When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals

Human emotions are often hard to describe. If people are unable to describe how they are feeling, are the people unable to feel emotion? Or perhaps they are of limited verbal ability and have difficulty expressing any thought. The argument that an emotion does not exist until a person is able to describe and verbalize the feeling is frequently used to discount and discredit the belief that animals have emotional lives. Animals can and do experience emotions. They express them through their actions and behaviors instead of words.

Masson and McCarthy believe that all animals are sentient beings and have feelings. The two authors lay out a logical argument for their belief. They are clearly sympathetic to the view that all animals have emotional lives and can suffer because of their emotions: any animal that suffers from pain, either physical or emotional, should have the right to exist without pain when humans can save the animal from suffering. They give three reasons for the lack of research into animal emotions: anthropocentrism, the belief that humans are at the "center of all interpretation, observation, and concern" (41); anthropomorphism, the assigning of human qual

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diction made by scientists studying animals of disavowing that human attributes or emotions exist in animals and at the same time claiming that "animals are so similar to us in their feelings that we can learn about human depression by studying animal depression" (104). Clearly, the scientists who are doing animal experimentation are picking their moral and ethical values according to their need of the moment and for their own convenience. Masson and McCarthy's style of flooding the reader with examples of anecdotal evidence of behaviors which most people would agree characterize the emotional state that they are discussing is effective in persuading the reader that animals do have an emotional life. Their attacks on all scientific research and experimentation and the use of animals for food and for production of other products is unnecessary to prove their thesis that animals have feelings. It is a distraction from their main topic. The case for animal rights is better presented by Peter Singer in his essay, "Ethics and the New Animal Liberation Movement." Singer presents his case for the abolition of speciesism. Speciesism is the belief that humans have the right to treat other species with disregard for their feelings
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Approximate Word count = 1915
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)