Do animals have a moral compass?

Do animals have a moral compass?

An article citing a report (Oxford University Press, October 2012) claims that animals are moral creatures.  The report seems to be an attempt to answer the question:  Can animals be moral?

Several cases of animal behavior were cited to show that social animals do have some sense of right and wrong, and that social animals can choose to be good or bad.  Some others argue that such behavior may simply be based on instinct or reactions of animal emotions.

One case involved a dog that was hit and injured on a busy Chilean freeway.  Its canine compatriot dodged traffic and risked its own life to drag the unconscious dog to safety.  What sort of instinct is involved in this behavior?

Another three cases involved rhesus monkeys that refused to electrically shock their fellow monkeys, rats that refused to shock their littermates, and mice that grimaced when their companion mice were in pain.  Such behavior is cited as an indication that rats and mice have empathy for each other.  Can instinct explain this behavior?

Bluebirds and dogs show jealousy.  Dog owners know very well that their canine pets show jealousy.   Is this instinct or is it really a sense of right or wrong?

The argument here is that jealousy among animals is related to the animals’ territorial instinct.  All dogs and cats exhibit territorial behavior.  Even the behavior of the bluebird is explainable as reaction based on territorial instinct.

Do dogs feel true remorse?  Some argue that dogs do not really feel true remorse.  The dog’s guilty looks do not signal remorse, it is argued.  They are merely responding appropriately to their owner’s anger and are reacting accordingly rather than feeling true remorse.

My argument is that a dog’s guilty looks do signal true remorse. One example is the observation that when the dog owner arrives home, he or she is greeted by the dog wagging its tail.  When the dog owner enters the house and smells dog urine, the dog will hide.  One explanation of this behavior is that the dog perceives that the owner has noticed the smell and the dog hides.  Another observation is that after welcoming the owner home, the dog runs ahead and hides even before the owner notices the urine smell.  This anticipatory behavior negates the argument that the dog’s guilty looks do not reflect true remorse, and that the dog’s guilty looks are merely an appropriate response and reaction to the owner’s anger.  Such anticipatory behavior does suggest that dogs do feel true remorse.

Dolphins repeatedly show love for species not their own, according to dolphin studies.  Random acts of kindness are also shown by dolphins that rescue swimmers from hammerhead sharks.  What sort of instinct is involved in this behavior?

Elephants bury the dead and visit the bones.  Do elephants have a moral compass or are they behaving according to instinct?

A female gorilla named Binti Jua rescued an unconscious 3-year-old human boy who had fallen into her enclosure at the Brookline Zoo in Illinois, and protected the child from other gorillas and even called for human help, according to the report.  What sort of instinct is involved in this case?

Animals do act on instinct.  Animals can also act on emotions and extrasensory perception (ESP).

Do animals and human babies have a moral compass or a moral sense?  Some argue that the instinct to help children is not moral sense but animal emotions that may be rooted in instinct and hardwiring rather than conscious choice.

Arguments

Do animals make conscious choices?  What would be the basis for an animal to make a conscious choice?  Is a dog’s loyalty even after the death of its owner a conscious choice?  Is a dog’s anticipation of its daily walk a conscious choice?

Humans judge what is right and what is wrong based on meaning and belief.  The belief that girls should have equal opportunity for education is “right” in Western society but “wrong” among the Taliban.  Stoning as punishment for adultery is “wrong” in Western and Asian societies but “not wrong” among some people in Iran and northern Afghanistan.

So what does a sense of right or wrong mean to the house cat or the pet dog?  What is the moral compass of a human baby or our house pet?

A hardwired sense of comfort and a hardwired sense of discomfort

The first argument here is that social animals like rhesus monkeys, elephants, mice, gorillas and dolphins all have instincts for social behavior.  This social behavior is based on an instinct of shared comfort.  Mutual grooming among monkeys is a good example of this instinct of shared comfort.  This instinct of shared comfort also explains cross species nursing, for example, a monkey nursing and protecting a kitten, etc.

A second argument here is that social animals instinctly share a sense of common threat and common danger.  This instinctive sharing of a sense of alarm is seen in schools of fish, flocks of birds, groups of monkeys, the hen and her chickens, the mother duck and her ducklings, the mother goose and her flock of geese, etc.

A third argument here is that social animals as well as lone animals have an instinctive sense of sizing up their prey and their nemesis.  Mice run away when a cat approaches.  Sheep dogs will fight to protect its flock of sheep from wolves.  Rodents will run and hide from snakes.

A combination of the first, second and third arguments thus provides an explanation as to the behavior of the gorilla that rescued and protected the 3-year-old unconscious boy from other gorillas.  It also explains why rhesus monkeys, mice, do not electrically shock littermates and why mice grimace when their acquaintance is in pain.  In addition to the instinctly shared sense of alarm and comfort among social animals such as the rhesus monkeys and mice, they also seem to instinctively share a sense of discomfort.  This instinctively shared sense of discomfort comes from the shared sense of alarm.

When these instincts of a shared sense of comfort, alarm, discomfort, are considered together as common instincts among social animals, they would negate any notion of a moral compass and a sense of right or wrong among animals.  Mutual grooming illustrates a shared sense of comfort.  Flight of flocks of birds when a loud gunshot is heard illustrates the shared sense of alarm.  Refusal to electrically shock littermates, grimacing when a fellow mouse is in pain, etc. demonstrate a shared sense of discomfort.

The behavior of elephants that bury their dead and visit the bones of the deceased stems from the fact that elephants are social animals in the wild and they engage in convivial activities and they travel in family groups.  And the argument here is that elephants may have an instinct for convivial behavior based on an instinctive sense of social and family bond.  This instinctive sense of social and family bond is an instinctive sense of shared comfort or companionship, and the mourning behavior of the elephant would then be its instinctively shared sense of discomfort or sorrow.