Is Man the only animal who cries TEARS for EMOTIONAL feelings?

Thomas1970

Hi Gecko,
This is something of a controversial topic, and though most people agree elephants do exhibit a wide range of emotions, some do believe they shed tears for emotional reasons as well. Here is a good link:

http://experts.about.com/q/Wild-Anim...ephant-eat.htm

Hope this helps.

Starman

I once heard an anti-bulfight advocate from Spain say that bulls sometimes cry in the arena. But my search was unable to find any support for this claim except a book entitled: When Bulls Cry.
http://www.authorhouse.com/BookStore...kid~37456.aspx


In any case, below is ink to yet another site where the question is discussed.

http://ask.yahoo.com/ask/20030313.html

Excerpt

6. Gorillas are very intelligent, and they share with us a full range of emotions: love, hate, fear, grief, joy, greed, generosity, pride, shame, empathy, and jealousy. They laugh when they are tickled and cry when they are sad or hurt. Gorillas cry with sounds, not tears.
http://www.koko.org/kidsclub/learn/10facts.html

sovaira

i think animals do cry

i have observed this myself ,when i was in a village ,there was a cow whose calf was taken away and sold,she cried with tears and i saw it.

valinors_sorrow

I agree with Starman that Koko the gorilla is a fascinating study, especially the interaction with the kitten. I have not seen the bull book (LOL that sounded bad) but there is another marvelous book out, easy to read, that delved into that very topic called When Elephants Weep that I would lend you off my bookcase if I could. I believe all living things feel feelings beyond physical sensations, the more sophisticated the entity, the more elelaborate their palette of emotional expression. I also see much evidence that we have yet to fully understand how badly we've been misinterpretting all sorts of things about this planet, including this very topic.

sovaira

almost ,all the mammals do share these feelings of love ,care ,motherhood,territorial limitation and emotions ,so i am sure that they cry when depressed or something have goe bad them ,


have u ever heard a lonely bird cry in the evening ,that has forgotten or is missed by the rest of the flight flock.

sovaira

Emotion in animals considers the question whether non human animals feel in the sense humans understand it.

Different answers have been suggested throughout human history, by animal lovers, scientists, philosophers, and others who interact with animals, but the core question has proven hard to answer since we can neither obtain spoken answers, nor assume anthropomorphism. As a result, on the one hand society recognizes animals can feel pain, by criminalizing animal cruelty, and yet on the other hand it is far from clear whether we truly believe animals "feel" in a meaningful sense. Often expressions of apparent pleasure are ambiguous as to whether this is emotion, or simply innate response, perhaps to approval or other hard-wired cues. The ambiguity is a source of much controversy in that there is no certainty which views, if any, are "right". That said, extreme behaviorists would also say that human "feeling" is a meaningless, hard-wired response to external stimuli.

In recent years, research has become available which suggests strongly animals have emotions as people do, albeit lacking certain cognitive insights. This matches recent advances that have revolutionized prior understandings of animal language, cognition and tool use, and even sexuality. Emotions arise in the mammalian brain, or the limbic system, which human beings share in common with other mammals as well as many other species. This presents both a scientific dilemma

if its a debatable issue then i would go with the fact ,tha tanimals do cry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion_in_animals