THIS year marks the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, the third of his major works on evolutionary theory. One of his chief assertions was that dogs, like many other animals, express emotions, including fear and anger, in a way recognisable to humans. That, bluntly, they feel things like we do.
You would be forgiven for thinking that Darwin’s argument would have enhanced the welfare of dogs, but change has been slow. In society at the time, the fate of street dogs improved only marginally, and in science, dogs continued to be used in experiments, from Ivan Pavlov’s dogs – each fistulated to expose the actions of digestive glands after hearing the dinner-time buzzer – to research dogs apparently during the production of the rabies vaccine and other life-saving medical interventions.
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Today, many people find it abhorrent that dogs could have been treated in such a way. Yet 150 years after Darwin’s book, there is still more to do. Science is making great strides in unravelling the emotional complexity of animals, but improvement to animal welfare legislation continues to move forward with tottering baby steps.
It was only last month that the UK government saw fit to pass the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act, which says some animals should be considered sentient beings, in the UK post-Brexit. Yet we await details of the , specifically how it will maintain independence from government and in a transparent manner.
There are other important welfare issues that need to be addressed, including around illegal puppy smuggling and the , a painful cosmetic procedure that is . To its credit, the UK government has , but we await clarity on how this will be done. Meanwhile, the confiscation at UK borders of puppies bred below welfare standards continues to rise, by . And the use of dogs in UK experimental procedures continues – , to more than 4000 procedures.
This is a shame, because if modern science has shown us one thing, it is that dogs deserve better – something Darwin understood 150 years ago and animal cognition studies have since supported.
Research has shown: how the emotional centres of dog brains, observable through fMRI scans, fire up like human ones; that the concentrations of hormones and neurotransmitters associated with emotional responses rise and fall predictably, just as they do in our own brains; that the sociability of dogs – specifically, their interest in us – is found in their genes; and that, in the words of psychology, dogs are capable of strong attachments with us that .
Governments should be looking at this swathe of scientific evidence and doubling their efforts to limit the suffering of dogs, whether that is through even stronger import laws to cut off the supply of puppy-farmed dogs, or curbs on the inbreeding of flat-faced dogs, which go on to develop heart defects, skin diseases, obstructed breathing and spinal deformities.
Small statements from the UK government are worth something, but Darwin’s literary denouement on animal emotion demands a grander response. Fewer baby steps; more confident strides.
150 years is a long time in science. In dog years, the wait must feel endless. Yet still, we sit. We stay. We listen… we wait.
Jules Howard is a zoological correspondent and author of Wonderdog. He will be speaking at Â鶹´«Ã½ Live in October
