Understanding animal emotion is a central challenge in improving welfare and human–animal interaction. In a 2023 study published in Animals, Olivia Pickersgill and colleagues surveyed 438 pet owners to explore what emotions they believe their dogs and cats experience, and how they identify them. The findings offer a valuable foundation for developing objective scientific measures of animal emotions.
Owners were asked whether their pets could express 22 primary and secondary emotions such as fear, happiness, jealousy, and guilt. If owners answered “yes,” they were also prompted to describe the behavioral cues used to identify each emotion, including body posture, facial expression, and vocalization.
Overall, owners believed dogs expressed significantly more emotions than cats. This trend held true among owners who had only dogs, only cats, or both species. The number of emotions recognized in dogs was positively correlated with owners’ personal experience but negatively correlated with professional experience, suggesting that daily informal interactions may shape stronger emotional attributions.
Interestingly, cat owners who also had dogs reported fewer perceived emotions in their cats than cat-only owners. This suggests that cross-species comparisons might influence emotional expectations. Despite species differences, owners described using comparable categories of behavioral cues to assess emotions in both dogs and cats, although the specific cue combinations varied by emotion and species.
The researchers emphasize that these findings do not confirm dogs or cats definitively feel each listed emotion. Rather, they provide a structured set of perceptions to guide empirical investigations. As science advances toward identifying objective emotional indicators, pet owner insights remain a key entry point into understanding how animals experience and express emotions in everyday life.
Source: Olivia Pickersgill, Daniel Mills, Kun Guo. “Owners’ Beliefs regarding the Emotional Capabilities of Their Dogs and Cats.” Animals, 2023-02-24. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani13061001
