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IT STARTED with a touch. Soon Butch and Aphro were slowly caressing. Then
they rolled together and embraced, locking flippers, before rolling back again.
For perhaps three minutes, the two southern right whales lay side-by-side,
ejecting water through their blow holes. The cetaceans then swam off, touching,
surfacing and diving in unison. As he watched, Bernd W眉rsig of Texas
A&M University became convinced that Butch and Aphro were developing a
powerful mutual bond. Could this be leviathan love?

That鈥檚 a controversial question. Biologists disagree about the nature of
emotions in nonhuman animals, and especially whether they consciously experience
their emotions. Many would not dare to say that a whale can fall in love, but
those like W眉rsig, who do not dismiss this idea out of hand, can trace
their thinking back at least as far as Charles Darwin. In The Expression of
the Emotions in Man and Animals, he argued that there is continuity between
the emotional lives of humans and other animals. Elsewhere, Darwin wrote: 鈥淭he
lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness and
尘颈蝉别谤测.鈥�

Despite Darwin鈥檚 interest in the subject, we still don鈥檛 know much about
which animals have emotional lives and which do not. Perhaps this failure to
make much headway can be put down to researchers鈥� fear of being labelled
鈥渘on-scientific鈥� or too anthropomorphic. But the tide is turning. Nowadays it is
permissible to ask such questions as: do animals love one another, do they mourn
the loss of friends, and do they feel embarrassment? Current research in animal
behaviour and neurobiology is providing compelling evidence that at least some
vertebrates feel a full range of emotions from fear and disgust to joy,
jealousy, anger and compassion.

Emotions are difficult to pin down. I know they are real because I experience
my own every day, but I have no way of knowing exactly how you feel. You might
try to describe your emotions using words, but even if you don鈥檛, I can deduce
something about your emotional state from your body language and behaviour. It
is the same with animals鈥攕trong clues about what they are feeling can be
gleaned from changes in muscle tone, posture, gait, facial expression, pupil
size, gaze, vocalisations and odours. You don鈥檛 have to be an expert to read the
signs. People with little experience of observing animals usually agree about
what they are seeing. And the subsequent behaviour of animals often suggests
they are correct.

Behaviour speaks volumes about animal emotions because emotions are
psychological phenomena that help an individual to manage and control its
actions. Investigating what is going on in the brain, however, is more tricky.
From a neurological perspective, it is useful to divide emotions into two types.
The most basic, or primary emotions, are innate鈥攖hey do not require
conscious thought or feeling. These emotions are likely to be widespread in the
animal kingdom, because they tend to increase an individual鈥檚 chances of
survival. More contentious is the idea that animals also have secondary
emotions鈥攖he ones that require more sophisticated mental processing.

The most obvious example of a primary emotion is the fight-or-flight
response, which allows animals to react quickly to danger signs, often with no
indication that they feel fear. For instance, a young goose that has never been
exposed to predators will run and take cover when it sees a hawk-like silhouette
overhead, but will not respond to the outline of a goose. Natural selection
favours those individuals who react in this way鈥攁nd the faster the better.
A hawk can swoop down rapidly and pluck a gosling while it is still thinking
about what to do, so one that avoids the predator by instinct alone has a
greater chance of surviving than one that takes time to decide on a
response.

Smell of fear

Sounds and smells can also trigger primary emotions, including innate fear.
Domestic dogs are among the many animals that have hard-wired responses to some
odours. My companion dog, Jethro, is normally comfortable visiting the vet, but
he will show signs of fear if he goes into an examination room where the
previous canine client was afraid. It is an instinctive response to a pungent
odour released by the anal glands of the frightened dog. Similarly, lab rats
that have never encountered cats or other predators show innate freezing
responses to the smell of these animals. Even pieces of cat hair seem to cause
anxiety鈥攖he rats play and eat less, and are more wary than usual.

