Whether some animals experience emotions to a lesser or to agreater extent in intensity compared to humans could depend upon the type ofemotion involved. Animals without doubt feel pity towards one another,sometimes even crossing beyond the species barrier, but it seems unlikely,although not impossible, that they feel emotions as complex or as intensely ashuman beings do. For example, it is questionable that the dolphins care abouthumans slaughtering one another as several humans care about the killing ofdolphins by some humans. But this may only be owed to the fact they don't havesimilar access to information that mankind do. Perhaps they are aware and haveprinciples of noninterference in human affairs. Perhaps they rightfully areneutral, or take a more farsighted view.There are several emotions, on that humans may feel lessintensely than several animals. Many people experienced the feeling, in somecases, that several animals appear to show happiness. One of the reasons forthe popularity of observing birds is the pleasure of listening to birdsongs,which appear as joyful. As Julian Huxley, describing the courting ritual ofherons twining their graceful necks together, wrote: "Of this I can onlysay that it seemed to bring such a pitch of emotion that I could have wished tobe a heron that I might experience it."The intensity of emotions in some animals is one recurringsource of human envy. Emotional support animals are even valued in the medicaland domestic environments. Joseph Wood Krutch states: "It is difficult tosee how one can deny that the dog, apparently beside himself at the prospect ofa walk with his master, is feeling a joy the intensity of which it is beyondour power to think much less to share. In the same manner his dejection can atleast seem to be no less bottomless. Maybe the kind of thought of which we'recapable dims both at the same time that it causes us less victims of either.Was any man, one wonders, ever as dejected as a lost dog? Probably certain ofthe animals can be both more elated and more utterly desolate than any man everwas."© 2012 Athena Goodlight

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