Q:"It sure seems to me that my ferret exhibits emotions that are outside
the realm of survival-related functioning....But I've been told that the
cerebral cortex of animals like ferrets and rats is inadequate to support
the biopyschological functioning which causes emotion."
 
A: As the tater said, I think, therefore I yam, but I'm just a tot.
 
The characterization of a ferret brain as similar to a rat brain is
simplistic and inaccurate.  Ferrets have brains of a complexity more
similar to small primates than to rats (See Fox 1998 Biology and Disease
of the Ferret and the references contained therein).
 
You were told wrong that emotion is a function of the cerebral cortex; the
center of emotion appears to be the limbic system of the brain.  This area
is activated by motivated behavior, arousal, and influences (and is
influenced by) the olfactory, endocrine and autonomic motor systems.  It is
often refered to as the visceral brain.  The cerbral cortex is the gray
matter that surrounds and invades the cerebellum, and is associated with at
least 47 areas of function, categorized into 3 broad areas; motor, sensory
and visual.  *ALL* mammals have a limbic system, but the amount of cerbral
cortex depends on the olfactory, visual and motor evolutionary history of a
species.  Your instructor should review some of the new books on the brain.
(Definitions and pretty, pretty pictures can be obtained in Stedman's,
Taber's and Dorland's medical dictionaries.  Photocopy them, as well as a
few pages from the newer texts on the brain and take them to class for the
argument, then duck and cover and pray for a passing grade).
 
I am not an ethologist (a person who studies animal behavior) so I may be
going out on a limb here, but I would say any animal that displays a mental
state, can communicate it and act on it has an emotion.  For example,
showing anxiety, signaling aggression and then acting aggressively would be
evidence of the emotion of fear.  Under that definition, I would say
ferrets express joy and anger, fear and curiosity, and maybe more.  But
that's how I define it.
 
The question is, would an ethologist agree?  I took two approaches to this
question; first, I looked up emotion in 6 different science dictionaries
and 3 books.  Second, I called two ethologists and asked their opinions.
Both ethologists agreed with what I already believed; that is, emotions
exist along a continuum from simple genetic (instinctual) to complex
environmental (learned) behaviors, and animals along that continuum will be
placed depending on the complexity of their brains.  They also agreed that
most emotions have a genetic or instinctual basis, but in mammals with
complex brains, the expression of emotion can be modified by conditioning
or learning (culture in people).
 
From 9 books I gathered a variety of separate and overlapping definitions
of emotion in animals.  For example, the "Veterinarian's Encyclopedia of
Animal Behavior" does not define emotion, but allows it exists by
discussing emotional behaviors in cats, dogs, horses, etc.  It is not
defined in "Black's Veterinary Dictionary," but again, it discusses
behaviors demonstrating emotional states.  "Bailliere's Comprehensive
Veterinary Dictionary" states animals have emotions "Insofar as they are
motivated to behave by what they percieve and much of the reaction is
learned rather than intuitive," which certainly occurs in ferrets.
 
In "A Dictionary of Ethology" an emotion is defined as 1) an inner state of
feeling, and/or 2) a physiological state of arousal, and/or 3) an action
tendency.  It admits the idea of emotion in animals is suppressed in favor
of behavioralism (a position some ethologists are now starting to reject).
The "Animal Behavior Desk Reference" lists 15 separate definitions of
emotion, and also lists other definitions which defaults to the idea that
animals indeed have emotions; for example, "Emotion-as- an-output: An
animal's behavior occuring in conditions of excitement, danger, joy, etc."
Finally, "The Oxford Companion To Animal Behaviour" has a long and involved
discourse that essentially allows emotion in animals, but stresses the
difficulty of definition and testing.  After all, you cannot read a
ferret's mind to determine an emotional state when a single physical
response (fluffed tails) can signal different emotions (joy, fear, anger).
 
127 years ago, Darwin expressed the opinion that animals had emotions in
his book "The Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animals" (1872).  He
stated, and even now there is considerable agreement, that animals express
3 basic emotions; fear, joy and anger.  He stressed for something to be
called an emotion, it must be socially communicatable as well as expressed
in action.  In other words, anger can be expressed as biting, but it can
also be communicated by a ferret hissing.  Many emotions are actually
considered modifications of basic ones; for example, sexual arousal,
environmental enrichment, and happiness at being scratched can all be
subsumed within "joy." The more complex an animal, the wider the range of
expression of emotion, as well as the inclusion of other emotions.  Darwin
stressed emotional states existed along a continuum, with basic opposites,
such as anger-joy, or fear-curiosity.  Using Darwin's definition, emotion
requires a social context and communication of emotional state that can be
transmitted by a variety of signals, such as fluffed tail, arched back,
hissing, teeth display and snapping, which signals anger before it is
expressed as actual fighting, preventing injury or death.
 
Since ferrets have a functional limbic system, they have the biological
potiential of emotional states.  Since ferrets can and do communicate their
emotional state to others prior to acting on them, they must, by Darwin's
definition, have emotions.  HOWEVER, ferrets, being ferrets and not people,
have ferret--not human--emotions.  There is nothing in the human experience
that a ferret can comprehend, and the opposite is also pretty much the
truth, which renders comparisons difficult, if not impossible.  So emotions
are species dependant; ferrets have emotions, but they are ferret emotions.
 
Bob C and 20 Mo' New Age Sensitive Ferts
[Posted in FML issue 2571]