When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals (18 page)

Elephant handlers say that the eyes of elephants water heavily, presumably to keep them moist. Fluid may also stream from their temporal glands, which are between the eye and ear. But no one familiar with elephants would be confused by this. Possibly there is some significance to the fact that many of the elephants shedding tears were lying down, not a usual position for an elephant. Perhaps the position somehow prevents drainage of tears. For all we know elephants often shed tears of grief, but if standing, the tears run through nasolachrymal ducts and down the inside of their trunks.

Emotional tears have been reported in some other species. Biochemist William Frey, who studies human emotional tears, has received reports of dogs—particularly poodles—shedding tears in emotional situations, such as being left behind by their owner, but despite repeated efforts, he has been unable to confirm this in the laboratory. No one but their owners has witnessed these tears, and poodles are a particularly damp-eyed breed even at their most cheerful.

It has been reported that tears rolled from the eyes of adult seals who saw seal pups clubbed by hunters. This is undoubtedly true. But since tears often roll from seals' eyes, there is no proof that these were emotional tears.

GRIEF, SADNESS, AND THE BONES OF ELEPK4NTS

Beavers have also been suspected of crying emotional tears. Trappers have said that a beaver in a trap sheds tears, but such beavers may be crying in pain. However, one biologist has reported that beavers also weep copiously when manually restrained. Dian Fossey reported tears shed by Coco, an orphaned mountain gorilla. Coco was three or four years old when her family was killed before her eyes to secure her capture. She had spent a month in a tiny cage before coming into Fossey's possession and was very ill. She was released into an indoor pen with windows. When Coco first looked out the window of her pen at a forested mountainside like the one on which she grew up, she suddenly began "to sob and shed actual tears." Fossey said she never witnessed a gorilla do this before or afterward.

Montaigne, who may be the first Western author to express distaste for the hunt, wrote in his 1580 essay "Of Cruelty":

For myself, I have not even been able without distress to see pursued and killed an innocent animal which is defenseless and which does us no harm. And as it commonly happens that the stag, feeling himself out of breath and strength, having no other remedy left, throws himself back and surrenders to ourselves who are pursuing him, asking for our mercy by his tears . . . that has always seemed to me a very unpleasant spectacle.

In the end, it hardly matters whether stags, beavers, seals, or elephants weep. Tears are not grief, but tokens of grief. The evidence of grief from other animal behaviors is strong. It is hard to doubt that Darwin's sobbing elephants were unhappy, even if their tears sprang from mechanical causes. A seal surely feels sad when its pup is killed, whether it is dry-eyed or not. Just as a psychiatrist cannot really know when a person has crossed the border of "normal" grief to "pathological" mourning, so humans cannot know that the world of sorrow is beyond the emotional capacities of any animal. Sadness, nostalgia, disappointment, are feelings we know from direct experience; animals we know intimately hint at their parallel feehngs in this dark world. Should science accept their

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challenge and xiy to understand animal sorrow, even its accurate description will need to be complex and subtle, well beyond the clumsy categories and reductive causalities that prevail in the psychology of human pain.

A Capacity ror Joy

Far out at sea, a tuna fleet surrounded a group of spinner dolphins swimming over a school of tuna, catching them in a gigantic net. Small, powerful speedboats circled the animals, creating a wall of sound that disoriented and terrified the dolphins, who sank down silently into the net, only the movement of their eyes showing signs of hfe. Biologists trying to learn how to save dolphins looked on in despair. But when a dolphin crossed the corkline at the edge of the net, "It knew it was free. It burst forward, propelled by powerful wide-amplitude tail strokes . . . [it] then dove, swimming at full speed . . . down and away into the dark water, only to burst from the surface in a high bounding series of leaps."

In an account of this episode, dolphin biologist Kenneth Nor-ris focused on the state of the trapped dolphins, persuasively arguing that their behavior demonstrated not apathy but deep fear. Equally compelling is the joy of the freed dolphins, springing through air and water.

