Can animals take offense?

“We went on vacation and asked a neighbor to look after the cat. When we entered the house, he pretended not to know us at all. He sat down and turned away. Apparently, he decided that he had been betrayed, and was offended.

“Yesterday I pushed the dog out of bed because it was fiddling and pushing. And in the morning she curled up on her mattress, lies with an offended muzzle, refuses to eat and does not want to play.

We are sure that our pets are offended, we ask their forgiveness and try to make amends with caresses and “sweets”. What is really going on? Let’s try to figure it out.

“People tend to humanize everything in the world, that is, to attribute qualities to animate and inanimate objects that are inherent in themselves,” says Tatiana Kulikova, zoopsychologist and author of the Entertaining Psychology of Cats blog. – This is the source of myths about the joy of motherhood for cats (although not all women experience this very joy). And about the feeling of gratitude of an animal taken from a shelter, a cat’s “revenge” in slippers, the guilty look of a dog that gnawed things, and about everything else that animals do not have, but we would like it to be.

But wait, when we look at a cat or a dog, we notice behavior that is very similar to ours! Wasn’t the cat that was punished offended? Vaughn, sitting back to everyone all day, does not want to communicate. Doesn’t the dog feel guilty when the owner found him eating the back of the sofa? He immediately spat out the remnants of the “crime”, curled up like a “snail”, flattened his ears, lowered his head and lowered his eyes.

NOT SO SIMPLE

“In order to be offended, to feel guilty, to take revenge, and so on, one “thing” is required, the presence of which has so far been proven only in people over three years old – abstract thinking, says Tatyana. – It includes the ability to generalize and differentiate, self-awareness and understanding of speculative concepts such as happiness, love and freedom.

Thanks to him, we can communicate verbally and non-verbally, translate language into symbols and vice versa, that is, write and read. We know how to separate the past and the future, dream, remember, replay events in our heads like a film. Concrete thinking (the antipode of the abstract) lives here and now. Abstract thinking considers not only specific objects (for example, the cat sitting in front of me), but also general categories (feline species in general).

It allows you to see invisible connections between facts or objects. Let’s say if we have a twisted stomach, we imagine that it hurts the stomach, and we drink a painkiller pill. Beings with concrete thinking can only realize the fact: “it hurts!”. They are not able to imagine what they do not see – their organs, and will try to relieve the pain as best they can. For example, hide in a shelter.

There is a lot of research on abstract thinking in animals. They mainly study monkeys, dolphins, pigs and dogs. With cats, everything is more complicated, they are so capricious that they often simply do not want to fulfill the conditions of experiments, which makes the attempts of scientists a failure. However, other animals have already given humans vast amounts of data to judge their way of thinking.

It has been proven that great apes have signs of abstract thinking. They can even learn sign language and communicate fairly well with people. Dogs are showing controversial results so far. Recent studies have shown that they are able to recognize representatives of their own species in photographs and combine them into a group, no matter what breed they belong to (and all breeds look very different).

This indicates a certain level of self-awareness and the ability to generalize. But it is still not completely clear whether dogs do this using abstract thinking, or simply found a way to get a treat for a correctly completed task, which is explained by concrete thinking.

WHAT IS OFFENSE

This bitter feeling arises if we are treated unfairly: accused, insulted, ignored, do not live up to our expectations. Resentment cannot be called an independent emotion: anger, disappointment, sadness and self-pity are mixed in it. We scroll the situation in memory for a long time and really suffer (sometimes all our lives).

Why are we offended? For example, in order to attract attention, arouse remorse in the offender, make him repent and no longer do us harm. If we attribute the same motives to animals, then it turns out that the cat, left in the care of a neighbor, remembered how sad he was. Nevertheless, he knew that the owners would return, and he imagined how he would show that they were indifferent to him.

The dog, which was chased out of bed, recalled how it was insulted all night. And in the morning I decided to show the owner how much she suffers, so that he would be ashamed and never do this again. Isn’t it too complicated a design for creatures devoid of abstract thinking?

WHY DO THE ANIMALS LOOK AS IF THEY ARE REALLY OFFENDED?

According to the animal psychologist, it’s all about their body language, which we usually read incorrectly. “The so-called signs of reconciliation allow animals to avoid conflicts in groups, with their help they send a signal: “I don’t want to fight you, stop being aggressive!”

What does it look like? Take for example the signs of reconciliation in cats. Here are some of them:

• eyes closed, look away;
• tongue flashes (often lick nose);
• the tail is lowered or straight;
• they fit, sit down;
• turn their heads away;
• turn sideways or back to the opponent;
• lower their heads, pick up their paws and tail (visually decrease in size).

If several of these signals come at the same time, we get the classic “offended” cat. With all his appearance, he seems to be saying: “do not touch me, stop the aggression!” and tries to avoid visual and physical contact. It’s the same with dogs.”

But why not consider these same signs of reconciliation as an insult, who will feel bad from this? “It will be bad for your pets,” the zoopsychologist answers. “If you think they are just being offended, you run the risk of misinterpreting their behavior!”

WHAT CAN HAPPEN IF YOU CONTINUE TO BELIEVE IN ANIMALS

Imagine that the owner, who pushed the dog out of bed for disturbing sleep, decided that she was offended. Otherwise, he himself would have been indignant: that’s harmful, the boycott has been announced! So they would be offended at each other until the dog was near death.

Fortunately, he suspected something was wrong and compared her nightly restlessness and morning “sadness”. And ran to the vet. Because in fact, her chronic stomach problems worsened, and behavioral signs indicated that she was not feeling well. And a person who believes in miracle animals with abstract thinking would have realized this too late.

“In the story with the dog, the problem turned out to be medical. But how many times have I come across the fact that behavioral problems, depression, stress, fear are taken as an insult. For the sake of your pets, try to change your beliefs. Cats and dogs are not offended! — reminds Tatyana Kulikova. – If you notice similar signs, think: something is wrong with their behavior or health. Or maybe you yourself are behaving incorrectly, and this makes the animal ask you all the time not to show aggression.