Teardrops Will Fall : A book about animal emotions may in fact be a treatise on animal rights : WHEN ELEPHANTS WEEP, <i> By Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy (Delacorte Press: $23.95; 236 pp.)</i>
“When Elephants Weep” is an argument for the existence of animal (non-human animal) emotions. Masson, who is the principal author, produces evidence, sometimes anecdotal, sometimes “scientific” (i.e. anecdotes told by scientists) to demonstrate that animals feel friendship, fear, love, joy and more complex emotions usually thought to be human specific, such as shame and the urge to altruism. He describes emotions in several creatures--elephants, orcas, parrots, dogs, Tasmanian devils, mongooses and in one instance, a trap door spider. He cites naturalists, ethnologists, hunters and animal trainers to buttress his conclusion that animals have emotions, that although some animal emotions may be unfortunate (one of his chapters is “Rape, Dominance and Cruelty in Peace and War”), those emotions animals exhibit are very much like ours. “These field studies show what most lay people have always believed: that animals love and suffer, cry and laugh; their hearts rise up in anticipation and fall in despair. They are lonely, in love, disappointed or curious; they look back with nostalgia and anticipate future happiness. They feel.
“No one who has lived with an animal would deny this. But many scientists do just that, which is why I have tried to address their worries in more detail than might be necessary for the ordinary person.”
Masson makes his case: Animals have emotions. Having said that, it is not immediately clear why he feels compelled to make it. Since 98% of our genetic material is common to other mammals, it would be strange to think that mammals didn’t have emotions. Although Masson never specifies which “scientists” he is trying to convince, I don’t doubt that some academic psychologists deny animals have feelings. But academic psychologists often say strange things. Surely the authors haven’t done all this research and tracked down these numerous instances of emotional animals just to confuse a few fusty old Skinnerites still hiding out in the universities? Masson is also distressed that animal researchers who discuss animal emotions are sometimes dismissed as “anthropomorphic.” Having been called “anthropomorphic” a few times myself, I must say there are worse things to be called. It is only in his final chapter that Masson is clear about his purpose which is, I believe, less to confirm what people already know about animals than to argue for the animal rights movement.
Since the animal thinkers I admire are specific about which animals they know, I should say that I have experience with sheep (especially Ramboulette sheep) and dogs (especially Border Collies). These distinctions are important to anyone who works with animals because distinctions have consequences. It is a serious mistake to confine a healthy, young Ramboulette ewe by herself because she will bash fences, leap obstacles and might do herself considerable mischief in her desperation to rejoin her flock. A confined Suffolk ewe is much less likely to do so. I trust my Border Collies to run out half a mile to gather sheep. No other dog breed can be trained to do it.
What interests me about animals is not that they are like us but the subtle and interesting ways in which they are not quite like us. That my ewes mourn for their lambs when they are weaned off them I do not doubt. Their mourning period lasts three days. If permitted, a ewe will return to the same ground where she was born in order to have her lamb. Because of their strong attachment to a familiar locality, I don’t need strong fencing to keep sheep. My ewes will defend a lamb with their life until it is about a week old, when the ewes become less altruistic. Threatened by predators, they pack themselves into a compact mass, pushing the very old, the frail and the young to the outside where they will be gobbled first. Do they feel strong feelings of safety as they burrow remorselessly to the center? Perhaps they do.
When my dog Pip died, his mate of 11 years looked for him at the gate for two days. If she mourned for him any longer than that she gave no sign of it. Perhaps some dog breeds can harbor a lifetime love--and a long, long grief. Border Collies are not among them.
Masson is a former psychoanalyst and author of books critical of Freudian theory. As an expert in human emotions, he frets about those who deny human-like emotions in animals. But if animal emotions were exactly like ours people wouldn’t need dog trainers to housebreak their dogs or animal shelters to kill pets they do not understand, cannot train and will not control.
“When Elephants Weep” is an earnest, over-simple account of animal emotions and the relationships that humans have with them, relationships Masson and McCarthy see as often exploitative. “There is no reason to believe that zoo life is not a source of sadness to most animals imprisoned there, like displaced persons in wartime.” “Asked whether their animals were happy, a number of dolphin trainers all said yes: they ate, engaged in sexual intercourse (it is extremely rare for an orca to give birth in captivity), and were almost never sick. This could mean that they were not depressed, but does it mean they were happy?”
In the final chapter of “When Elephants Weep,” the authors make their central point. “When humans refuse to inflict pain on other humans,” they say, “surely it is because they assume they feel.” Upon this proposition, they build an animal rights argument that quotes familiar animal rights advocates, Peter Singer and Tom Regan.
Masson and McCarthy see animals through the lens of a philosophical theory that can’t admit the fascinating emotional distinctions between species, nor breed distinctions within domesticated species. He cannot begin to discuss the mysterious affection and trust many animals have for human beings. Although we take their lambs for slaughter our ewes keep close to us, trust our sheep dogs and routinely bed down as near to our house as they can. In some instances, animal emotions are more interesting and admirable than human emotions. I wish I could hire a farm hand who would work as hard and gratefully as my unpaid Border Collies. Certain terriers are braver than the bravest human heroes. Only human saints love as deeply and uncritically as the average Newfoundland dog.
I suspect that the animal rights movement could only have arisen in a late-industrial, petrochemical society, which has marginalized its animals and those few people who still know and work with them. Just like its great foe, agribusiness, the animal rights movement devalues real animals and fails to understand those distinctions that can make animal lives worth living. The best philosophical refutation of animal rights theory can be found in Vicki Hearne’s “Animal Happiness.” That Masson focuses on elephants weeping, and Hearne on happy animals is not, I think, coincidental.
Our connections to animals are cultural, genetic, emotional and spiritual. Thinking about animals should be specific, clearheaded, humble and, in the absence of any sound guiding theory, pre-theoretical. I hate it when animals are reduced to tears.
