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Do animals have rich emotional lives? For people who spend a lot of time with animals, these are silly questions. Common sense tells us that our animal companions do indeed show happiness, sadness, anger, jealousy and grief. However, common sense is sometimes difficult to reconcile with science sense, which looks for repeatable observations under controlled conditions. But emotions are often brief and unrepeatable.

For centuries, the inner lives of animals were ignored because we assumed animals were automatons - biological machines ruled simply by urges and instincts, responding mechanically to stimuli they were confronted with. However, we share nearly 99 percent of our genetic material with our nearest biological relative, the chimpanzee. Is it possible, then, that with so much in common, we have emotions and other creatures do not?

Like people, animals behave in recognizable ways when feeling happiness, grief or anger. In addition, the study of neurobiology reveals that different species of animals have in common both certain brain structures and the chemicals that transmit information within those structures. Today many scientists are accepting that non-human animals do indeed experience emotions and there is increasing evidence that birds, reptiles and fish experience some kind of emotional activity as well. The study of animal emotions has become an exciting field that is quickly making up for lost time. According to some scientists, in the last ten years we have probably learned as much as we did in the previous one hundred.