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Asked by siobhaaaan to Charlotte, Jo, Kevin, Louise, Valeria on 12 Jun 2012.
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Kevin Mahon answered on 12 Jun 2012:
That is a very deep philosphical question!
The use of the word ‘love’ is a bit difficult when talking about animals. Love is a human emotion/construct (that sounds horrible even typing it…). Can animals feel affection towards their owners/keepers? Most definately. Pet species have become so ubiquitous (i.e. they are everywhere) because of this – people like the company of something that shows affection.
There is a lot to be said however about where this affection comes from – cats as an (obvious) example. If you hand-wean a kitten as opposed to letting it suckle on it’s mother, it will often result in a cat that is overly affectionate to that one person and aggressive to other people. So in many cases what we think is affection is just a kind of mis-directed parent-offspring behaviour.
Do animals know they’re pets? We can’t really say – we don’t know if their thoughts go that deep yet! SOme captive apes have been able to convey they are self aware of their situation. Dogs & cats? Can’t say yet! But if I was to hazzard a guess, many cats view their owners as ‘providers’, hence why now and then they’ll drop presents for you!
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Joanna Cruden answered on 12 Jun 2012:
What a great question and one that I don’t think there is a scientific answer to but my feeling is that I think animals get the sense of security from us when we love an animal we give it a feeling of security and safety, so in a way we are its pack or family. So while it is unlikely they will know they are a pet they may feel a sense of belonging to a pack, or that we belong to their pack!
I had a friend who had a pet marmoset and every time her boyfriend went to visit the marmoset would attack him because as far as the marmoset was concerned she was his female! I think parrots can be similar and also dogs but I don’t think many other pet animals are so protective of their owners. I remember when I had my own pony, many years ago, getting frightened by a strange man who came walking up to me asking me weird questions and wanting me to dismount and talk to him my pony just bolted off with me until we were out of reach. I used to imagine the pony loved me and was protecting me but it is most likely he could sense my fear, got scared and ran away which is their instinct; personally I prefer to think he loved me!
There are species that mate for life (the Condor is a good example) but it is difficult to know whether they feel love however I like to think they do feel they are loved and I am very confident they are capable of deep lasting affections, but isn’t love is a complicated word? it is a small word with so many different meanings and I don’t think that humans always sense they are loved when they are.
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