Theorists of human joy have sought to categorize it and to analyze its causes in terms that range from a "sharp reduction in the gradient of neural stimulation" to "what obtains after some

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creative or socially beneficial act that was not done for the express purpose of obtaining joy or doing good." Such theorists tend to ignore the possibility that animals, too, feel joyous.

No one who has ever had a dog or cat can doubt the animal capacity for happiness. Beholding and sharing their open joy is one of the great pleasures people take in animals. We see them leap or run, hear them bark or chirrup, and put words to their delight: "You're home!" "You're going to feed me!" "We're going for a walk!" Like uninhibited human happiness, the pleasure is contagious, so that pets serve as a conduit to joyful feelings. It is rare to find a person as openly ecstatic as a cat about to be fed, or a dog about to go for a walk. If such joy were a figment of anthropomorphic projection, it would be a remarkable collective delusion.

Happiness can be a reward, a response of pleasure in accomplishment. If an animal feels good from doing things that have selective value, certainly that happiness can be said to have selective value. But that does not necessarily mean that the happiness exists only because it has selective value. The grim tasks of survival, even surviving well, do not make a lot of people happy. Part of happiness is often its lack of relation, or even its perverse relation, to any rational end, its utter functionlessness. The evidence is good that animals as well as people do feel such pure joy.

One of the many signs by which joy in animals can be recognized is vocalization. Pet cats are admired for purring, a sound that usually indicates contentment, though it may also be used to appease another animal. Big cats purr too. Cheetahs purr loudly when they lick each other, and cubs purr when they rest with their mother. Lions purr, though not as often as house cats, and only while exhaling. Both young and adult lions also have a soft hum they utter in similar circumstances—when playing gently, rubbing their cheeks together, licking each other, or resting.

Happy gorillas are said to sing. Biologist Ian Redmond reports that they make a sound—something between a dog whining and a human singing—when they are especially happy. On a rare sunny day, when the foraging is particularly good, the family group will eat, "sing" and put their arms around each other. Howling wolves

A CAPACITY FOR JOY

may be asserting territorial rights or cementing social bonds, but observers say it also appears to make them happy.

Black bear cubs express their emotions more clearly than adults, says wildlife biologist Lynn Rogers. "When a cub is very comfortable, particularly when it's nursing, they give what I call a comfort sound. I used to call it a nursing vocalization until I saw cubs doing it when they were not nursing." He imitates the sound, a low squeal. "A pleasing littie sound that they make. One time I gave a big bear a piece of warm fat. It just really seemed to like it. In fact, it made that same sound in a deeper voice. So I don't know —is that happiness or not? Is it just comfort? It was pleased, anyway."

Joy can also be expressed silentiy. Observers of almost any species will quickly learn to know the body language of a happy animal. Darwin cited the frisking of a horse turned out to pasture and the grins of orangutans and monkeys being caressed. In a personal letter he also gave a charming account of animal joy:

Two days since, when it was very warm, I rode to the Zoological Society, & by the greatest piece of good fortune it was the first time this year, that the Rhinoceros was turned out.—Such a sight has seldom been seen, as to behold the rhinoceros kicking & rearing, (though neither end reached any great height) out of joy.—The elephant was in the adjoining yard & was greatiy amazed at seeing the rhinoceros so frisky: He came close to the palings & after looking very intently, set off trotting himself, with his tail sticking out at one end & his trunk at the other,—squeeling and braying like half a dozen broken trumpets.

Signs of happiness can no doubt be misinterpreted. One of the many factors contributing to the fascination with bottle-nosed dolphins is their permanent "smile," created by the shape of their jaws rather than by an emotional state. Since a dolphin doesn't have a mobile face, it "smiles" even if furious or despondent.

Despite this, biologist Kenneth Norris beheves that people and dolphins can recognize the emotional freight of many of each

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Other's signals. That is, the two species can recognize or learn to recognize friendliness, hostility, or fear across species, even if we do not understand each other's vocalizations. He cites a spinner dolphin's "peremptory" harks, which indicate hoisterous hehavior, as compared with soft chuckles that indicate friendly contact, often between female and male. The body language of human and dolphin mothers with their babies, Norris says, is not only comparable, but easily understood by both species.

