DO ANIMALS HAVE EMOTIONS?

It is widely accepted that emotions and other “affective states” of various kinds are adaptive and widely conserved across much of the animal kingdom. But many key uncertainties remain. This chapter highlights some of the most significant contributions made to our understanding of animal emotions to date, and outlines the many remaining, unresolved issues, including whether and how conscious feeling states might arise in animals. The authors argue that defining terms such as “emotion” and “affect” in ways that can be used in both human and non-human animal contexts is crucial to developing a new comparative science of emotion. The chapter also shows how recent developments in our understanding of the sciences of emotion and consciousness may pave the way for important advances in comparative emotion research and theory.