Animals cry but don't weep
![[Corel] A gorilla emotes.](weep-gorilla.jpg) Q: The recent death of our much-beloved cat, Hepzibuh, raises the questions: Why do people weep?
Do people in all cultures weep? Do other primates weep? Do other animals weep--Harvey J., Maine
A: This is the second of a two-part answer. This part considers whether other primates and animals weep
also. The first part discussed why people weep. See Further Surfing below.
Right: [Corel] A gorilla emotes.
Darwin noted that some human emotional expressions may have started as part of a physiological function:
for example, baring the teeth to bite food. The function, however, took on meaning and became a form of communication: baring the
teeth signals anger.
The same may be true for the animals, from which we sprang. Marmoset infant monkeys cry for attention. They also cry when older to
signal to an adult that they want to be carried.
"Chimpanzees do make upset vocalizations when they are being weaned by their mothers or have lost their mother or other individual,"
says Anne Pusey, ecology, evolution and behavior professor at the University of Minnesota. She also directs the Jane Goodal Institute's
Center for Primate Studies. "They whimper and cry and scream. When we hear these calls, the emotion involved seems obvious.
However, they do not weep in the sense of producing tears. I have seen an adolescent male whimpering when he lost sight of his older
brother with whom he had been traveling."
Infants of many mammalian species, including rats, cry. Moreover, when a baby rat cries, often his mother brings the fallen pup back
into the nest. This is probably a straight-forward communication as it is with humans. However, psychologists at the University of Iowa
aren't convinced.
The Iowan researchers can induce the same crying sounds by producing large decreases and then increases in blood flow. The blood
flow also lowers when baby rats get cold. Thus, they conclude rat babies cry in the same way that we sneeze. Of course, the rat baby
could also be crying because he's cold and wants his mother to know.
All young mammals make cries when separated from their mother, says Jaak Panksepp, a psychologist at Bowling Green State
University. If you're willing to call this crying, then "certainly other animals show this emotional response," he says. "Some of us take
seriously that animals do have emotions."
Charles Darwin said that the keeper of the Indian elephants at the London Zoo told him the elephants would sometimes weep from
sorrow.
Further Surfing:
Center for Primate Studies: Meet the chimps
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