Can This Feline Behaviour Be A Basic Form Of Empathy?

[miasa]

Rarely I ignore my cat's "I'm gonna bite you" warning signs and keep stimulating her to the point where she can't help but bite me (She never really bites actually; her teeth mildly touching my skin would be a better description). Nevertheless, in order to prevent this behaviour from developing and becoming a habit, I make a sound like a yowling sound as if it really caused pain. As soon as I make that sound she starts frantically licking the point on my skin where she bit.

I wonder if there is any feline behaviour you witnessed that looks like empathy?
Any ethologists or feline behaviour people out there! How would you interpret this one?

 

[Mamanyt1953]

Hekitty gets upset every time I cry, and she gets frantic when I fall (and I fall a lot). I can't prove it, but it sure looks like empathy to me!

 

[Furballsmom]

When I'm upset my big guy's eyes get really large and the look on his face indicates to me I need to chill cuz I'm upsetting him. On the other hand if he's in another room and hears me on the phone with a very happy voice, he literally comes running and wants to share in the joy. I think your little sweetie is very tuned in to you

 

[dustydiamond1]

Gypsy gets cuddley and snuggley when we are sad or upset.

 

[abyeb]

I think so. Charlie is always extra affectionate if I’m not feeling well.

 

[MeganLLB]

Humans are only capable of empathy. It is a function of the virtue of charity where a someone enters into another's suffering.

Everything you all are describing are behaviors that can easily be explained by stimuli response, not because animals are able to feel the same emotions we feel.

 

[dustydiamond1]

Humans are only capable of empathy. It is a function of the virtue of charity where a someone enters into another's suffering.

Everything you all are describing are behaviors that can easily be explained by stimuli response, not because animals are able to feel the same emotions we feel.

 

[Furballsmom]

We're not saying these are the same emotions that humans feel. These are emotions, or whatever you want to call them, that cats feel.

 

[miasa]

Humans are only capable of empathy. It is a function of the virtue of charity where a someone enters into another's suffering.

Everything you all are describing are behaviors that can easily be explained by stimuli response, not because animals are able to feel the same emotions we feel.

That was an unsubstantiated hypothesis stemming from our engrained anthropocentrism and it's now plain wrong according to many scientific observations.
Many behaviours and emotions previously thought to be unique to humans have been observed by many species in one form or another including empathy, cooperation, reconciliation, fairness, planning for the future, deception, reciprocity, mourning...
For example: For the latest evidence from many species, you can have a look at Frans de Waal's latest book "Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?"

 

[MeganLLB]

That was an unsubstantiated hypothesis stemming from our engrained anthropocentrism and it's now plain wrong according to many scientific observations.
Many behaviours and emotions previously thought to be unique to humans have been observed by many species in one form or another including empathy, cooperation, reconciliation, fairness, planning for the future, deception, reciprocity, mourning...
For example: For the latest evidence from many species, you can have a look at Frans de Waal's latest book "Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?"

Just because you can show a behavior does still not prove what an animal feels. Those monkeys could react that way because you have set up an expectation that was not fulfilled, not because the monkey understands the idea of what is just. If I tell my dog to sit and I don't reward him he barks at me. Is that because he thinks its not fair? No, it's because he expects the treat and he's not getting what he knows he should be able to obtain through doing the action I commanded him. Its not because he feels that not giving the treat is unfair. There is no way to prove that.

 

[MeganLLB]

You are anthropomorphizing animals by trying to prove they feel complex emotions, which cannot be proven. There is no way to definitively prove what an animal feels.

 

[Furballsmom]

Fear, love, desperation, focus, joy, playfulness, eagerness, caution. Nope, there's no animal that feels any of these things. I "love" the scientific community that by golly insists that the human species is so grand as to be the mark that everything else is measured against. I'm done with this discussion, I'm "afraid" it'll turn into one of those threads that goes on forever and gets nowhere.

 

[miasa]

you have set up an expectation that was not fulfilled

And that expectation is created by the very sense of equality that makes the animal feel frustrated seeing the other one repeatedly getting better food. So I think that it's here obvious that this animal can display behaviour not based on simple stimulus but by a more complex cognitive analysis of an experience.

 

[miasa]

A quote from de Waal's The Age of Empathy: "We start out postulating sharp boundaries, such as between humans and apes, or between apes and monkeys, but are in fact dealing with sand castles that lose much of their structure when the sea of knowledge washes over them. They turn into hills, levelled ever more, until we are back to where evolutionary theory always leads us: a gently sloping beach."

 

[Dacatchair]

There is a lot of recent science that points to animals having empathy.

But even my own limited experience suggests this.

