Anthropomorphizing or 'humanizing' tortoises and turtles

[Alexio]

you really need to understand what an emotion is ............. animals most certainly have emotions , the higher the intelligence , the more complex the emotions .....to think they don't is to not understand what an emotion is .......... how is it you know what a tortoise knows ?

Emotions are a cultural construct invented for humans by humans to explain things we dont understand and need find a better way to explain.

It is of your opinion animals have emotions and it is of mine they do not.

If you don't feed a tortoise he becomes hungry. Not sad. Being sad is useless and and won't get you fed. A hungry animal will search out food not mope around on the internet. It never had time to be "sad" because it's just too pre occupied with trying to live.

 

[Tom]

1. I guess this is where I come full circle and say I do not believe that turtles, tortoises and really any animal at all does not have emotions, they have instincts.

2. What is an emotion to a human? What one person may perceive as happiness could actually be anxiety. And how do you feel when you feel happy? Do you feel like I feel when I feel happy?

3. A tortoise knows that if it is provided warmth, moisture, and nutrition, then in will survive.

4. Surviving is all any animal is programmed to go. Humans don't really have " emotions" either. It's just what we are choosing to call the different combinations of electrical signals our brains are receiving .

5. I guess in summary: tortoises and humans operate on instincts and not emotions.

For clarity, I number your points that I wish to address:
1. I don't agree that they don't have some sort of brain chemical reaction that would be defined as emotion. They certainly experience fear, for example. Is that not an emotion? I define it as an emotion.

2. Well the answer to this question will define this entire discussion, won't it.

3. I don't think they make any such cognitive philosophical stretch. They don't "know" every things going to be alright because they have what they need.

4. I don't agree on your "survival" point here either. Many animals are "programmed" for play, sex, and other non-survival related activities. Primates engage in politics to a degree.

5. Neither of these assertions are necessarily true. What instinct is at work when one of my sulcatas park under a bush as night falls on a night that will drop below freezing instead of using the heated shelter that it has used many times before? On the other assertion, I have a 3 year old star that goes into a full-on panicked run every time I place him back in the enclosure after a soak. Is he not operating on the irrational emotion of fear? I think he is.

I bring these points into the discussion to demonstrate that things can also go to far the other way in these discussions. I certainly believe that tortoise and other animals can experience basic , survival related emotions like "fear". Touch an earthworm and watch it flip out. Is it simply doing a pre-programmed instinctual reaction, or is it "afraid" its about to be eaten?

When two male tortoise fight, are they not "angry" at each other? When I see humans engaging in territorial disputes, I see the same "emotion" that I see in tortoises engaging in territorial disputes. Don't you?

I think that most animals do experience basic, survival related "feelings". I don't think most of them (some exceptions) experience cognitive based complex emotions like "happiness".

 

[WithLisa]

If you don't feed a tortoise he becomes hungry. Not sad. Being sad is useless and and won't get you fed. A hungry animal will search out food not mope around on the internet. It never had time to be "sad" because it's just too pre occupied with trying to live.

Without food most humans also become hungry and maybe grumpy, not sad.
I don't know about reptiles, but some mammals and birds can definitely be "sad", they show similar (measurable) symptoms as humans suffering from depression and can even be treated with the same meds.

 

[Kapidolo Farms]

Golly gee willickers. Emotions are chemical cues that have evolved to compel us to succeed. How do we know this? Because there are people who don't have those chemical cues. They behave extraordinarily differently. So we have an experimental control (by observation), people who don't have the genes that produce some complex of molecules that cascade into a behavior. There are also people with an abundance of some of these compound producing DNA configurations. That darn bell curve thingy. Some drugs can change these things in predictable way further indicating it is a series of input and outputs. At least half of all humans have strong monthly cycle for part of their life that alters these cues. Get it now? Emotions are drugs our body produces to survive. Runners high, testosterone rage, estrogen cycle. These body produced things have multiple purposes, so it's not exclusively about 'feelings'.

We as individuals can also project onto others our feelings so strongly they "take over" the state the person projected onto was in. When one baby cries several start, even thought they did not get whatever happened to the first baby directly. As we grow we are better able at holding our own state, against the projection of others.

Tortoises no doubt have some of all this too. The difference is the brain, which acknowledges these impulses and tempers them with thinking. Sometimes the brain won't stop running with an impulse thought so some people retreat to their mind. Our brains are less hardwired and more adaptive than most animals.

'animal people' is a few different things. Some people are well accepted by animals as another animal and if your not in your predator mode, they deal with it okay, for the most part. Some people are really good a reading an animal (or other people) and acting in a way to compel or bridge the animal to you. One is how you are received by the animal the other is how the animal receives you. Some people are great at both.

