Vol. 8 No. 2 (2022)
Papers

New perspectives for quantifying emotions in animals – pilot study

Giulia Bompadre
L.P.
Daniele Gullà
National Institute of Biostructures and Biosystems (I.N.B.B.)
Pier Attilio Accorsi
University of Bologna

Published 2023-02-17

Keywords

  • behavior,
  • emotions,
  • dog

Abstract

The aim of this research was to measure the emotions of animals. For this purpose, some subjects belonging to the canine and feline species have been taken into consideration. Some of them underwent situations that can arouse strong emotions in order to record the changes in their emotional state. The recording of the variation of their emotional state was made by means of special equipment capable of displaying and measuring the energetic state of a body and its variations instant by instant. The tools used for such recordings are already used in the human field. Therefore we wanted to see if what is already validated in the human sphere could also be validated for pets. The first results obtained seem to confirm this possibility.