Re: Full Recovery Is Not A Gradual Process Years Into The Future

We experience and endure joy, hurt,d sorrow, hate, etc. . Animals don't have these.

Animals can certainly hurt. They can certainly fear. And clearly much more. Living with pets can help us understand this. If an animal isn't able to speak, should we assume their being energetic at our arrival is only the appearance of joy, not actual joy? If they get mopey when we're sad, they're just mimicking empathy and sadness?

People who should be there for her and aren't are often given the cold shoulder—her way of informing them that she's miffed at them. Washoe greeted Kat [the caretaker] in just this way when she finally returned to work with the chimps. Kat made her apologies to Washoe, then decided to tell her the truth, signing "MY BABY DIED." Washoe stared at her, then looked down. She finally peered into Kat's eyes again and carefully signed "CRY", touching her cheek and drawing her finger down the path a tear would make on a human. (Chimpanzees don't shed tears.) Kat later remarked that that one sign told her more about Washoe and her mental capabilities than all her longer, grammatically perfect sentences.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washoe_(chimpanzee)#Self-awareness_and_emotion


The fact that animals have emotions is not a challenge to God or the specialness of humans. We should not deny them their feelings or mistreat them just because we think we're special. That would be unchristian. Tweet