Neurobiologists have tracked primary emotions down to an evolutionarily
ancient part of the brain called the limbic system, and in particular to a small
almond-shaped structure known as the amygdala. This so-called 鈥渆motional鈥� brain,
which is thought to have evolved to allow sophisticated analysis of smells, is
found in fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. The amygdala receives
raw sensory information from the thalamus鈥攁 neural relay station鈥攁nd
is connected by a bundle of nerves to the brainstem, which allows it to prime
the body for fast action.

Speed is essential in a survival situation, but the downside of primary
emotions is their inflexibility. That鈥檚 where secondary emotions have the edge.
They involve higher brain centres in the cerebral cortex, allowing an individual
to reflect and weigh up the relative benefits of different actions in specific
circumstances. We don鈥檛 know which animals other than humans are capable of
conscious reflection about their emotions. But the brain structures and
biochemistry that are associated with so-called 鈥渇elt emotions鈥� in our own
species are found in others. This has led some researchers to become convinced
that secondary emotions are unlikely to be unique to humans.

If we accept that we are not alone in experiencing emotions, where can we
draw the line? New findings suggest that reptiles may have been the first
animals to experience their emotions. Last year Michel Cabanac from Laval
University in Canada showed that iguanas try to maximise sensory
pleasure鈥攖hey prefer to stay warm rather than venture out into the cold to
get food. And when basking in a warm environment, they experience physiological
changes associated with pleasure in humans and other vertebrates, such as
鈥渆motional fever鈥濃�攁 boost in body temperature鈥攁nd a raised heart
rate. Amphibians and fish do not exhibit these behavioural and physiological
responses. Cabanac suggests that the first mental event to emerge into
consciousness was the ability of an individual to experience the sensations of
pleasure or displeasure. His research suggests that reptiles experience basic
emotional states, and proposes that such emotions evolved somewhere between
amphibians and early reptiles.

Many vertebrates seem to be motivated by pleasure and nowhere is this more
apparent than in their play. There鈥檚 no doubt that animals at play appear to be
having fun. Young dolphins often dart about in the water and also seem to enjoy
slowly drifting in the current. Buffaloes have been known to go ice-skating,
excitedly bellowing 鈥済waaa!鈥� as they slide across the frozen ground. I once
observed a young elk in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, running across a
snow field, jumping and twisting its body while in the air, stopping, catching
its breath, and doing it again and again. There was plenty of grassy terrain
around but the elk chose the snow field.

It certainly looks as though these animals are enjoying themselves, and there
are some neurobiological findings that support the inferences. Studies of the
chemistry of play indicate that it is fun. Jaak Panksepp from Bowling Green
State University, Ohio, has found evidence that rats produce opiates during
play. They also have increased dopamine activity in their brains when
anticipating play, according to findings made by Steven Siviy from Gettysburg
College, Pennsylvania. In humans, both opiates and dopamine are associated with
pleasure.

Play is important in development because it teaches a young animal skills
that it will require to survive as it becomes independent. If animals play
because they enjoy it, then the positive emotions associated with play have an
evolutionary advantage just like the fight or flight response. A similar
argument has been used to explain what looks like romantic love among
animals.

Birds do it

Bees may not do it, but birds certainly seem to. Ravens fall in love,
according to renowned biologist Bernd Heinrich from the University of Vermont,
Burlington, who has studied and lived with these birds for many years. In his
book, Mind of the Raven, Heinrich writes: 鈥淪ince ravens have long-term
mates, I suspect that they fall in love like us, simply because some internal
reward is required to maintain a long-term pair bond.鈥�

In many animals, including southern right whales, romantic love seems to
develop during courtship and mating. Often this is protracted, with both parties
performing rituals that take time and energy and can be risky. It is as if they
need to prove their worth to each other before consummating their relationship.
Interestingly, our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, don鈥檛 appear to fall
in love. And male chimps don鈥檛 spend much time courting, mating, or remaining
with the females whose young they have fathered.

