Do animals have morals?

[Zierro]

Something interesting I was thinking about in the shower. I honestly don't know. Perhaps some of you can enlighten me? :)

[sohkmj1]

Perhaps, but I'd like to think not so I wouldn't get a guilty conscience when I eat meat (eww eating stuff that thinks). Instead I'd like to think of animals as "whatever it takes to survive bro".

[RpgGamer]

Animal brain structure is significantly different from human brain structure. They feel no emotion, they have no morals.

Simple as that.

[Saru Inc]

Besides Tigers hunting out the weakest gazelles in the flock to massacre, shure.

 

 

Tbh no, I really do think it's survival of the fittest excluding mother/cubs.

[Zierro]

They feel no emotion

 

Can a dog not have its day?

 

Dogs get excited when their master returns from a long day of work. Is this emotion, or is it merely a biological response to an external stimuli? And if the latter, couldn't the same be argued for human beings?

[Dax]

Why all the threads designed to mess with me!? D:

 

I've never heard anyone say animals don't have emotion.. :S But morals, I don't know.

[Shiny]

Emotion yes. Morals, no. Long post when I am not drunk.

[Assume Nothing]

Bet this was from the Vegetarianism thread. Animals perceived as 'intelligent' may have morals, I just haven't read up on it

[Tempest_Mike]

Emotion yes. Morals, no. Long post when I am not drunk.

 

I like the way you think. :thumbup:

[Zygimantas]

Well they do have morals in a sense. I mean, their chemical nature determines what is right or wrong. Isn't not eating ALL your offspring in order to pass on genetic material a moral? Aren't morals derived from natural instincts and emotions? If so then if something has emotions or at least natural instinct to do anything, then it should also have morals.

[assassin_696]

The concept of morality is a human construct, but regardless animals do show some moral behaviour. Motive is different, humans are moral but their motives may be rooted in desire for sex or approval. Below is a lazy copy and paste I did of a pretty equally lazy essay I did last year:

 

[hide]Altruism is typically thought of as the selfless concern for the good of others, and is seen as a noble virtue in many cultures and religions throughout the world. However in evolutionary biology altruism refers to behaviour by an individual which increases the survival fitness of an individual whilst decreasing the fitness of the actor. At first glance it may be hard to see how this kind of behaviour could ever possibly evolve. Whilst helping out a fellow member of your species with no cost to yourself might seem to be a reasonable thing to do since you are likely to share many of the same genes (an example of kin selection, explained in more detail later), to do so when your fitness is directly impacted may seem contrary to the wishes of your own selfish genes. The definition of true altruism is not clear cut; however I am taking it to mean altruism which is completely selfless in nature, i.e. with no long term or short term benefit to the altruists genes whatsoever.

Nevertheless, numerous examples of apparent altruism do exist in the natural world. For example, dolphins will often support sick or injured animals, swimming under them and pushing them to the surface so that they can breathe. Vampire bats will often regurgitate blood to sick or unlucky roost mates that have been unable to find a meal. Walruses have been observed adopting orphans who have lost their parents to predators. Meerkats will often stand on guard to warn the rest of the group about predators at greater risk to themselves.

Many of these examples can be attributed to kin selection. This is the theory that describes how closely related individuals will often perform apparently altruistic acts for other members of their group. However this kind of behaviour is rarely considered truly altruistic. For example consider a hypothetical situation where one animal is drowning and another walking by. Since rescuing the animal will incur some potential cost to the animal, c, since there is a chance of it drowning too survival of the fittest type reasoning might indicate that animal should just keep on walking by. But if the passing animal is of the same species as the drowning one then they will likely share some of the same genes. Therefore by saving the animal you would increase the survival fitness of those genes that you share with the drowning animal, a benefit which we can call b. The benefit will go up as the relatedness of each animal to each other increases, which can be worked out by simple Mendelian genetics. So if we denote their relatedness by r, then for identical twins the relatedness will be one. For parents and their offspring their relatedness will be 0.5. Therefore the condition for natural selection to favour altruism among relatives is that it should be performed if rb > c, a condition called Hamiltons rule. This can explain much of the apparent altruism observed in the animal kingdom. For example the blood regurgitating vampire bats have a relatively small cost to them associated with regurgitating one meal to a struggling bat, so their cost is small, whereas the benefit to the recipient of the meal is very large because the alternative might mean death. Therefore it is clear how this behaviour might be selected for, but as mentioned before it is not generally thought of as true altruism since the altruistic genes are merely acting in their own interest. Nevertheless there are still some example of altruistic kin selection that are staggering in their scope. Perhaps the most obvious example of this would be matriphagy, or the consumption of the mother by the young seen in the spider Stegodyphus. Clearly the cost to the mother here is very high, but since she gives birth to many young with a high relatedness to her (0.5) then the benefit to her genes can be considered to outweigh the cost to her life.