One of the more dramatic examples I can think of is my last cat who had a very rough kitten hood and was very very shy. Nobody ever got to meet him because he was out the window as soon as they arrived but when it came to me he was a complete mush ball. One day I had a couple of visitors and something came up that was very sad and I started to cry. My normally shy cat was suddenly at the window demanding to be let in. My friend let them in and he was in my lap headbutting me, his chest pressed close to mine, and obviously concerned and for the first time ignoring the unfamiliar people in the house. If that wasn’t empathy what was it?

Another example of seeing animals exhibit what looked like empathy was when I raised a baby crow. It came to me when it was so young it was still getting feathers and it never knew it was a crow. It didn’t come from here it came from another land mass about 60 miles from here as the crow flies so the local crows we’re not related to the baby crow On several occasions the wild crows tried to take care of it. When it was old enough to feed itself, but still begged to be fed, I went to town and left it alone thinking it would be all right in chicken wire pen off my front porch. When I got home I was surprised to see the local crows had raided my neighbours compost heap and had tried to stuff bits of white bread in through the top of the pen for the baby crow. Leading me to conclude that the local crows had social services. Theses crows had their own babies or families to feed and yet they were willing to take the food that they found and try to feed it to unrelated baby. If that’s not empathy I don’t know what it is. When the baby crow began to be able to fly I took it to the beach with me one day and was trying to show it how to drop clams. The there was two wild crows that saw me with the baby and though crows had previously not reacted when I was with one of their babies, these two crows seeing me with the baby that could fly started to scold me and followed us home. The next morning when I got up and walked out the door there was about 50 crows silently sitting in the trees around my house waiting for me to walk out the door. And as soon as I did they all started to scold me. This only happened once. And it was obvious those two crows we met at the beach had told every crow within a couple miles of here where to be and when to be there and what the situation was, and it was really obvious what they were saying. They were saying you don’t have what it takes to raise one of our babies. And they were right. My baby crow lived happily as free bird that came and went as he pleased for about six months, and then one day he never came home. On several occasions I had seen hawks try to eat him when he was with me, and I’m pretty sure that he didn’t have a survival skills he needed and a hawk got him because there’s no way he just wouldn’t come home. He was way too attached to me. Before he disappeared there was one other occasion I saw the wild crows try to take care of him. My baby crow was full grown and outside and a pair of crows showed up and sat on my porch railing, something the wild crows here never do, and for a couple hours they hung out on the porch. They had a baby with them and they kept feeding their baby in front of my baby crow and it seemed like they were saying to him “hey you could be part of our family” but he just ignored them he didn’t even know he was a crow. Then I had to go outside and my baby saw me and flew over and landed on my shoulder and the wild crows gave up.

But that behavior does not seem to be solely explained by heartless survival of the fittest.

And I think in most species the benifits and capacity for empathy and cooperation is probably a driving force just like our shared capacity for competition.

 

[miasa]

D Dacatchair Very impressive stories and experiences... Goosebumps... To read stories like yours was exactly the reason why I started this thread, thanks...

 

[kate187]

According to the Conservative government animals can't feel empathy

 

[Furballsmom]

The government? Uh...

 

[shannon1984]

While I see cat strangers being kind to each other and will probably never be sure whether that's compassion or coincidence, I do believe these owners who tell stories of their cats feeling empathy for them or their house/litter mates.

After taming 3 feral kittens I can absolutely tell you without a doubt those cats wanted my attention far more than the food I brought by the time they were able to be touched. By the time I could pet them, they would ignore even freshly cooked beef/chicken/fish for a few minutes of stroking, chatter, and play.

When you have a pet cat who's been a pet for life it's not always easy to tell how much you mean to them but most pet owners just know without being able to explain it. It's so much different with feral cats that you work hard to domesticate. There is no way for them to hide how much they value their bonding time with you once they trust you. While that bond is there with house pets, it's not always on display. A feral kitten on the verge of taming would not dare take one moment of opportunity to have your attention for granted.

I have no doubt that cats feel much more emotion and attachment than their reputation gives them credit for but I will probably never be sure about whether they can feel significant compassion or empathy for a stranger (human or cat).

 

[Yanaka]

I believe they feel empathy, but not as complex and systematically as humans (most) would. But simply thinking that animals aren't capable of emotions and only stimuli (instead of a blend of both that's not super sophisticated but is more complex than we'd like to think) is why people are still eating meat and exploiting animals.

I do agree, though, that often some behaviors are misread. What the OP is describing, for instance, doesn't sound like a show of empathy. Cats do that without the cry, it's just what they do for both love bites or for gentle bites before they break skin if you don't leave them alone...