In the zoo world, people who are good carnivore Keepers may not be good hoof-stock keepers. Bird keepers versus primate keepers etc. The most rare in my experience are good elephant keepers, they are very special individuals that get on well with elephants.

People are generally strong with the ability to emot onto animals. Most people do not listen well to animals. That's the anthropocentric, projecting so loud you can't perceive what the animal is projecting. Domesticated animals are most often those species which have become emotionally weak, and allow us to project onto them without damage to their own projections. (Puppies and kittens for life).

This line of perspective is not from psychology, but biology, evolutionary biology.

 

[mark1]

as Will says , emotions result from chemical cues , serotonin , cortisol , endorphins , dopamine , those same chemicals are present in your turtle , and certainly all higher animals .........as he also stated , emotions promote survival , i may argue they drive instincts ............... every general part of our brains is present in your turtle or tortoises brain ......... why or how would they not have emotions ? they obviously seek to avoid something they know is painful , and when they see me with food , they obviously seek the pleasurable experience of eating , in what certainly appears to be excitement or maybe anticipation ....... for folks who believe they have no emotions what do you believe the actions when they see/anticipate food are ? ............ you can actually train an animal to starve itself to death using pain , which tells me it's not the food , but the chemical pleasure that comes from eating it , the "emotion" . when eating is not pleasurable , they stop ...... personally having had the animals i've had over my life , i don't need any scientific evidence , but there is plenty of it , to think animals are emotional feeling beings .... if the scientific evidence would point otherwise , i'd have to wonder what they were doing wrong ......... folks that believe otherwise , i think it just suits their world ........ some folks will butcher an an animal without killing it because they believe they are as unfeeling as a rock ...........

 

[Kapidolo Farms]

Further consider how animals treat each other as the major clue how they will treat you. Dogs and cats are playful and show a great deal of physical positive contact, purring, licking, head butts, pushing against you for assurance, warmth and companionship. Most male tortoises are hedonistic rapists by 'anthropomorphic' standards. Though some female tortoises can be, again by 'anthropomorphic' standards, complete cheap little hussies.

Frankly with few exceptions mice are more cuddly than tortoises.

 

[Mother_of_Turtle]

You could be wrong, you could be right. What it sounds like to me is the rationalization of a soulless person lacking in spirituality, imagination and the belief that anything is possible. Try not to miss out on the heart, soul and spirit of life. We are all energy and we are all connected. You look into the eyes of a reptile and simply see and animal. I look into the eyes of my turtle and see a life. What you describe is sad and unfortunate.....to me.

 

[Sa Ga]

I say yes to all.

Yes yes yes! Exactly!

There is a difference between anthropomorphism to justify our will over the animal's known good care, and anthropomorphism as recognizing rather "the animal" in all of us, allowing animals their emotional parallels to us. (AND being that torties have been here a hell of a lot longer than WE have... might we have to look at shared emotionality as tortipomorphizing?)

Why is it we (throughout the animal kingdom, not just humans) instinctively understand a growl? A cower? A whine/cry? Why is it we can often discern seeming displays of pleasure vs pain? Because we DO share certain experiences and only the simplest of creatures do not attach anything but reflex to it. When a type of creature will show differing responses to the same stimuli across a group of the same creatures, and even with themselves, the same stimuli across different times, it is not just hardwired biology fueling that preference. There is a difference being mitigated by something else entirely.

Why will Morla handfeed from me, but not from Eric? Why will she happily munch her grub from me when she's on my bed, but not if I feed her on the floor, or sitting on the couch? It's still me, it's still food, she's still hungry, and I'm assuming, still loves her butter lettuce treat? Biologically, physically, there is nothing different except the feeder or the setting. When I've had a busy day and do not spent any x w/ her until suppertime, she completely consistently is slow to start eating, sometimes not willing to eat at all until we hang out for a while. It isn't warmth--she has plenty of all that in her enclosure. It isn't activity level--when we hang, I almost always just sit w/ her and decompress w/ a book or YouTube; she sprawls out on my chest or in her blanket and just stares at me or falls asleep, so we're not running around working up an appetite. Literally nothing is different except amt of attention. Clearly something beyond biology is mitigating this behavior.

I think it's really not so much DO they have emotions, but rather, are they expressing what we think they are? And when we think we identify their feelings toward something, are we assessing it w/ an informed and honest mind--or are we naively assuming something to make ourselves satisfied?

It of course is in the finer nuances that the assumptions can become erroneous. We experience that many times with other humans, and so we definitely will with our animal brethren. Context, personality of each individual, culture (and yes, animals can have local differences in how they interact and live, so outward reactions will likely show some variations), ...these all matter. And with this complexity, there will always be a degree of uncertainty as to what we're seeing and does it mean what we think it does?