[CLIP: Panda sounds]
Sheila Love: What you are hearing is the sound of two pandas making love.
Megan Martin: She kept going to his side of the pen — and, you know, calling him to check in on him.and [it] felt like one of the very unhappy people Romeo and Juliet– a type of story or something.
[CLIP: Panda sounds]
[CLIP: Beginning music]
Love: love picks up many of human attention. We write movies, books and music about it. We talk endlessly with our friends about dating and partners. But how big a role does love play in the lives of our non-human animal friends?
I’m Sheila Love.what you are hearing Scientific Americanof science, quickWe’ve explored many facets of love, but today it’s important to understand whether animals feel love and how we answer that question depends on how we view non-human animals. It leaves people wondering if it can teach us anything about what love is…all.
[CLIP: Ending music]
Love: Meghan Martin is a conservation biologist in Portland, but another way of saying what she does is that she’s an animal matchmaker.
Martin: Caribbean iguana, checkerspot butterfly, Hawaiian ‘Aki Kiki’ and African painted dog at the Oklahoma City Zoo.
Love: She directs PDXWildlife, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping animals. get it in confinement. She is perhaps most famous for helping pandas breed.
[CLIP: Panda Calls]
Martin: [Laughs] Arranging a panda speed date is fun. I really enjoy my job.
Love: When animals aren’t breeding themselves, Meghan and her team encourage them by looking at their environment and making changes to better match how mating occurs in nature. In the case of pandas, one of the techniques they use is to introduce male-on-male competition.
Martin: In the wild, females climb treetops and males crawl under trees. And of course, the winner gets access to women.
Love: Pandas in conservation centers cannot fight. So Martin sets up a so-called “howie”.
Martin: They keep each other visible between very fine mesh fences so they can’t actually physically harm each other. And it gives them the quoting, the dequoting, the competition. So they would be really annoyed. and introduce them to women.
Love: After Howdy, pandas become more motivated to mate. Martin is no stranger to the logistics of getting animals to have sex. Does this mean she helps them fall in love? Her process can make animal love pretty conventional. Still, Martin said it’s still a mystery as to why some animals are attracted to each other and others aren’t.
Martin: Because as scientists, we are trained not to anthropomorphize. However, I strongly believe that my entire career has been born out of anthropomorphizing and recognizing that personality has something to do with the success of this crossbreeding.
Love: In fact, to understand whether animals can fall in love, we To clarify the meaning of love in the first place. Only pandas have sex? is it something else?
Claudia Winke: Love, and falling in love, is a particularly complex phenomenon. Of course, there are various emotions involved, but love is actually a state, not an emotion. In that state, there are many emotions and they can be quite different.
Love: Claudia Winke, an animal behavior biologist at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, says that while you can’t look into an animal’s mind and know what they’re thinking, you can see their behavior. We know that animals have positive states and can form attachments to each other. An example of this is when animals get close to each other and spend time together.
wave: If you don’t like each other, don’t get close. And the first thing is to get closer to each other. And, of course, when they smell and the individual likes, they can groom themselves, sit next to each other, sleep together, or sleep very close together.
Love: Some animals can form monogamous pairs for life, such as the albatross.
[CLIP: Waved albatross call]
wave: And when they meet each other after a year on the breeding grounds, they really get close to each other and find each other in these huge colonies. Once they find each other, they reunite in a very emotional act that definitely makes them look like they’re in love and in love.
[CLIP: Waved albatross call]
Love: Scientists have also measured chemical increases in hormones such as oxytocin in animals, as well as increased brain activity in the emotional centers of the brain. Ultimately, however, our perception of whether animals love us depends on what we think they can feel, based on their physical characteristics and behavior. increase.
David Peña Guzman: I don’t think asking questions about love will automatically get you into trouble. However, if we narrowly define love without taking into account the diversity of expressions of love that exist in the animal kingdom, I think we will be in trouble. I think it’s really dangerous.
Love: David Peña-Guzmán, a philosopher at San Francisco State University who wrote a book about animal dreams, has spent a lot of time thinking about the internal state of animals. He thinks we need to be careful about defining love only as something that conforms to human cultural norms.
Peña Guzman: I think many of us consider romantic love to be the highest expression of love. It is tied to many human conventions, such as monogamy, courtship, and marital relationships.
Love: When you start thinking about love that way, it’s hard to say that animals feel romantic love. Although this form of love is historically fairly recent…
Peña Guzman: It only dates back to the 19th century or so.
Love: The love story changes when we look more broadly at animal behavior like the one Vinke mentions.
Peña Guzman: One example is animal mourning and animal grief. It is clear that when a loved animal dies, it suffers very deeply and very intensely. And there is a set of behaviors associated with the mourning and grieving process that have been fairly well documented in animals as diverse as elephants, whales, and primates.
Love: Veterinarians even recommend that if a pet you live with dies, it’s important to show the pet the corpse.
Peña Guzman: If you have a dog and a cat, they get along well, but for some reason the cat suddenly dies, it is very important to show the dog the actual corpse of his friend. They can start the grieving and mourning process.
Love: Do animals grieve because they loved their deceased animal companions? But what does that really mean?
Peña Guzman: One way of thinking about what grief and mourning are is that they are the process of separation or separation from a loved one. And that’s one way to think about love.
Love: There have been disagreements throughout history about the emotional lives of animals. French philosopher Rene Descartes believed that animals were like robots, moving purely on instinct and conditioning. When we look at animals this way, it may be less about whether they can feel love and more about how we think about their emotional lives.
Peña Guzman: So I think the question of love is interesting. Because it leads to this broader debate about whether animals are emotional subjects and whether animals are emotional subjects. If your answer to that is no, then you may have to have a very different kind of discussion than just about whether they love each other.
Love: The story of panda mating made me think that human love can also be stereotyped. As we discussed in previous episodes, when you manipulate the environment around people by lighting candles, pouring wine, or asking a specific set of questions… very sexy how do you wear …may be able to induce mating behavior.
As reluctant as it may be to say that animals experience love in the same way humans do, it may be equally reluctant to say how human love can be animalistic.
Peña Guzman: We live in a culture where love is tied to sex, and sex is understood as procreation. Therefore, the person we should love the most is usually the one with whom we form a heteronormative relationship and have children.
Love: Even if a panda isn’t your best mate, you may still want to be with them.
Martin: At this time there was a rescue male who was rescued from the wild….and he had lost his hind legs…
Love: They introduced him to the perfect woman for him.
Martin: And they fell in love across barriers.
Love: However, the pair had physical problems mating because the male’s legs were gone.
Martin: Because male penises are so small, pandas have specific problems in that area.
Love: In the end, the two had to part ways.
Martin: But she kept going to his side of the pen.
Love: In the next episode of Love and Brain:
Female 1: I can assure you that you are never… unhappy…
Love: yes….
Female 1: …after your breakup.
Female 2: [Laughs] Haven’t women always complained about dating men?
science fast Produced by Jeff Dervicio, Turika Bose and Kelso Harper. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith.
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for Scientific American science, quickly, I’m Sheila Love.
