>I Know scientists say that animals have no emotions and that we
>humans Are only anthropomorphizing them. I have to disagree. The daily
>Evidence I am confronted with from my menagerie of dogs, cats and
>Ferrets leads me to believe otherwise. I believe my dogs and cat and
>The ferrets experience a myriad of emotions. You just have to watch the
>Unbridled dance of joy from an ecstatic ferret or the pitiful speed
>Bump of despair from a sad weasel to believe it is so. It just makes
>Sense to me that these emotions and emotional bonding can cross from
>Ferret to human.
I have to agree. My first bonded pair of ferrets, "Seymore" and
"Slippers" were quite the pair.
Both were my first adoptees, and were the beginning of my foray into
ferret rescue back in 1994.
I was lucky enough to have them both into their 10th year, despite
Seymore having gone blind from an intense unidentified illness when he
was about 4 or so; and both having advancing insulinomas later in
life.
When the morning came that I had no choice but to let Seymore
go.........I came home to Slippers and let her out for play time (and
comfort time)... she came out to the middle of the hallway and sat
down.......something she never did, and she never moved again. I
lost her one week later to the hour that Seymore passed. I had always
expected her to go first, but I know she was waiting for Seymore....I
know she knew the moment he was gone that he was not coming back, and I
know without a doubt that she then decided she was ready to go. Despite
my best efforts and coaxing, she gave up. And, I know she was simply
waiting for Seymore to go first......she didn't want him to be left
behind.
My husband is a physician and in the understand of the scientific ways,
I know his rational thought processes tell him that "they say, animals
do not experience emotion"; but I also know with our ferrets and our
dogs and the multitude of experiences we have had with them and
their various behaviors that our beliefs are that animals do indeed
experience emotion....we've seen it watching them with each other and
in the ways in which they grieve, ways that we wouldn't even think of
let alone expect of our pets. And, of course, in the many ways in which
they interact with us.
I'm no expert, but when a ferret chases the dogs anytime they come
near (and I mean for the attack), and refuses to hang out with other
ferrets, but rather chooses to curl up on the pillow next to their
human and lick their face....well, I have to say there is some deep
seeded emotions there. Oliver hated dogs and other ferrets, but adored
his humans. That for a ferret that had been though hell, passed from
home to home because no one wanted a ferret that had reoccurring
adrenal tumors the size of a golf ball and thus required many
surgeries.
When he had his last surgery, he never recovered.....He slept on the
heating pad next to our bed and seemed to be resting comfortably....
I checked on him every 30 minutes or so. In the middle of the night I
heard him what I would call crying and I got up and put him in the bed
with me. He managed to crawl up on the pillow in my lap and gave me a
few licks before curing up and dying in my arms about 5 minutes later.
If there is no emotion, I don't see why he'd have made the effort to
get my attention crawl a few feet and give me those last fewlicks....
just my thoughts I guess, call it what you want, but I see emotion
here and I've a dozen other stories that match.
[Posted in FML 5509]
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