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It turns out that when you are wolfing down all that ice
cream, and your dog looks at you like it's ashamed,
it's because it's ashamed.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Anthony here, for DNews.
And in the past, we've thought that dogs
are pretty simplistic, emotionally.
While owners thought their dogs saw them as best friends,
science said it's more like trustworthy guardian.
Where owners saw sympathy, science
said, emotional transference and anthropomorphism.
But a bunch of new findings recently
show that dogs and a lot of other animals
might have the same emotional depth that we do.
Gregory Berns is a professor of neuroeconomics
at Emory University.
And over the last few years, he's
been training dogs to sit comfortably in an MRI.
Sit.
Sit.
Previously, putting an animal in an MRI required sedation
or just dealing with a crazy, stressed-out animal, which
means we've never gotten a clear picture of how they think.
We've been going mostly on behavioral study.
And let's be honest here, we misread the behavior of humans
all the time.
And we can verbally communicate with humans.
So--
Anyway, with calm, happy dogs chilling in the brain tube,
they found some very interesting activity going on,
particularly in an area called the caudate nucleus.
It's a happy place-- well, an anticipation
of happiness place.
In humans, researchers can look at the caudate nucleus,
and based on what part of it is lighting up,
predict what we like, what our tastes
are in things like food or music.
It can even clue them in into things
that we find aesthetically beautiful.
In a dog, the caudate lit up in response
to food or the possibility of food.
It activated at the sense of familiar humans.
It activated when their owner walked into the room.
So the same part of the brain that
lights up for love and attachment and beauty
in a human lit up for similar things in a dog.
Now that doesn't necessarily mean
that a dog has got a song that makes
them think of their ex or anything,
but it's a functional homology.
Their brains work like ours, so they
might have emotions like ours.
Other research lately has been showing
a depth in emotion and social memory
that we've never thought animals were capable of.
We used to think that friendship in animals
was based mostly on reciprocity-- what
one animal can do for the other to help it survive.
A recent study of chimpanzees actually
showed it's based on something called the similarity effect.
It's how we humans choose friends.
We tend to like people who have personalities or interests that
are like ours.
Chimps seem to do the same.
Sociable, outgoing chimps flock to one another.
Emo chimps hung out under a tree and smoked with other emo
chimps during lunch-- something like that.
Anyway--
Another study of dolphins this year
showed that they can remember the unique whistle
of their friends, even after being apart for decades.
When a recording of their buddy is played,
their mood improves, and they go hunting around
in the tank to find their lost friend.
More and more, it is looking like animals feel things
as deeply as we do.
In his write-up of his study in the New York Times,
Doctor Berns asks how society would
have to change if we can prove that.
What happens to lab animals, pet stores, agriculture?
Would we have to define what an animal is to us?
What do you think?
Do animals have emotions like us?
Dagger, do you have emotions?
How did you feel at the end of Twilight?
What is your five-year plan?
Feel free to answer any of the questions I just
asked Dagger in the comments and subscribe for more DNews.
And oh, Dagger, we're going to be on Petopia, over
on Animalist, aren't we?
They can't talk. they can feel, but they can't talk.
But he would say yes.
You should go check that out.