DO Animals Have Feelings?

As someone who has lived with animals all her life,
(no, not wolves)
I would have to say that the answer to that
question is a resounding yes!

"The onus of proof to show otherwise should be on those who deny that animals have these capacities," says scholar and animal advocate Jonathan Balcombe, author of The Exultant Ark: A Pictorial Tour of Animal Pleasure. 

In the book, published in May by the University of California Press, Balcombe surveys a new generation of studies into animal feelings, especially animal pleasure. Accompanying the scholarship are photographs of animals seeming to enjoy themselves: hippos and flying foxes, zebrafish and sharks, parrots and polar bears, a whole animal kingdom of pleasure. 

- from a Brandon Keim Interview with Jonathan Balcombe, 

Image: Jonathan Lhoir

Konrad Lorenz, a Nobel Prize-winning zoologist who studied geese "was convinced, not by any repeated scientific study, but by anecdotes based on living among geese for decades, that they fell in love with each other,"

"We know that many geese do mate for life, and have a single partner. Evolution should guarantee that they have strong bonds."

 - How to Have Fun Like Monkeys, Whales and Foxes,

By Brandon Keim.