Hoo-t I think anyone that has spent a lot of time around dogs, particularly groups of dogs, would say they obviously do experience emotion. I do not know if they experience the array of emotions in the same way we do, but on the other hand not all people experience emotion in the same way either.

But like people dogs are pack animals, they live and hunt in groups and their ability to communicate with each other is important to the group harmony and survival They have complex forms of body language, and people can learn to read a lot of that body language over time. Domestic cats maybe solitary animals in nature, but because cats put a lot of energy into raising their kittens those traits are transferable to humans (they can bond and see us as playmates, food providers, nurturers, etc…).

Snakes on the other hand do not raise their young (beyond guarding the eggs in some cases). They are designed to survive autonomously, and they do not need to cooperate with other members of their species outside of mating or relay a variety of different expressions via body language for the purpose of communicating. They are just very different.

A hundred years ago virtually no one would believe it if you told them gorillas could learn to communicate through sign language. It would be a crazy and laughable idea as anyone could “obviously see” they were stupid, primitive animals that just ran on pure instinct and were incapable of higher thought.