.
Eventually, my research focus shifted to the human-animal relationship, and while that confirmed the deep love that some humans have for specific animals, it failed to explain the global mistreatment of other animals perceived as commodities. I realized I could utilize my background in human psychology to explore why some animals are privileged over other animals and why it can be hard to change human behavior even in the face of animal suffering.
MB: Who do you hope to reach?
VH: Those already living with, caring for, or working with animals will gain further insight and validation of their intuitive knowledge that animals have feelings. However, I’m also hoping to reach those who may be struggling to understand and change humanity’s potentially irreversible impact on every aspect of animals’ lives, whether in factory farms, research, and animal testing laboratories, illegal trafficking, or degradation of the natural environment. I explore the protective strategies associated with cognitive dissonance (rationalizing contradictory beliefs and actions) and psychic numbing (removal of personal responsibility for large-scale atrocities) that contribute to the way we treat animals.
MB: What are some of the major topics you consider?
VH: Demonstrating that animals can experience feelings—although not necessarily in a way that humans can understand—is a constant theme. I provide examples of family connections, pair bonding, bi-parenting, maternal bonds, empathy, and altruism in a range of animals including whales, cows, birds, crocodiles, vampire bats, bees, earwigs, and more.
Feelings can present as happiness and play like the turtles spotted batting around a ball, but equally, as the grief associated with the loss of loved ones or freedom experienced by elephants, prairie voles, chickens, and more. Examples of death awareness and morality among animals help establish that these domains do not reside exclusively with humanity.
Embedded within these stories of attachment, family, grief, and moral standing is recognition that these same animals are also eaten, worn, deprived of their freedom and natural environments, legally and illegally sold, blamed for pandemics, or used as a buffer to loneliness in a human-dominated world. To explain how human perceptions can determine which animals are deemed to have sufficient emotional capacity to make them worthy of societal protection and which animals are classified as commodities or problems, with minimal or no societal protection, I introduce the zoological emotional scale. This framework provides a lens through which to explore the mechanisms fueling those perceptions and provides some insight into how some animals become more equal than others.
For many people, animals are on the periphery of their existence, perhaps represented by a companion animal, a trip to the zoo, nature documentaries, and the insects that encroach on domestic spaces. Connecting the death of animals to the plastic-wrapped meat in supermarkets, milk cartons, square blocks of cheese, leather shoes, and medicines maintaining human health and longevity is a harder concept to grasp.
Acknowledging that these animals have positive and negative feelings is an even harder task on which to embark as that requires acknowledging the human-inflicted separation, discrimination, and suffering of individual animals, groups, and whole species. Change is possible and necessary.
MB: How does your book differ from others that are concerned with some of the same general topics?
VH: While this book adds to the growing body of support for animal emotional capacity and the moral implications when this is ignored, it also delves into the mechanisms that have contributed to human domination of animals and the natural world. Humans have long sought to change animals, with sometimes disastrous consequences for the individual animal, the species, and the natural world. This disempowering of animals and the privileging of human interests suggests change must come from humanity to create a more equitable, sustainable, and safe future. The zoological emotional scale encourages the reader to recognize and interrogate their perceptions and biases as a key step in the process of change.
MB: Are you hopeful that as people learn more about the emotional lives of animals they will treat them with more dignity, compassion, and respect?
VH: We’ll never know for sure what an animal is feeling but that shouldn’t stop us looking for clues. As science increasingly validates that animals do have feelings, this book provides one means to hear and respect animal voices, no matter what language they are speaking, and seeks to encourage people to consider the important questions: “Why do I think this way about an animal, and are there other ways of perceiving them?” I currently live with an assortment of animals who all contribute in their individual ways to my writing.
References
In conversation with Vicki Hutton, a researcher whose interests now lie in the urgent need to view animals as unique individuals capable of experiencing positive and negative emotions, not just as adjuncts to the human experience or commodities to be used and abused.
The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy―and Why They Matter.
Dogs, Cats, and Humans: Shared Emotions Act As "Social Glue".
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