Perhaps the most astonishing acts of altruism exist in the social insects, where individuals in a colony like bees might knowingly commit suicide (in whatever sense a bee can know its future) to defend the colony. However this behaviour is really once again kin selection acting at its strongest. The suicidal solider bees are infertile, and since they have no reproductive potential, by defending their closely related colony they are acting in their genes best interests.

Another area where there exists much potential for interesting discussion of apparent altruism is the observed phenomena of individuals in a group alerting the rest of their group by making alarm calls. Again, at first glance this may appear to be a heroic act of self-sacrifice since the animal making the alarm call is surely placing themselves at greater personal risk by alerting to the predator specifically to their presence. However with closer examination it can be shown that many of these acts of apparent altruism are actually either the actions of self-interested individuals (or their genes) or not as altruistic as they first appear. This explanation was thought up by Richard Dawkins and is known as the cave theory. Consider a flock of birds grazing on the ground with a hawk circling overhead. The hawk may not have noticed the birds yet, but if one of the birds does it will remain safe if it were to freeze and not attract attention to itself. However since the rest of the flock are still noisily grazing any one of them could attract the attention of the hawk and put the whole flock in danger. Therefore from the point of view of a selfish individual the best strategy may be to issue a quick warning call to its fellow birds and get them all to stop moving. Furthermore, the acoustic warning calls of birds are optimised to make them difficult to locate. Another example is that of the Thomsons gazelle, which will stott (leap around dramatically) in front of a predator, which serves as a warning to its companions. Clearly this can be in no way designed to be a discreet warning, since it is so obvious. However it is now thought that the display serves as a show of strength and confidence to the predator, in effect saying that the predator would have an easier meal if it went after the gazelles weaker, lower (or non) jumping companions.

Another area where altruism might be considered to develop is in reciprocal altruism, a concept introduced by Robert Trivers. It is based largely on the field of mathematics called game theory, which has many applications in social sciences and evolutionary biology. Analyses of these situations always examine the payoff and cost for each possible scenario. To use an example given by Richard Dawkins again, consider a population of monkeys with a particular parasitic tick that lives in their hair and if left unchecked could lead to infection and death. A common social behaviour observed in many primates is their grooming of one another to remove these ticks and fleas; however it needs to be examined why this should be so. Let every monkey in a population have a sucker gene which means they indiscriminately groom any individual. This population could live quite happily, until genetic mutations throw up a new gene called cheat in an individual. This gene makes the individual receptive to being groomed but the individual will never return the favour of grooming. His average pay-off is higher than for the sucker, since he receives the grooming without having to do any in return. In this case the gene for cheat would spread rapidly through the population since no matter what the ratio, cheats will always do better than suckers in a population. Even when the population is declining towards extinction due to infection the cheat gene will still be doing better than the sucker gene. However then consider a new gene called grudger, the bearer of which will groom any individual once but remember if the grooming is not reciprocated. I.e. he bears a grudge against anyone who doesnt groom him back. In a population of cheats a single grudger gene is likely to go to extinction rapidly, since he would have to groom all individuals before realising none of them reciprocate, wasting a great deal of energy. However once there reaches a critical proportion of grudgers in a population their chance of meeting one another is high enough so that their payoff is greater than the cheats, since they are more likely to be groomed in return. In this case the cheats will begin to be driven towards extinction, with a few rare cheats remaining (since their chance of meeting the same grudger twice is relatively rare). Therefore in this case a population of cheats and grudgers are both evolutionary stable strategies, although the population of cheats has a higher chance of going to extinction. This perhaps then explains why so many social animals will perform altruistic acts for each other, in reality they are doing them because they expect the favour to be returned somewhere down the line.

In conclusion, this essay has looked at many examples of apparent altruism and has shown nearly all of them to have some basis in selfish gene theory. Therefore of the examples discussed I dont think that any could be considered as truly altruistic. And there are numerous other explanations for altruistic behaviour which I havent even discussed, such as selective investment theory, which explains why some species which mate for life might in the courtship stage perform many acts which may be considered truly altruistic in the hope that they will get a long term payoff in terms of reproductive potential (and without wanting to anthropomorphise this essay any further, parallels could easily be seen in humans with this behaviour). However despite these it is my contention that sustained truly altruistic behaviour doesnt exist in animals. I say sustained, because there are still cases often reported in the news of animals behaving in a way that can only be considered truly altruistic, such as dolphins circling a struggling human swimmer to protect it from sharks. This kind of behaviour cannot be explained by any of the previously discussed methods, and so must be considered true altruism. The reason for this behaviour is hard to tell, however it may be because dolphins are conscious in a similar way to humans and can display emotions such as empathy like we can. This essay has also assumed that the title was referring to any animals other than humans. In humans true altruism is probably observed in charitable acts, however whether or not these acts have spread through memes and can be considered true altruism is a title for another essay. Therefore, apart from in extreme cases such as the dolphins mentioned and perhaps some of the behaviour of some of the primates, I dont believe that true altruism is observed in the animal kingdom.

