Do any other animals cry? Ed Keegan, Needham Market
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Readers reply
Crocodiles (and Tories seeking votes). MrCassandra
Doves cry, according to the artist formerly known as formerly known as Prince. PeteTheBeat
Our dog has separation anxiety. He isn’t left at home much since I work there, but at times we have returned home and he has tear tracks under his eyes as if he has been crying. melmelmel
My dad was a dairy farmer. When the newborn calves were taken away from their mothers, there was a lot of bellowing from the mothers, sadly. And when the lambs are taken away from their mothers here in Scotland, the hills ring with baaing. MB
My hunch is, based on a lifetime of observing cat behaviour, that moaning, whining and whimpering can easily be equated with crying. But since cats, like most animals and human infants, do not have the option of speech, we as adult humans must develop skills through experience that may allow us to ascertain whether the moan, whine, whimper or even sigh connotes pain, hunger, sadness or just plain boredom. RPOrlando
I have to dig into the meaning of cry first, the why and what. Let’s take the function of human tears coming to the eyes – frequently accompanied by a wail, scream, sob or sniffling – in response to emotional stressors as the baseline for “crying”. Do animals feel the same emotions and emit noise and tears? Hunger, loss, love, terror: I think we can agree most animals share our experience of those. The companion animals I have shared my life with, dogs and cats, definitely cry. There is a special shininess to the eye of my terrier when storms strike, while my beautiful cat Boo would well up when I gave him extra love. Both would verbalise pain, or the loss of one of their furry friends. So, definitely, they cry.
My husband does not tear up, weep or sob. My da was the same. But you cannot get off the planet without expressing the stressful emotions that happen during the course of a lifetime, so you find other ways. Are these ways not a form of crying? I recognise when these men mourn that it is in their own way. It is not typical, but they need to do it. Heather
