Demonstrating that snakes experience emotions

[BeansTheDerp]

Part of me has always tried to stand up for the "underdog" & snakes are surely that in the eyes of most people. We also have to remember that when it comes to research interest & funding, snakes are roughly the last priority. I do remember years back reading about a study done with snakes & mazes that concluded that when the mazes were designed with snakes in mind (not relying on visual cues, as is normally done with other animals, but on cues snakes can relate to for survival) snakes showed more ability than rats in mazes. Which if you'll pardon the pun, is fairly a-mazing.


@ BeansTheDerp: By the way, I like these videos that you shared- much more than the original one that I started this thread with.

Thank you! I've always been the "nut" that believes that reptiles do in fact feel these emotions and create bonds, but before I hadn't really found anything to back it up other than the way that Beans is. He is so much more expressive than I would have thought because of the way reptiles are portrayed, there are things he does that have no other reasoning I can find other than him trying to express affection by learning/mimicking things that I've done with him to show my own affection. Finding information that actually backs me up is a breath of fresh air especially since many don't want to hear it from someone who has only had one snake, or who is young and therefore isn't usually taken very seriously.
I don't mind the disagreements people send me unless they claim that I shouldn't own him or that I'm doing something bad to him by anthropomorphizing, when really the only bad anthropomorphizing is when people put their animals in dangerous and distressing situations. I watch his body language carefully, I watch his behavior and I take into account what I know about his personality already. I'm constantly observing and learning what he does and doesn't like and how he tries to tell me. I've always been better and more interested in reading animals and creating bonds with them in order to understand them. I think that humans are too distracted by the power that they have and the ability and privilege that we have, that we end up belittling animals and put them into these boxes of being less than us and less intelligent when sometimes we don't even know enough about their brains to really understand. Because of that people become fearful or hateful. The lucky ones are the ones who actually try to understand and see the animals eye to eye.
That's the piece of my mind for this discussion.