Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Part I Attitudes to animals
- Part II Animal awareness
- 4 The problem of animal subjectivity and its consequences for the scientific measurement of animal suffering
- 5 Environmental enrichment and impoverishment: neurophysiological effects
- 6 The behavioural requirements of farm animals for psychological well-being and survival
- 7 Personality and the happiness of the chimpanzee
- 8 Primate cognition: evidence for the ethical treatment of primates
- Part III Animal welfare
- Part IV Research and education
- Part V Epilogue: the future of wild animals
- Index
7 - Personality and the happiness of the chimpanzee
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Part I Attitudes to animals
- Part II Animal awareness
- 4 The problem of animal subjectivity and its consequences for the scientific measurement of animal suffering
- 5 Environmental enrichment and impoverishment: neurophysiological effects
- 6 The behavioural requirements of farm animals for psychological well-being and survival
- 7 Personality and the happiness of the chimpanzee
- 8 Primate cognition: evidence for the ethical treatment of primates
- Part III Animal welfare
- Part IV Research and education
- Part V Epilogue: the future of wild animals
- Index
Summary
Two hunters, Ntino and Iko were out strolling one day through the forest. They came across some chimpanzees who were playing in the branches of a mulemba tree.
‘Look at the chimpanzees,’ Ntino said. ‘Look how they swing so easily through the branches. This is the happiness of the chimpanzee.’
‘How can you know?’ Iko said. ‘You are not a chimpanzee. How can you know if it is happy or not?’
‘You are not me,’ Ntino said. ‘How do you know that I do not know the happiness of the chimpanzee?’
William Boyd Brazzaville BeachThis dialogue between Ntino and Iko about the happiness of chimpanzees addresses two approaches to a problem that the philosophically inclined have pondered for centuries. The solipsist Iko has no patience with frivolous speculation about chimpanzee happiness. However, the clever Ntino redirects Iko's solipsist argument against Iko himself. Ntino also reveals himself to be an adherent of the increasingly popular view that animals are most happy when they are freely engaging in natural or species-specific behaviours.
Interest in the scientific value of subjective states and dispositions, including happiness, in animals is often traced back to Charles Darwin's (1872/1965) discussion about phylogenetic continuity of emotional displays in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. The book features a striking illustration of a chimpanzee described by Darwin as ‘disappointed and sulky’. Earlier, in The Descent of Man (1871/1981) Darwin had asserted that ‘The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness and misery.’
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- Information
- Attitudes to AnimalsViews in Animal Welfare, pp. 101 - 113Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999
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