Demonstrating that snakes experience emotions

[Bogertophis]

I don't know about emotions, but they don't form emotional attachments, at least not with their keepers. I'm as nice and can be to my Children's python and he tried to eat me.

I get the anthropomorphism. It helps us bond with out pets and I do it too. But, one of the things that drew me to keeping snakes is how different they are from us. I remember a presentation I attended as a young man where the keeper, showing off a cobra, told us that, despite the fact that he had raised it from an egg, it would not hesitate to kill him. To me, that's indicative of a creature whose emotional make up, if any, is totally alien to mine, and I find that fascinating.

But keep in mind that you have only one snake, & if I recall, only had one before that? So your experience with snakes is limited to a very minimal number. From the many (both kinds & numbers) that I've known, I think the personality & intelligence varies widely. (Come to think of it, isn't that also true of people, dogs & so on?) Anyway, I'm not sure I'd use the term "emotional attachment" but some I've known definitely retained a "friend" status, even with minimal handling. Also I've worked with a number of wild snakes that clearly accepted that I was no threat to them- enough to make me wonder & want to keep an open mind.

I do agree that snakes are "different" & that has always fascinated me too. But I'm still in the camp that says "We don't understand as much as we think we do as yet"- & "we humans tend to jump to conclusions" (yes, even scientists- fyi, my late best friend was a scientist); in fact, when you consider just how "useful" animals are to us (think agriculture & economy) I'm not sure there's any big rush to give animals more credit than they already have- when our society generally devalues animal intelligence, it makes it "easier" (on our conscience) to use or abuse them as society sees fit- some for work (like horses), some as food (cows, chickens, sheep, etc), some for companions or entertainment (dogs, cats, birds, etc) & some as "vermin" to be exterminated (snakes, rodents).

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.

Do reptiles have emotions: https://youtu.be/-CzKh8bBjkY?si=j6F4c0II7NMtm8vY

Snake intelligence: https://youtu.be/LlUBSbOOCGI?si=3XR0OvFWvTCXx9sJ

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

[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.

[Malum Argenteum]

when our society generally devalues animal intelligence, it makes it "easier" (on our conscience) to use or abuse them as society sees fit- some for work (like horses), some as food (cows, chickens, sheep, etc), some for companions or entertainment (dogs, cats, birds, etc) & some as "vermin" to be exterminated (snakes, rodents).

You're right, of course, that devaluing an animal species removes a psychological barrier to caring for and about it. There are, though, plenty of aspects of various animal species the value of which could be emphasized and which have the advantage of being demonstrably true. Saying that snakes have emotions/intelligence and that makes them worth valuing could be taken to imply that if there's a species that has no emotions or intelligence then that species is thereby less valuable -- which seems to me to be false.

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.

That is pretty cool. Not sure if you know about cellular slime molds, which are single celled organisms that group together and collectively learn to get through mazes and improve with practice -- that is, they're intelligent. They're also social, and can be altruistic to genetically unrelated slime molds.

https://appvoices.org/2019/10/11/sli...-intelligence/

https://academic.oup.com/ib/article-.../4/329/5219064

[Bogertophis]

Gee, thanks for reminding me, Malum- now I want a pet slime mold.

[Caitlin]

I honestly don't want to get into a back and forth about this, so will just say that the science claiming that snakes lack the brain structures to experience emotions is very outdated, and has been effectively debunked for almost a decade. This happened once we had improved technology, beginning with really stunning research from the Max Planck institute utilizing single-cell RNA sequencing.

We now know that vertebrates including snakes possess neural structures that have been demonstrated to share functionality with the structures contributing to emotional states in humans. The current research shows that even though the reptile brain is structurally somewhat different (not hugely so) from the mammalian brain, multiple areas of the reptilian brain share functionality with mammalian brain structures, including the functionality found in the most advanced structures of the mammalian brain that are associated with processing emotion. This is a level of functionality previously assumed to be nonexistent in reptiles.

Physiologically we now know that reptiles not only have the capacity to experience emotions, but also to regulate emotions, demonstrate impulse control, and engage in complex learning.

Some of the problem with folks discussing this is that when the term 'emotions' comes up, humans understandably assume that we are all talking about things like 'love' or 'hate', but those are just the labels that we give to the physiological states that comprise emotions. Snakes, birds, dogs, fish and other vertebrates experience emotions in SPECIES-SPECIFIC ways. None of them can label or categorize emotions in the same way that humans might, but that does not mean those emotional states do not exist.

Even if we discuss only human emotions, there is no way of discerning whether the state that I label as 'love' is the same state that you or anyone else would call 'love'. We can't know how other vertebrates experience emotion, how they may categorize it, or how they would label it if they could, but there is no doubt at all (scientifically speaking) that vertebrates including snakes experience emotions.

I will admit to a lot of frustration with the over-use and misuse of the term 'anthropomorphism'. It is typically used as a stick to beat keepers with who are trying to improve husbandry standards, and I find there is a lot of misunderstanding of its actual meaning and application. Just as actual anthropomorphism can be harmful to our animals ("My snake loves being kept in the Barbie Playhouse!"), I'd also caution against mechanomorphism: the assumption that snakes aren't much more than instinct-driven tubes requiring only a temperature gradient, food, and water in order to thrive.

And with that I will thank you if you have read this, I appreciate your patience with my science nerd tendencies, and I will peacefully take my leave <3

[Bogertophis]

I agree with what Caitlin posted ^ ^ ^ times 100! And besides, not even all humans have identical emotions, do they? And look how many relationships fail because the partners aren't on the same page. I think there's an awful lot of diversity to go around on this planet- and we need to acknowledge & respect it, whether human or other* animal. (*don't forget we're animals too)

[Malum Argenteum]

I honestly don't want to get into a back and forth about this, so will just say that the science claiming that snakes lack the brain structures to experience emotions is very outdated, and has been effectively debunked for almost a decade. This happened once we had improved technology, beginning with really stunning research from the Max Planck institute utilizing single-cell RNA sequencing.

We now know that vertebrates including snakes possess neural structures that have been demonstrated to share functionality with the structures contributing to emotional states in humans. The current research shows that even though the reptile brain is structurally somewhat different (not hugely so) from the mammalian brain, multiple areas of the reptilian brain share functionality with mammalian brain structures, including the functionality found in the most advanced structures of the mammalian brain that are associated with processing emotion. This is a level of functionality previously assumed to be nonexistent in reptiles.

Physiologically we now know that reptiles not only have the capacity to experience emotions, but also to regulate emotions, demonstrate impulse control, and engage in complex learning.

Could you post a couple links to such research? I'd be really interested to learn more.