Thread: "Humanizing" Our Pets

Well, it certainly depends on the definitions of some of those emotions but I know that cats and dogs have emotions similar to humans.

For starters, take the emotion of fear. That one seems pretty obvious. I remember my cat walking into a room where I had dropped my belt at a place it normally wouldn't be. She mistook it for a snake and jumped back with her tail all puffed out. Looked scared to me! And if you've ever seen a mistreated dog cower, you know the look of fear.

Love? Well affection, at least. Dogs and even cats (but especially dogs) are beyond obviously happy to see you come home after even a short absence. And they obviously value your companionship. Even my cat follows me around "like a dog".

Hate? Some cats do appear to hate some people, but this may be closer to fear. But isn't that also true with humans sometimes?

Contentment? Is that an emotion or a state of mind? Is there a difference? The definitions get fuzzy here but cats and dogs show obvious signs of contentment when they curl up at your feet to rest. What else other than contentment is a cat's purr.

Playfulness? Another obvious cat/dog attribute, to avoid the word emotion -- take it however you want to.

Just my off-the-cuff thoughts on this.

EDIT prompted by BrentonC's comments: How do we recognize these emotions in humans? By observation of their behavior and that's seems just as valid for cats and dogs. To whatever degree we deny these emotions to cats and dogs it seems we would need to do the same with humans.