Can love exist between species? science says yes

Both the people who care animals such as those who have embarked on a vegetarian lifestyle are prone to criticism for projecting human feelings onto animals that cannot experience them in the same way that us. These criticisms, which may be partly true (after all, as bipedal and massively social primates we experience the reality in a very particular way) do not stop sinning the same as they criticize: affirming universal truths based on faith.

The truth is that none of us can get inside the head of another living being, much less if that living being is seven branches away from our position on the evolutionary tree. He love between species It is a phenomenon that is difficult to study, especially when the behavior that would be expected from an animal emotionally involved with a human It is very similar to the behavior that would also be expected in a living being that has learned to manipulate its caretaker to obtain better results. deals.

However, science provides us with tools to indirectly know the cognitive and emotional phenomena that occur in other organisms. There is a study, in particular, that gives reason for optimism to all those people who believe that love between species exists.

Talking about love between species is talking about reductionism

how can studied scientifically he love? To do so, there is no choice but to resort to a reasonable dose of reductionism. The sensations and moods of non-human animals are so different from ours that, to study them, we must focus on the essential aspects that make them similar to us. In this case, being reductionist means focusing on a specific and objective aspect associated with the moods linked to love or affection both in our species and in many others. Normally, this is done through research focused on the study of hormonal flows.

Interspecies love is such a broad concept that it needs to be reduced to very concrete operational terms if we want to investigate it. At this point, it is important, above all, to measure the levels of oxytocin.

The affective bond dog - human

Oxytocin is a hormone associated with the creation of affective bonds trusting relationships and maternal behaviors. It is present in a wide variety of living beings, and therefore oxytocin levels are an appropriate indicator to quantitatively estimate the moods that we associate with love.

With an analysis based on the levels of this substance, it is possible to know indirectly what is experiencing animals when interacting with their human caretakers, and vice versa, thanks to the use of a same meter for both species.

Starting from this premise, a team of Japanese researchers set out to study the emotional states that are triggered in the organism of domestic dogs when interacting with their caregivers. To do this, they let the dogs and humans interact with each other in pairs and, right after, they took urine samples from both the dogs and their playmates.

The results that were published in the magazine Science, although they are based only on the measurement of a chemical substance, they tell us about animals that create powerful emotional ties with homo sapiens. When dogs look humans in the eye, both species begin to generate more oxytocin. This fact is easier to explain from the hypothesis of "love between species" than from that of animals taking advantage of their masters, since the experiment does not include any material reward for the dogs.

Doggies and Emotional Loops

Oxytocin, like all hormones, generates dynamics of loop, since it is both a method of sending instructions from the brain and a substance that informs the brain about what is happening in the body. In the case of dogs and their masters looking into each other's eyes, researchers have also documented the existence of a loop: the fact that the animal couple spends more time looking at the other (caused by a few higher than normal oxytocin levels) causes the latter to generate more oxytocin, which in turn means a tendency to look at the other longer, etc

The existence of this hormonal loop, typical of the complex relationships established between humans, is not so well documented in the relationships between our species and the rest, among other things because there are few animals whose habits make peaceful and sustained interaction with organisms with which they share little easy. evolutionarily. However, this research offers support for the idea that the hormonal feedback process can be found far beyond our own evolutionary family.

a special case

Of course, although what is documented in the paper of these researchers can be interpreted as an example of love between species (or affective states associated with love), that does not mean that all species pairs are equally likely to be emotionally involved in the same way. After all, dogs are a special case for having learned to coexist very well with sapiens. As in almost all subjects, science advances at an ant's pace and there are few results that can be generalized to a large number of cases.

This research also supports the idea that the evolutionary path of domestic dogs may have prepared them especially well to get along with us. The scientists repeated the experiment substituting the dogs for Wolves and, studying the behavior and hormonal levels of these carnivores, they verified that they couldn't even stand looking at the animals for so long. eyes of the keepers, nor did their oxytocin levels increase in a way comparable to that of their domestic relatives.

It should be noted that the dog and the wolf are part of the same species, so the difference between them could be due to a process of recent adaptation that they took place in dogs and not in their wild brethren. The dogs might have developed a special interest in the human face and certain baskets, but the wolves would not have had that need. Or perhaps, who knows, the key to these different results is that humans don't look at some dogs in the same way as others.