Many things have passed for love in humans, yet we do not deny its existence.
It is unlikely that romantic love first appeared on the scene in humans with no
evolutionary precursors. Many birds and mammals share the brain systems and
chemistry that underlie love in humans. Dopamine levels, for example, are
elevated in lusting, love-struck humans and in rodents anticipating a sexual
encounter. In addition, mammals have the hormone oxytocin, secreted by the
pituitary gland, which is associated with courtship and sex. Birds and reptiles
have a similar chemical, vasotocin, associated with comparable behaviours. Taken
together, these findings suggest that at least some animals are capable of
romantic love.

The flip-side of love is grief at the loss of a loved one. Some animals
display the characteristic behaviour we associate with grief. Often there is a
period of mourning. Grieving animals may withdraw from their group, sit in one
place and stare into space as if they were paralysed. They remain unresponsive
to attempts by others to interact with them or console them. They may also stop
eating, lose interest in sex, or become obsessed with the dead individual. Some
even try to revive the corpse or carry it around until it decomposes.

Sea lion mothers, watching their babies being eaten by killer whales, squeal
eerily and wail pitifully. Dolphins have been seen struggling to revive a dead
infant. At the Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania, primatologist Jane
Goodall observed Flint, an eight-year-old male chimp, withdraw from its group,
stop feeding and finally die after the death of his mother, Flo. Elephants may
stand guard over a stillborn baby for days maintaining a quiet vigil with their
head and ears hung down. And young elephants who witness the death of their
mothers often wake up screaming. Joyce Poole, who has spent decades studying
elephants in the wild, is convinced the orphans experience grief and
depression.

Even birds appear to grieve. 鈥淎 greylag goose that has lost its partner shows
all the symptoms that John Bowlby has described in young human children in his
famous book Infant Grief,鈥� wrote Nobel prizewinning ethologist Konrad
Lorenz. 鈥淭he eyes sink deep into their sockets, and the individual has an
overall drooping experience, literally letting the head hang.鈥�

A bereft greylag goose may behave like a bereft human, but does it feel grief
in the way that a person does? This question is difficult to address because we
don鈥檛 yet have a biological explanation of how humans experience their emotions.
Antonio Damasio from the University of Iowa offers one possibility in his book,
The Feeling of What Happens, published last year. He suggests that some
parts of the brain map both the internal state of our bodies and external
objects or situations that are affecting us. Damasio believes that the
physiological processes that accompany emotions are not mere by-products, but
instead are part of the mechanism that produces feeling. By simultaneously
mapping our internal and external environments, we feel our experiences as our
own. If Damasio is correct, then his explanation may also apply to some animals,
particularly our closest living relatives, the other primates.

Chimpanzees, for example, may not fall in love but they do appear to
experience a wide range of emotions, including embarrassment, which requires an
individual to wonder what others are thinking about it. Goodall has witnessed
embarrassed chimps. She describes a young male showing off by swinging on a
sapling in front of a dominant male. When the branch snapped, the youngster fell
head first into long grass. He then turned to check that his fall had not been
spotted, climbed another tree and began feeding.

Another noted primatologist, Marc Hauser from Harvard University, has
observed embarrassment in a rhesus monkey. After copulating, the male strutted
away and accidentally fell into a ditch. Hauser recounts how the monkey stood up
and quickly looked around. After sensing that no one had seen the tumble, he
marched off, back high, head and tail up, as if nothing had happened.

These observations suggest that the differences between human and animal
emotions are often differences in degree rather than differences in kind. Even
where the similarities with ourselves are not so obvious, if we accept that
animals have feelings too, then there are important implications for the way we
behave towards them. When animals are seen as automatons with no emotions, it is
easy to treat them as mere property with which humans can do as they please. But
view them as sentient, feeling individuals and it is more difficult to justify
some of our cruel and unthinking practices.

If we close the door on the possibility that many animals have rich emotional
lives鈥攚hich may be very different from our own鈥攚e will lose great
opportunities to learn about the lives of creatures with which we share this
magnificent planet. There are many mental worlds beyond human experience just
waiting to be explored.