Expression

I feel like we really didn’t discuss cetaceans very much in class so I thought I would post a question about them. Mark Peter Simmonds discusses on page 194 in the book the anatomical differences between cetaceans and primates. He describes a view taken from Goold and Goold in The Animal Mind:

“Primatologists… assume that their subjects are to some degree self aware. In part this may arise not because primates are so much smarter than others species, but because it is easier for humans to read primate gestures and emotional expressions than the equivalents in, say, beavers or dolphins. It is easier for us to empathize with behavioral responses to situations that could touch our own lives.”

Simmods goes on to say, “thus they highlight the possibility that our interpretation of cetacean behavior might be hampered by a lack of empathy.”

I think it’s true that it is easier visually to see that a primate can understand and have certain feelings, if of course they really are having the feelings that their expressions are portraying. Which in my opinion apes do express how they feel, but getting back, we cannot visually see expressions as clearly from an animal such as a dolphin.

Do you think it is harder for us to have empathy and associate higher cognitive thinking to animals such as dolphins and whales because of their lack of expression?