Instinct or Schminstink?

Based on your argument, which seems to be that we have reactions for which we are not responsible for initiating and that these responses are due to the stimuli of fear or anger or security (completely taking as an aside that we CAN control being in situations in which fear or anger or security are likely to be present or absent) and you have decided to call these instinctive (which you also seem to question) reactions emotional responses.

There isn't much that scares me, but what does doesn't make me mad.

There's a few things that make me mad, not afraid.

Security is different things to different people and as there is no constant, measuring it, quantifying it, it is virtually impossible to have a measurable constant to base whatever measurements you take to determine if "security" has been achieved.

I suspect that at one time we did have instincts with which we were in very close communion. I suspect that a couple of hundred years ago you would have been closer to the mark you seem to be aiming for.

Now though, with all the culls that have reproduced, all the removal of threats that honed our instincts, the need to have them at all, instincts that is, I don't think they are as evident or prevalent as in the past.

Anthropomorphism is an interesting quirk that many people have. I firmly believe that some mammals experience some of the same, or at least very similar, feelings that we do. We've seen it in dogs, whales, hefalumps and others. They do seem to have traits that could be directly experienced by us and ours by them.

Reptiles and feeling as I think mammals can? Mayyyyyybe with some of the bigger monitors or tortoises, maybe even cobras though I am very skeptical of them. I do not think the rest of the reptile world feels things the way we do though.

I sort of wish they could but then again, would your snake be angry/scared enough at you to want to assert it's dominance by some threatening behavior? Would your snake harbor a grudge for keeping it in a rack? Would your males see you as a threat to their ability to procreate? Would they join the Rodent Liberation Front and sue for equality?

Maybe it's best that they don't feel as we do.