References

The Selfish Gene Richard Dawkins

Evolution Mark Ridley

http://www.bio.davidson.edu/people/vecase/behavior/Spring2001/Ewart/Altruism.html

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[obfuscator]

Animals definitely have emotions - as assassin said morality is a human construct, so no, they don't understand the difference between right and wrong.

 

They do what they do for attention - if being a good pet gets them fed, they'll do that.

[Lenticular_J]

I think they do, but in their own way. We won't be able to understand it - at least, if we could it would be massively difficult. The same way they don't understand human morals. The same way some humans don't understand that other humans have different morals.

 

But, I think in the animal's very different perspective, they have morals. And their morals are totally better than the stupid meerkats (or whatevs).

[Alg]

It's not emotion, it's instinct. When master gets home, the chance of going on a walk increases, and the dog knows that going on walks feels good, so it get excited.

That's pretty much what human emotion boils down to as well, if you want to get all sciency. I don't want to go into more detail, I don't have enough time.

 

Animals are more pragmatic. Predators go for the weakest in a herd, or even just the individual that stands out, because it knows that it's prey probably won't be able to put up as much of a fight as the others. That conserves energy for the animal and gets rid of the weaker members of the herd (Yay Darwinism!).

 

 

For the question..

Emotion in some animals, especially the smarter ones. I'm pretty sure I read something about crows mourning their dead, for example.

Morals, probably not as we know them. Most of our morals are tied in to human society, and are the first things to go in life-or-death scenarios.

 

I'd write more, but again, no time. Maybe later.

[Quyneax]

Counter-question: do humans have morals? By the answers above, no. A human is an animal as well.

 

Morals don't exist physically anyway (not anymore than other thoughts, dreams etc.). I certainly think all animals dream though, so I don't see why other animals wouldn't have morals if we did.

[The Dark Lord]

I saw a dog spare a cat's life once.

[Sam]

My cat has no remorse for killing the sparrow chicks that fell out of a nest near my house. For predatory animals, there is no morality, just primal instinct.

[Skull]

Morals are a concept, not a physical trait. I would argue that some animals certainly have "morals", just not what humans would call morals. Is there proof of this, not that I know of, but if they have self awareness I would imagine they have some sense of morality.

[fakeitormakeit2]

Well from what we've observed I'd say no. Animals are conscious but they're not existentially conscious.

[Socc]

Emotion yes. Morals, no. Long post when I am not drunk.

 

You get drunk and then get on Tip.it? I think you're doin it wrong tbh...

[Guy]

I doubt animals have the mental capacity to have morals. I would think that it is more of a survival at all costs sort of feeling for them.

[Zygimantas]

Animals definitely have emotions - as assassin said morality is a human construct, so no, they don't understand the difference between right and wrong.

 

They do what they do for attention - if being a good pet gets them fed, they'll do that.

But isn't whats right or wrong based on emotions? If you look at morality as a human construct then there is no point in even debating this topic because the very definition of the word provides the answer.

[Giordano]

But isn't whats right or wrong based on emotions? If you look at morality as a human construct then there is no point in even debating this topic because the very definition of the word provides the answer.

Uh, no. Beating up and eating a cute little bird seems wrong, but to the dog it's pretty enjoyable thus he is happy.

 

The owner arrives home from work, I know MY dog doesn't think for a walk or food or anything else because we don't give it to him once we arrive, but he likes our presence. Our presence isn't right or wrong its just something he likes and thus is happy.

 

We hit him with a broom because he peed inside the garage, it wasn't a morally wrong thing to do but he's taught not to do it so he's scared when we come out because we'll be upset and probably hit him.

 

Animals don't have morals. But saying they don't have emotions is the stupidest thing I've heard. Thinking emotions = human intelligence which leads you to say animals don't have emotions is stupid as well.

[Zygimantas]

But isn't whats right or wrong based on emotions? If you look at morality as a human construct then there is no point in even debating this topic because the very definition of the word provides the answer.

Uh, no. Beating up and eating a cute little bird seems wrong, but to the dog it's pretty enjoyable thus he is happy.

 

The owner arrives home from work, I know MY dog doesn't think for a walk or food or anything else because we don't give it to him once we arrive, but he likes our presence. Our presence isn't right or wrong its just something he likes and thus is happy.

 

We hit him with a broom because he peed inside the garage, it wasn't a morally wrong thing to do but he's taught not to do it so he's scared when we come out because we'll be upset and probably hit him.

 

Animals don't have morals. But saying they don't have emotions is the stupidest thing I've heard. Thinking emotions = human intelligence which leads you to say animals don't emotions is stupid as well.

Well, maybe its just not morally wrong for the dog to kill the bird, animals probably just have a different level of empathy.

 

Its not going to attack you because you give it food, and that makes the dog realize that that would be a wrong thing to do, so it becomes a moral.

 

And if I got hit every time I did something, I'd probably soon realize its not a good idea as well.

[Giordano]

I see what you're saying now. You're talking about small morals, nothing like the complex human ones I thought you were.

 

In that case, I have to say animals have some sort of morals, depending on the species and individual.