Animal emotions and empathy with Frans de Waal

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Do animals show empathy? Are there any signs of morality in animal societies? Can a monkey distinguish right from wrong? And what are the standards of what is right and what is not? Does morality evolve in time both for human societies and animal societies?
It is hard to imagine that empathy-a characteristic so basic to the human species that it emerges early in life, and is accompanied by strong physiological reactions-came into existence only when our lineage split off from that of the apes. It must be far older than that. Examples of empathy in other animals would suggest a long evolutionary history to this capacity in humans. Over the last several decades, we’ve seen increasing evidence of empathy in other species. Emotions suffuse much of the language employed by students of animal behavior -- from "social bonding" to "alarm calls" -- yet are often avoided as explicit topic in scientific discourse. Given the increasing interest of human psychology in the emotions, and the neuroscience on animal emotions such as fear and attachment, the taboo that has hampered animal research in this area is outdated. The main point is to separate emotions from feelings, which are subjective experiences that accompany the emotions. Whereas science has no access to animal feelings, animal emotions are as observable and measurable as human emotions. They are mental and bodily states that potentiate behavior appropriate to both social and nonsocial situations. The expression of emotions in face and body language is well known, the study of which began with Darwin. Frans de Waal will discuss early ideas about animal emotions and draw upon research on empathy and the perception of emotions in primates to make the point that the study of animal emotions is a necessary complement to the study of behavior. Emotions are best viewed as the organizers of adaptive responses to environmental stimuli. If you like this kind of stuff you should read: Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

[@omerh8825]

Where is the video? This is such an interesting talk and we can't see the experiments.

[@stevemartin4249]

Indeed! I came for the pictures! 😂

[@laurakelly631]

great lecture! I so wish we could see the video with it... especially the Bonobo multitasking part

[@douwebeerda]

Is this video available somewhere?

[@vaultsjan]

Need video too

[@DremoraKynmarcher]

I once accidentaly made experiment with my parrots. For every little cracker I gave to a Quacker I gave half of cracker to Green Cheek Conure. Quacker was sitting on my shoulder and GCC was sitting on my monitor in front of me so they saw each other clearly and amount of cracker every one received. After third or four piece of cracker GCC got angry and refused to take half crackers from me until I offered him whole one.

[@anonamuss1604]

Ok, I did a bit of checking and it doesn't seem that there is available footage short of contacting the organisers and asking if there is any. Thats a shame.

[@mamutakada]

ok, i just got to the yawn part---- I knew I am an empath, but I swear, I never yawned this much in my life. I had a real proper, sea lion kind of yawn (twice now) as I am writing this.

[@speckofdust272]

impressive talk 👍👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

[@usrine]

At least its Franz. Almost makes up for it.

[@andreasmith5743]

No videos D:

[@gypsy2007]

I don't agree. I feed a colony of cats. I see reconciliation often. I see cats stepping in between two cats having a conflict in order to break it. When conflict happens, they all show concern. Cats that didn't like one another in the beginning, will end up tolerating each other and sometimes become friends. They are social too.

[@colleenorrick5415]

I volunteer with an animal advocacy coalition. I report animal abuse videos with a major focus on macaques. The people who own and film the macaques and then post the videos on social media love to get very young monkeys. They love to get newborns. The owners don’t even try to meet the emotional needs of these traumatised babies. This maternal deprivation harms the monkeys for life. However, I do see evidence of empathy and altruism. Today I watched a video of two little monkeys whose owner is very mean and very unpredictable. The smaller of the two monkeys is terrified most of the time. We see almost constant fear grimaces. The older monkey today was trying to protect her. He would shield her from the slaps and pinches coming from the owner. He would stand over her in such a way as to intercept the blows. He would put his arm around her a pull her closer to him in a way that protected her. I’ve been doing this advocacy for two years plus and I’ve seen this before. I’ve seen little monkeys only a few months old carry younger infants, letting them cling to their bellies like they might have clung to their mother. Dr. De Waal, I would love to hear you comment on this absolute crisis of monkey abuse videos on social media.

[@gypsy2007]

I don't know how you can bear watching stuff like that. My heart is hurting just from your description.

[@colleenorrick5415]

@@gypsy2007I write reports for a coalition of animal advocacy NGOs who are trying to get animal abuse videos banned from social media. Of all the animals that they get reports about macaques are by far the largest group. I absolutely love the macaques. The ones I see are babies. They are incredibly resilient. I get to see how beautiful their characters are. The other day I was watching a video of two little monkeys who had just arrived at what I assume was their new home. No one was there except the guy on the camera. One of the babies was blind. The other baby cared for him. He knew that his blind friend needed him because it was a new place unlike anywhere they had been before. Many times I find the monkeys’ characters are far better than those of the humans! That said, I won’t watch the very cruel ones. I know that would burn me out faster than any thing. I can do this work because I know that someday we will succeed in getting these videos banned. Once the social media platforms stop making it possible for people to make money abusing animals the abusers will stop and the monkeys will be left in the forest with their families. If I don’t do this work, it will never change.

[@anonamuss1604]

Lol. I came here to see if anyone found the video lol. Mostly with this type of content you can treat it like a podcast but it's really annoying when you can hear everyone laughing but you can't see what they are laughing at.

[@lancestewart5250]

Check out his TEDx talks! They did video captures on those where de Waal shares the same presentation video examples. At times they ARE quite hilarious! :)

[@anonamuss1604]

@@lancestewart5250 Cool tks heaps.