Do dogs, cats, and other animals get angry, retaliate, hold grudges and "snub" their owners?

The Love of Pets & Other Fun Stuff
1

This topic was brought up elsewhere on this forum and deserves it’s own thread. I was asked to provide sources to some of the statements I made on that other thread. For those who want specific references, it’s easy enough to simply type “do dogs and cats get angry and retaliate” and dozens if not hundreds of sources will be readily available which support what is written here.

Dogs, cats, other pets and probably every other animal on the face of the planet do not possess the intelligence, complex emotions and thought patterns that humans do. They don’t get angry in the sense that they experience an emotional reaction to a perceived slight and subsequently plot some sort of revenge. While they may become aggressive in response to a threat while protecting their territory, their young, or their food supply, they aren’t “angry” and they are incapable of retaliation in the same sense as humans are.

Animals don’t plot revenge or hold complex grudges. If you step on a dog’s tail, startle a sleeping cat, or push their boundaries, they may retaliate with a bite, swat, or growl. This is simply their way of saying, “Stop that, I feel threatened”.

If a cat urinates on your bed, or a dog destroys your shoes while you’re away, it is usually a stress response. Pets often do this when they are suffering from separation anxiety or seeking self-soothing comfort because your scent is the strongest there. It’s not because they’re “angry” and trying to get back at their human by intentionally performing an unwanted behavior that they know will upset their human.

Another example is when a pet owner comes home and sees or smells dog poo and knows there was an accident especially because the dog is “acting guilty”. Some take it to another level and punish their pet by pushing their face into the feces. Not only is this abusive, it’s counterproductive as the pet has no clue why you’re doing this. The pet wasn’t “acting guilty” it was picking up on the body language and harsh tone of the owner who realized there had been an indoor accident.

A dog is not “snubbing you” or giving you the silent treatment because you put it in a kennel for a week. The cat didn’t urinate on your pillow because you gave the dog more attention and the cat didn’t tear up the carpet to get even with you because it was angry that you locked it in the room.

Behaviorists confirm that cats lack the cognitive ability to plan payback, hold grudges, or feel complex human emotions like guilt. These are stress reactions to anxiety producing situations, nothing more.

It is tempting and too easy to attribute higher levels of intelligence and thought to behaviors of our beloved pets who react and operate on a much more basic level than we do.

(Post edited by the Forum team to comply with the Community Guidelines).

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[quote=“Prissie, post:32, topic:78020”]

will start a new thread on this topic and provide from links to various sources.

[/quote]

So you stated you will provide the sources but then tell us to look it up ourselves.

Or is that what was edited out by the moderators? Otherwise, why bother with a new thread?

3

This is all accurate based on modern understanding of dog and cat behavior.

In addition, the guilty look that some humans use to rationalize that the pet understands they did something wrong beforehand is actually a fear response to to the anger/frustration they sense in you when you see an accident in the house. They are responding to your current emotional state, not feeling guilty. They lack the short term memory to associate, say, chewing a shoe a half hour ago, to you being upset now.

For cats, peeing in your bed is almost always territorial marking. You are gone, they are stressed as you provide the resources (food, water, play) in this territory, and the bed is where your scent is very strong. So they co-mingle their strongest scent (urine) with yours. Same for other areas where your scent is strong - shoes, bathmats, etc.

Here is the AI generated response to do dogs feel guilty:

No, dogs do not feel guilt or shame. While they do experience primary emotions like happiness and fear, complex human emotions are beyond their cognitive capacity. What appears to be “guilt” is simply a learned, submissive response to your body language or tone. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

The "Guilty Look:

That iconic look with flattened ears, a lowered head, wide eyes, and a tucked tail is not an admission of wrongdoing.

  • Reading Your Cues: Dogs are incredibly adept at reading human body language, facial expressions, and vocal tones. When they look “guilty,” they actually anticipate that you are upset and are trying to calm or appease you.
  • Learned Associations: If a dog has been scolded in the past for a specific mess (like a chewed shoe), their submissive behavior is a conditioned response to seeing the mess in your presence. They have learned that visible damage equals an angry owner. [2, 3]

Why You Can’t Punish Them After the Fact

Because dogs lack complex reasoning, punishing them after an event is ineffective and confusing.

  • Short-Term Memory: Dogs have very short attention spans. If you scold a dog hours or even minutes after a misbehavior, they cannot connect their past action with your current frustration.
  • The Result: Instead of understanding they did something “bad,” they only learn to fear your arrival or presence when certain items are nearby. [2, 8]

Addressing Unwanted Behavior

When dogs “act out”—like chewing furniture or going to the bathroom indoors—it is almost always driven by boredom, anxiety, loneliness, or an unmet physical need. To curb these habits, experts on Reddit r/Dogtraining highlight that prevention and positive redirection are far more effective than trying to scold them. [7, 8, 9, 10]

4

And yet:

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We also have a (very vocal) parrot as a family pet, who’s quite bonded to me. While sometimes he just says things to hear himself talk, I will say that his attunement to my moods is uncanny. He senses when I’m disturbed, sad, stressed or upset — even without any verbalization or action from me — and will become highly agitated & start screaming or crying until I either leave, or can convince him that I’m OK. He recognizes friends & family via their cars coming down the road & gives differing calls to let us know, & similarly warns my dog with a different call when any of the neighborhood dogs she dislikes walk past the house (he stays quiet if it’s one of the dog’s “friends.”)

I’ve also seen empathic responses from some dogs & cats (although not quite to the degree of our parrot).

