Emotion in animals

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A drawing of a cat by T. W. Wood in Charles Darwin's book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and
Animals, described as acting "in an affectionate frame of mind".

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Worldwide laws regarding the formal recognition of nonhuman animal sentience and suffering
National recognition of Partial recognition of
animal sentience animal sentience1

National recognition of Partial recognition of

animal suffering animal suffering2

No official recognition of Unknown

animal sentience or
suffering
1certain animals are excluded, only mental health is acknowledged, and/or the laws vary internally
2only includes domestic animals

Emotion is defined as any mental experience with high intensity and high hedonic
content.[1] The existence and nature of emotions in animals are believed to be
correlated with those of humans and to have evolved from the same
mechanisms. Charles Darwin was one of the first scientists to write about the
subject, and his observational (and sometimes anecdotal) approach has since
developed into a more robust, hypothesis-driven, scientific
approach.[2][3][4][5] Cognitive bias tests and learned helplessness models have shown
feelings of optimism and pessimism in a wide range of species, including rats,
dogs, cats, rhesus macaques, sheep, chicks, starlings, pigs, and
honeybees.[6][7][8] Jaak Panksepp played a large role in the study of animal emotion,
basing his research on the neurological aspect. Mentioning seven core emotional
feelings reflected through a variety of neuro-dynamic limbic emotional action
systems, including seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, panic and play.[9] Through brain
stimulation and pharmacological challenges, such emotional responses can be
effectively monitored.[9]
Emotion has been observed and further researched through multiple different
approaches including that of behaviourism, comparative, anecdotal, specifically
Darwin's approach and what is most widely used today the scientific approach
which has a number of subfields including functional, mechanistic, cognitive bias
tests, self-medicating, spindle neurons, vocalizations and neurology.
While emotions in animals is still quite a controversial topic it has been studied in
an extensive array of species both large and small including primates, rodents,
elephants, horses, birds, dogs, cats, honeybees and crayfish.