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 project human feelings onto animals that cannot experience them in the same way as U.S. These criticisms, being able to be true in part (after all, as bipedal and massively social primates we experience the reality in a very particular way) they do not stop sinning from the same ones they criticize: affirming universal truths based on faith.

The truth is that none of us can get into the head of another living being, much less if that living being is seven branches away from our position in the evolutionary tree. The interspecies love It is a phenomenon of complicated study, and more so when the behavior that one would expect 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 caregiver to obtain better deals.

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

To speak of love between species is to speak of reductionism

How can be scientifically studied the love? To do this, there is no choice but to resort to a reasonable dose of reductionism. The sensations and moods of nonhuman animals are so different from ours that, to study them, we must focus on the essential aspects that make them similar to U.S. In this case, pulling reductionism means focusing on a specific and objective aspect associated with the states of mind linked to love or affection both in our species and in many others. Typically, this is done through research focused on the study of hormonal fluxes.

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

The dog-human bond

Oxytocin is a hormone associated with the creation of affective ties 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 they are 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 the domestic dogs by relating to their caregivers. To do this, they let the dogs and humans interact with each other in pairs and, right after, take urine samples from both the dogs and their playmates.

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

Puppies 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 pair spends more time looking at the other (caused by higher than normal oxytocin levels) causes the latter to generate more oxytocin, which in turn means a tendency to look at the other for 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 easy with organisms with which they share little 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), This does not mean that all species pairs are equally prone to being emotionally involved in the same way. After all, dogs are a special case for having learned to clive very well with sapiens. As in almost all subjects, science advances at an ant's pace and few results can be generalized to a large number of cases.

This research also supports the idea that the evolutionary path of domestic dogs might have prepared them especially well for understanding with us. The scientists repeated the experiment, substituting the dogs for Wolves and, by studying the behavior and hormonal levels of these carnivores, they found that they could not even endure so much looking at the caregivers' eyes, nor did their oxytocin levels rise in a comparable way to those 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 they were carried out on dogs and not on their wild brethren. Dogs might have developed a special interest in the human face and certain baskets, but wolves would not have had that need. Or perhaps, who knows, the key to these different results is that humans do not look the same to some dogs as others.