So in conclusion, I guess what I would say is that behavioral science may not be as set in stone as some may think, and is open to a certain amount of interpretation and new discoveries as new studies happen.

(And if you want to get really weirded out — take a look at recent studies re: the emotional intelligence of octopi. I literally gave up calamari over it!)

5

Answering the question that is this thread’s title, I’d say it takes a certain measure of human arrogance to insist that humans “know” something unknowable to be a fact. We do it a lot in spite of a long history of getting facts wrong.

6

What I specifically asked about was the

I don’t think anyone on the other thread said that animals

What someone did say was that they had experienced

It now has become in your words

It’s just natural for humans to use our own language to describe animal behaviour, even to try and “translate” their “language”. That doesn’t mean that we extend a particular observation to generalize that animals emotions and thoughts are the same as human equivalents.

I still would like to know who classified depression as a basic emotion and anger as a complex one. It’s commonly accepted that who claims something to be true, particularly in a rebuttal, is the one providing sources or evidence to back up their claims, not the other way round.

7

I had a male siamese cat that was very demanding. He slept next to me pretty much every night. In the morning, he’d get up and start heading out of the room, looking at me while he was walking. If I didn’t get out of bed, he’d walk towards the wall, turn around, look right at me and that little s— would spray the wall!

I guess he could’ve simply learned what got me to move.

8

My little porker used to get on top of the bookcase headboard of the bed, then jump straight down onto my stomach so I’d come wide awake, jumping up & gasping for air…and he’d keep going — off the bed & out the bedroom door, where he’d be sitting in the kitchen next to his food dish, waiting for me as I ran into the room with murder in my heart…

9

Here’s a good source to get you started.

Do Animals Get Angry? The Science of Animal Emotions - Biology Insights

10

The article you quote seems to support my point on two levels. The first is that these crows are being attributed a characteristic that is human-like in nature that does not exist (anthropomorphism), and the second is that animals react in response to a threat not based on complex thoughts or emotions.

From the article “suggesting that these birds could recognize threatening humans” and “One such volunteer found himself at the center of an avian uproar, confirming the crows’ skill in discerning and remembering threats.”

“Marzluff recalled an incident while wearing the mask when 47 out of 53 crows he encountered vehemently scolded him.”

The researches are using the term “scolding” which is a human behavior. The crows are clearly acting in response to a threat (to their territory, themselves or their young) as clearly stated in the article.

11

Great article, thanks for sharing.

While it’s interesting reading, it doesn’t reveal surprising information and certainly nothing that makes @OnTheRoadAgain post, the one which triggered this discussion, invalid, particularly in a casual context as this forum is.

What they say, basically is that

The scientific community increasingly supports the idea that animals experience a range of emotions beyond basic instincts

They also acknowledge

their rich emotional lives

They just specify that different species have

unique complexities

Which nobody has denied.

Saying that a behaviour doesn’t necessarily involve

a human-like subjective feeling of resentment or indignation

Is just a scientific warning that further research needs to be conducted. It doesn’t really prove that they don’t exist, much less that we can’t colloquially use human terms in the meantime.

12

I’ve told this story elsewhere on the Forum, but when I used to travel to music festivals for a few days, on my return, my lovely Walter-cat would do a very stinky “dirty protest” in his litter tray as soon as I returned home. He has outdoor access so chooses to toilet outside 99% of the time.

Mind you, he is very well cared for by my upstairs neighbours, who love him like their own, so he isn’t alone and is very spoiled!

13

Depression is a disease of biochemical origin, hence the effectiveness of antidepressant medication. It is not an emotion nor is it a high level of thought process as is happiness and sadness or revenge, retaliation and snubbing.

Scientific studies cannot prove something does not exist, whether it’s complex emotions or thoughts by animals, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny or one’s chosen god.

It’s impossible to prove a negative, that much said quite often Occams Razor applies. The simplest explanation is often the correct one. But of course, our pets could be even smarter than we are, and secretly planning to overthrow us one day, lock us up and turn is into THEIR pets. How can we ever be sure?

14

I never said depression is an emotion. I was just surprised by this statement:

But, anyway, it seems you have finally got my point

15

I could have worded the statement better which ends with “and depression”. I meant that while animals can experience depression, I did not intend the term to be lumped in with the basic emotions listed in the first part of the phrase prior to the comma.

My apologies for the ambiguity.

16

Pets can absolutely experience depression. They can grieve for their humans if they pass away, they can grieve for another pet they are bonded with. They often withdraw into a depressive state when in a stressful shelter situation.

No one is saying we ‘know’ exactly what dogs are or are not feeling, but I do believe in science and the body of work that has concluded that animals experience emotions, but not the same way and manner that humans do. Dogs simply lack the same memory pathways that let them associate a behavior from the past with a punishment in the present.

17

In my experience working with scientists, they rarely claim to know a thing as a settled matter. Those scientists that do are usually at the center of some scientific, often rancorous hoopla. Most scientists postulate and equivocate over conclusions made out of their observations and wait for better data in the future.

18

When there is a sufficient body of work pointing to a conclusion, it is generally accepted to be the supported theory. But I have no interest in a debate on the scientific method. Everyone with an interest can do their own research on the work that has been done to date if they choose, and decide for themselves what to believe from there.

19

And honestly, barring those few misguided people who think they should punish pets for unwanted behavior, it doesn’t seem awfully concerning to me that some people will attribute more human-esque motives to a pet’s behavior than others will.

We definitely know that animals have their own unique personalities, and I love them for it! (Even the slightly naughty ones…)

20

That could also be @Jenny that Walter didn’t have a loving THS sitter to look after him in your absence :wink: