Today, let's talk to animals. The University of
Houston's College of Engineering presents this
series about the machines that make our
civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity
created them.
I visited a street fair that
offered elephant rides for children. I stopped at
the fence, asked the name of a nearby African
elephant, and was told she was Rosie. "Hey
Rosie," I said, "what a fine beautiful elephant you
are." Rosie liked that. She walked over, curled her
trunk and placed the tip right in front of my face.
The gesture said, "Don't be afraid of what I'm
about to do." Then, in a quick move she uncoiled
her trunk, rewound it around my neck, and began
nuzzling the top of my bald head.
The whole act was as calculated as a kiss on a
first date. This was a clear expression of good
will. It was about making friends. I was as pleased
to have that elephant pet me (for that's what she'd
done) as my cat is pleased when I pet her.
Now, was this silly romanticism? Was I projecting
my emotions on to an elephant? Jeffrey Masson's
book When Elephants Weep offers insight. In
1995 Masson, a pychotherapist, continued what
Darwin began in 1872. Darwin's book, The
Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals,
contradicted supremacist 19th-century thinking. His
contemporaries believed humans were superior to
animals, whites superior to dark-skinned people,
and males superior to females. They believed true
emotion could be felt only near the top of the
tree.
Masson traces theories about animal emotions
through the age of modern science. In the 17th
century, Descartes flatly said that animals were
robots. They only appear to have feelings
like ours. Nonsense, Voltaire said. Animals have
anatomy like ours. They surely feel as we do as
well. But his was a minority view.
To look for human attributes in animals has been
branded with the word anthropomorphism. You
no more endow an animal with human feelings than
you do a rock or a tree. A tacit rule precludes
applying science to animal feelings. Masson quotes
an administrator at an animal training institute:
"... if you talked to any one of us, we'd say,
'Sure they have emotions,' but as an organization
we wouldn't want to be depicted as saying [that]."
Darwin's study of animals reflected a lifelong
talent for letting facts break through old beliefs.
He cataloged emotional expressions of species.
Since animals have less facial mobility than we, he
included their use of full-body language to express
feeling.
And we're back to Masson's title, When Elephants
Weep. Darwin looked for evidence of weeping
among animals and could find only anectdotes about
African elephants shedding tears under great pain
or distress. Masson also finds unverifiable
anecdotes. But, he points out: Tears aren't grief;
they're only symbols of grief. We have to
look at animal expressions of feeling on their own
terms.
Tears or no, it's patently obvious to anyone one
who's spent time with animals that they feel grief
-- and anger and joy. So I don't know if Rosie
sheds tears. But I do know she enriched my life
that day she told me that she accepted me as a
kindred animal.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
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