New science:

Dogs cry too.

Surprised by that. Suppose I should not have been.

My kid is doing a lot of scientific research on captive animal welfare, and the general animal welfare community is becoming more and more accepting of the fact that individual critters have personalities which must be included in any overall welfare model. I think it's pretty cool.

When I was in school back when the earth's crust was cooling, the cardinal sin was to anthropomorphize any animal by assigning anything remotely resembling a personality, or even acknowledging that individual differences were anything more than just noise in the data you had to live with.

Nina, that was my experience as well, the joys of behaviorism. One could not suggest emotions to animals even though my dog Duke made what I thought was a persuasive argument.

That does not surprise me at all. All my dogs had distinct personalities and emotions. Cats too.

I would have thought this intuitively apparent.

But that's just me.

No props for the thread title?

I definitely had Prince pop into my brain....