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TDK, when an animal overcomes an older one who’s beaten him up for years, is his apparent satisfaction nothing more than our projection, or is he just looking forward to the prize (ie the female)? <br>Ever been out with your dog and seen off one that beats him up when he’s on his own?<br>Horses are competitors or they’re no good at racing.<br>Why be so certain animals can’t experience so simple an emotion as revenge?
Would Silent Witness and Cape of Good Hope have been ignorant of each other’s existence and their places in the pecking order? Or Affirmed and Alydar, for example? Or Ardross and Le Moss?
Do horses have a detailed knowledge of the formbook then?
Otherwise how would they remember over which horses they need to gain this "revenge"?
<br>No they dont
They use speed ratings…
Why?<br>Animals know which of their species to submit to, which to bully. So do humans for that matter. Hardly surprising since we’re animals too:cool:<br>Why should we assume we possess a monopoly of those emotions with which we are familiar?<br>
Zorro,
Not sure why you started this thread but if you watch Kauto Star’s race again from saturday, I swear the horse is eyeballing L’Ami almost as if he’s challenging him to try and get past him..
Horses are competitive, in a natural environment, in that they will compete for their place in the breeding heirarchy and to defend themselves and their herd against danger. As such, the ability to run offers no advantage and would not create a desire for revenge. A good kicking, on the other hand, might.
Also – to desire revenge for being beaten a horse would have to know he had won/lost. This poses many problems. A horse race is an artificial medium with a contrived outcome requiring the horse to think abstractly if he is to make any sense of it (and, lets face it, we have enough trouble making sense of it ourselves). How does a horse know where the winning post is for example? To him it might just as well be 100 yards (or half a mile!) after or before the actual finish.
I only brought it up because someone on the Racing Post Chat Room said I was a loony anthropomorphist for even suspecting horses might experience something like revenge or the desire for it. Silent Witness and Cape of Good Hope met 11 times. COGH never got past him. They must have been aware of each other in some way.<br>I’m willing to accept I might be wrong in attributing human emotions to them But I can’t see why the very idea is ‘loony’.
The HRA might soon have to look at the possibility that it is the horses themselves who fix the races.
Revenge isn’t an emotion per se ~ that’s where you start going wrong Zorro, by describing it, not as some complex motive for emotional behaviour, but as "a basic human emotion". That’s before you get into the tricky anthropomorphism debate at all. Interesting line of thought though…..
http://www.equine-behavior.com/
This one looks interesting but haven’t ventured into it in depth. There is an entire article on ‘dominance’ though which may be of relevance to our little debate.
Of course you’re right, Rory. <br>Still, I don’t think the semantic question is really relevant to the philosophical one (if that’s not too grand a description) of whether or not animals feel emotions – or derivatives of those emotions like the desire for revenge, or satisfaction at its achievement. <br>I’ve always thought it was very arrogant of us to assume humans are unique among animals in that respect.
<br>Suppose that ought to put me off bacon sandwiches etc, but it doesn’t. But…Does the instinctive revulsion against the idea of eating horse (unless you’re a Belgian or something) imply a recognition that certain animals possess characteristics that at least remind us of our own, and that eating them is somehow ‘wrong’ in a way that eating others is not?
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