BBC:
A military dog named Gina is recovering from post-traumatic stress disorder after a six-month tour in Iraq, where she conducted door-to-door searches.
A veterinarian diagnosed the dog with PTSD, which some experts say can affect animals in a similar way to humans.
The two-year-old dog returned home to Peterson Air Force base in the US state of Colorado one year ago terrified, skittish and fearful.
It is precisely here that the ownership of and friendship with a dog makes much of its sense to me: mammals are in essence the emotional animal. It’s what links us to the smallest mouse—we the descendants of night animals that for millions of years hid from the dinosaurs in the cold night and returned to the day with our hair and big eyes only after those noisy monsters were destroyed by an asteroid. People who own reptiles are profoundly puzzling. No emotional bond is possible with that class of animals. A large lizard or snake could never suffer or be stressed like poor, warm, and hairy Gina.
You’ve come around my friend. Next slog happy, I’m bringing you a puppy. F it, puppies on the house.
I’ll bring him a chimpanzee.
“No emotional bond is possible with that class of animals.”
It’s SCIENCE! All mammals have a region of the brain called the neocortex, which is involved in sensory perception, spatial reasoning, conscious thought, and language. All mammals have it, no other animals do.
That bond you feel between you and your hamster? Yeah, it’s because of that part of their brain. Turtles and some birds can have cognitive processes, which is why you feel sad when a turtle, cat, or parakeet dies, but not so much when your salamander kicks the bucket.
This has been your biology lesson of the day.
“All mammals have . . . spatial reasoning.” Hmph. You obviously never met my ex-wife.
@3 It’s empirically impossible to say that all mammals have “conscious thought.” We can observe awareness and stimulus response in the world (and higher levels of response in more complex organisms), but to ascribe consciousness to other animals because WE too are mammals and possess consciousness is fallacious.
Epistemologically speaking, it’s impossible to prove that anything is conscious but onesself. However, as a pragmatic rule-of-thumb, we operate on the assumption that other humans (at least) experience the world in a way similar to us. Making that leap to other organisms ignores the fact that human’s only tool to gauge consciousness is through language.
Talk about misquotes. It’s true (proven) that mammals have a neocortex and it’s true that the neocortex is involved in sensory perception, spatial reasoning, conscious thought, and language. Most mammals have a smooth neocortex, but primates and humans have a wrinkly one, increasing the surface area without increasing the volume, essentially giving us more bang for our buck. Nothing I said was fallacious, I was merely mentioning that mammals share a very important trait, the existence of a certain region of the brain. Because mammals are the only animals with this part of the brain, one could say that only mammals are ABLE to have conscious thought, thus giving us a stronger connection with them than with reptiles or other animals.
I don’t think all mammals have conscious thought. I mean, come on. Palin? Please.
@5 lol. the neocortex also plays a roll in reading comprehension.
Even crocodilians care tenderly for their young.
Maybe they should start using alligators in door-to-door searches in Iraq. ‘Gators don’t become traumatized and they’re more intimidating than dogs too.
Send the pup to the Hund Stadt. It’ll be among friends there, at least.
I expect reptoids have emotions, they just don’t have a ton of expressive facial muscles like dogs or mans do.