>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]