Teasing and clowning in infancy

Figure 1. Example of clowning. Extreme facial expression (imitation of great grandmother’s face while snoring) repeated following others’ laughter. Our revised understanding of the organization of the avian brain also provides us with an opportunity to investigate the neural basis of emotion in birds. We could also apply physiological techniques used with mammals to record autonomic responses to emotional material or affective experiences. However, these would suffer from the same problems as mammals, as changes in heart rate, blood pressure, skin conductance, cortisol levels, and so on can be weak correlates of a specific emotional response. For example, heart rate can increase both as a result of being frightened and the result of seeing a loved one. The best opportunity for progress is to bring all these techniques together into a comprehensive study of emotional states, one species at a time. What are the implications if we conclude that birds do not have fun? Our animal welfare laws are based largely around an attempt to provide animals with an absence of pain and suffering. We would also like them to be happy. Although a noble pursuit, as yet there is very little scientific evidence to bear on what a happy animal would look like if we saw one. It is therefore of primary importance that we develop sensible, scientifically-based methods to determine precisely what constitutes an animal feeling happy, sad, joyful and whether it can have fun. We can then use such information to enhance their lives, rather than attributing our own ideas on what they do and do not need based on introspection and anthropomorphism.