"As she loves me!", - with tenderness the owner of a dog thinks, looking as she enjoys his arrival. And it is valid whether animals are capable of love or these are people are inclined to attribute them human feelings?
The most developed animals, as well as people, are allocated with by nature difficult higher nervous activity. As well as to representatives Goma the sapiens, they have temperament, are capable to remember and study. The emotions characteristic of people are inherent in them: fear and joy, anger and tenderness. But whether animals can have feelings, like the person, for example, to love?
Of course, animals have feelings, but they are not similar to human. The instinct, simple emotions which are not burdened by moral standards, reflections and abstract concepts, as at the person is the cornerstone of feelings of an animal.
But some scientists nevertheless recognize ability to feel love for animals.
Partnership
Couples in the nature arise spontaneously, but is not accidental at all. The female with high probability will begin to copulate with a male of the look, but not with any, and only with the one who "will be pleasant" to it i.e. with whom as a result she is capable to bring the most viable posterity into the world. In order that "continue itself" the strongest and adapted individuals could, the wise nature provided rituals of courting, fight for a female, supplied animals with ability on a smell, external signs and another, known only it, to signs unmistakably to define what of representatives of a look is most worthy "love". Perhaps, in bondage many animal species so reluctantly breed: they just have no possibility of the choice. Some animals form stable couples: wolves and foxes, polar foxes and ermines, swans and storks, signature stamps and eagles. Partnership of these animals lasts several seasons in a row, sometimes until one of couple does not die. Others form stable couples for one marriage season, for example, beavers. But "fidelity" of these representatives of fauna is caused not by moral standards, but physiological features: their cubs are born helpless and can survive only on condition of care of both parents. Other animals "adhere" to the polygamous relations, and it is also caused by physiological features of any given look. Males of many polygamous animals during the marriage period lose care, refuse food, thus, the death rate among males sharply increases. To provide preservation of a look, each male – the representative of "polygamous" types of fauna seeks to impregnate during rutting as the bigger quantity of females is possible.
Maternal instinct
Not only the instinct of reproduction, but also maternal instinct which forces a female to care for the cubs is important for survival of each look, to train them to avoid danger, to get to itself food, to equip the dwelling – to everything without what full-fledged life of an adult animal is impossible. Also they do it not because "have to" or feel "responsibility" for the kids. This powerful mechanism is put in a female by the nature. But, looking how mummy of the kids touchingly licks how she selflessly rushes on their protection even if forces are not equal, and sometimes and in literal sense sacrifices himself in order that the posterity survived at whom it will turn to tell language that it is not love? Not all secrets were revealed to us by the nature, and the person cannot tell with confidence yet whether are behind instincts of animals of feeling, perhaps, in our, human, understanding of this word, and in any special, deep, "animal" understanding?