Dogs may well have some emotion-like concepts. For example, a number of scientists now suspect that very social animals, such as dogs and elephants, have some concept of death and can experience some kind of grief. This grief need not have exactly the same features as human grief, but both could be rooted in something similar: the neurochemical basis of attachment, body budgeting, and affect. In humans, the loss of a parent, lover, or close friend can wreak havoc with your budget and cause much distress that operates similarly to drug withdrawal. When one creature loses another who helped to
...more