Our Pomeranian plays Bruiser Woods in Legally Blonde. She waits for her cue, then walks onstage all by herself

[u/thetinydancer1]

[u/Foe117]

i am pretty sure doggo's can be smarter than we take them for. like the pupper knows the context of what they're doing is for the stage, but it likes what it's doing on cue.

[u/coldize → u/Foe117]

i am pretty sure we anthropomorphize anything we like.

[u/MothmanIsALiar → u/coldize]

Anthropomorphize is a nonsense word because humans are animals.

[u/Cactuas → u/MothmanIsALiar]

It's not nonsense to point out that animals are usually not experiencing certain situations exactly as humans would. We are all animals and we all experience emotions, but it's a leap to assume dogs experience the same emotions as humans do, just as it would be a leap to assume a cat experiences the same emotions as a dog.

[u/MothmanIsALiar → u/Cactuas]

I think its silly to assume that emotions are new rather than an integral part of the evolutionary experience. I have emotions. Chimps have emotions. Why wouldn't squirrels have emotions? We all have a common ancestor.

[u/Ppleater → u/MothmanIsALiar]

It's not about assuming that animals don't have emotions, it's about understanding that animals don't always express the same emotions in the same way for the same reasons. It's the species version of being ethnocentric, assuming that your experience is the default. It's arrogant and often results in harm for the animals. Chimps showing a fear grimace look to a human like they're happy because it resembles a smile, but chimps are chimps, with their own unique experiences, culture, and ways of expressing emotions that are not going to be the exact same as humans. If you assume that a chimp is happy when it isn't, you will continue to do things that make the chimp afraid while assuming you're making it happy. That is not fair to the chimp. And then the chimp freaks out lashes out, hurts someone, and people on reddit go around talking about how chimps are violent, psychopathic, and evil, instead of recognizing the chimp's perspective and experience as something that does not conceptualize the world the exact same way humans do.

Anthropomorphizing is assigning human motivation, logic, and morality to something that is not human, then judging it by those human standards, instead of acknowledging and respecting the animal for what it actually is.

[u/Cactuas → u/MothmanIsALiar]

Yes, all animals have emotions. But that doesn't mean animals always experience or express emotions the same way that humans do.

For example, a person who doesn't know anything about dogs might see a dog panting and think "Oh, that dog is smiling, it must be happy." In reality the dog is panting because it's hot, not because it's happy. That's anthropomorphization.

[u/ColdCruise → u/MothmanIsALiar]

But we are able to process and understand emotions in a way that no other animal can. We experience them differently because of this.

[u/rcknmrty4evr → u/MothmanIsALiar]

Where has anyone said animals don’t have emotions? I feel you’re unintentionally (hopefully) building strawmen.

Also that doesn’t make sense anyway. There’s plenty of different animals with common ancestors that don’t share countless traits.. that’s why they’re different animals.

You seem to be confusing your ignorance and naivety with enlightenment, and insisting on your argument being one extreme and any disagreeing argument being a direct opposite extreme even when no one claimed so.

[u/textingmycat → u/Cactuas]

...why would a cat not experience the same emotions as a dog? do you mean in the same situations they wouldn't have the same emotions? because that's also a pretty big leap to a blanketed statement.

[u/Cactuas → u/textingmycat]

I'm not saying they don't experience any of the same emotions. I think there is almost certainly some overlap in the way dogs, cats, and humans experience emotions. But they are different animals with different brain structures, which means they're going to experience many things differently.