WTien the ice finally melted from one New England beaver pond in spring, a male beaver and his yearling daughter swam over to look at their dam, "porpoising" on the way, swimming over one another's backs. Afterward they swam across the pond together, rolling, diving, popping up again and turning somersaults, in a display of delight with which even a nonswimmer could identify.

In an example of more literal language, several apes have been taught the sign for "happy." Nim Chimpsky used the word when he was excited, as when he was being tickled. Koko, asked what gorillas say when they're happy, signed "gorilla hug." Whether Nim and Koko would understand one another's use of "happy" is unknown. One criticism of ape-language teaching has been that the animals, with the exception of the gorilla Koko, were usually not taught words to express emotion, though it seemed likely that they would want to communicate emotive states to their friends and enemies. Carolyn Ristau suggested: "It could be worthwhile to attempt teaching a chimpanzee to associate signs with such mental states as aggressive, frightened, in pain, hungry, thirsty or wanting to play." These might be the words that would interest them deeply.

One rainy day in Washington the signing chimpanzees Moja and Tatu were offered a chance to go outside into an exercise area. Moja, who hates rain, went out but scurried into a cave. Tatu climbed to the top of a play structure and sat in the rain, signing "out out out out out out." A researcher said, "It looked like she was singing in the rain."

An equally expressive behavior called "war dancing" is seen in mountain goats and chamois. One animal starts rearing, leaping, tossing its horns, and whirling about. One after another, the whole

A CAPACITY FOR JOY

band takes it up. Goats war dance most often in the summer, when food is plentiftil. The sight of a slanting snow bank can start a war dance and send the band bucking, twirUng, and shding downhill, kicking up the snow. They expend so much energy in their dance that some goats have been seen to make almost two fall turns in the air in one jump.

What have these goats got to be happy about? They have not heard news of an inheritance, received a job offer, or seen their names in the newspaper. They have nothing to be pleased about except life, sunshine, and being well fed. They jump for joy.

Sometimes the source of the joy is obvious and recognizable, such as the excitement displayed by a group of wild chimpanzees finding a large pile of food. "Three or four adults may pat each other, embrace, hold hands, press their mouths against one another, and utter loud screams for several minutes before calming down sufficiently to start feeding," Goodall and Hamburg reported. The implications seemed obvious. "This kind of behavior," they wrote, "is similar to that shown by a human child, who, when told of a special treat, may fling his arms ecstatically around the bearer of the good news and squeal with delight."

A principal source of joy for social animals is the presence of their family and the members of their group. Nim Chimpsky was raised in a human family for the first year and a half of his life. When he was about four years old, a reunion was arranged with the family that had raised him. When he spotted them, in a place where he had never seen them before, Nim smiled hugely, shrieked, and pounded the ground for three minutes, gazing back and forth at the different members of the family. Finally he calmed down enough to go and hug his foster mother, still smiling, and shrieking intermittently. He spent more than an hour hugging his family, grooming them and playing with them before they left. This was the only occasion on which Nim was seen to smile for more than a few minutes.

Reunions after separation are a common source of joy. Two male bottle-nosed dolphins at an oceanarium did not have the adversarial relationship seen between many male dolphins confined together. One was removed to another exhibit for three weeks.

H'HES K/.EP/U.V/S HEIT

When he was returned, the two seemed very excited. For hours they hurtled around the tank side by side, occasionally leaping out of the water. For several days they spent all their time together, ignoring the other dolphin in the tank.

The meeting of rvvo related groups of elephants seems to be a very emotional time, full of ecstasy and drama. Cynthia Moss has reported the meeting of two such groups, one led by the old female Teresia, the other led by Slit Ear. From a quarter of a mile away they began calling to each other. (Since elephants can communicate over long distances with sounds too low for us to hear, they might have been aware of each other before they started calling audibly.) Teresia changed direction and began walking fast. Their heads and ears were up, and fluid poured from the temporal glands (small glands between the eye and ear) of all the elephants in the herd. They stopped, called, got a response, changed course slightly, and sped ahead. Slit Ear's group appeared out of some trees, running toward them.