In my talk I'll discuss why animal emotions have evolved - the functions they serve in a wide number of species, especially mammals - and why they matter. There can be no doubt that numerous animals experience a wide array emotions ranging from extreme joy to devastating grief and I'll talk about these and other fellow feelings. It's bad biology to argue against the existence of animal emotions. I'll also consider animal empathy and compassion and how these influence social interactions. I'll stress that it's the presence of emotions that attract us to other
animals and that animal feelings are the reason why we must treat animals with respect and compassion. I'll also talk about the evolution of moral behavior in animals, a phenomenon that I call "wild justice." In social interactions such as those that occur during social play, animals clerly know right from wrong. Along the way I'll discuss different ways of knowing including scientific data (what I call "science sense"), commonsense and intuition.

Homepage: http://literati.net/Bekoff
Marc Bekoff and Jane Goodall (EETA): www.ethologicalethics.org
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