Do rats like a laugh? Are some goats more optimistic than others? Do elephants have good and bad days? Scientists are looking for answers
In July 1932, a rhesus monkey at the recently opened Chester Zoo was seen by visitors gnawing at a length of rope. After tying one end to a branch, he made the other into a noose. He put it over his head and jumped, dying instantly.
“Monkey commits suicide!” screamed newspaper headlines, while pictures showed the animal hanging, looking horribly human. It sparked a heated debate over whether it was deliberate, whether the monkey was depressed and whether animals should be kept in captivity. Yet no one really had a clue about the monkey’s state of mind.
Nearly a century on, we still struggle to unravel the emotional lives of animals. Distress in animals can be easier to spot than happiness but rarely can there be a subject where popular views are so far removed from scientific understanding. Most pet-owners are convinced that when a cat purrs or dog wags its tail it is expressing joy. Surely it would be arrogant and anthropocentric to assume that humans are the only happy animals on the planet?
Most scientists and philosophers, however, are far more cautious. This scientific approach has been articulated by Marian Stamp Dawkins, professor of animal behaviour at Oxford University, who specialises in the study of chickens and farm animal welfare. Animal behaviourists such as Stamp Dawkins do not deny the existence of animal consciousness but say that theories about it cannot be tested in the real world. Only observable behaviour and physiology can be studied scientifically and yet Stamp Dawkins has complained about a “rising tide of anthropomorphism”.
We certainly project human motivations on to animals in clumsy and unscientific ways, as shown by the story of Anne, an extremely well-travelled fiftysomething with gammy legs who has been up the Eiffel Tower and along Blackpool Beach. Anne was the last circus elephant in England and two years ago she was taken from the circus after her owners were convicted of animal cruelty: video footage showed a groom beating her. Anne was taken in by Longleat Safari Park, but when the elderly elephant arrived she began destroying the trees in her enclosure. “The anti-animals-in-captivity campaigners would probably say that’s because of the trauma she experienced in the circus,” says Longleat’s head vet, Jonathan Cracknell. “But Anne’s not a demonic animal, she’s an elephant – she enjoys smashing stuff up because she can.”