We know animals mate, form emotional bonds and co-parent. But determining whether they feel intangible emotions is much more difficult.
. These examples make a case for animals having emotional attachments, not unlike companionate love in humans. But there are also examples that seem like romantic love. For instance, albatrosses keep coming back to the same partner for their whole lives, sometimes over 60 years.
There are also chemical signs of love, like increased production of certain hormones. Oxytocin has been called the “love hormone,” but that’s not quite right, according to Ophir. “Things like oxytocin and vasopressin are working to modulate a lot of the reward circuitry, the things that make you feel good,” he explains. When something “good” happens to you, like finding $5 on the street, eating sugar or having sex, your brain rewards that behavior by making you feel good, too.
When creating breeding programs for endangered animals, scientists “need to figure out how to make them fall in love, and it’s not as easy as turning on Marvin Gaye,” says Meghan Martin, an adjunct biology professor at Washington State University-Vancouver and director of the nonprofit PDX Wildlife. “We have to break their specific code.”; she describes her research as “speed-dating for pandas.
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