Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows two women whose work with animals has led them to question beliefs about the ability of animals to feel emotion. The sequence opens with footage of Dr Gisela Kaplan in a garden with Dr Lesley Rogers. The narrator describes the women’s research into animal behaviour and communication. In the next shot Kaplan holds a tawny frogmouth and explains how she needs to teach the bird how to hunt. She is then shown with birds she is rearing, explaining how birds are able to demonstrate a range of emotions.

Educational value points

• The clip introduces the subject, much debated by scientists, of whether animals feel emotions. Charles Darwin (1809–82) concluded that animals did have emotions. However, many scientists since his time believe that although animals may behave as though they feel emotions, this is an interpretation based on ascribing human qualities to instinctive behaviours in animals. There is little scientific data on higher emotions in animals.

• Kaplan claims that birds are capable of feeling and expressing higher emotions such as grief and fidelity. However some scientists who take issue with this idea claim that such higher emotions require a neocortex, a key part of the brain used for higher cognition that is fully developed only in primates and humans. They claim that primitive emotional responses – such as fear or pleasure – are tied into survival and arise from the more primitive limbic system.

• The clip features a tawny frogmouth. Tawny frogmouths are usually between 23 and 58 cm long and have a wide and slightly hooked beak well suited for catching large insects and small reptiles. With its mottled plumage and still, erect pose, the tawny frogmouth can be almost indistinguishable from a broken tree branch. They are often thought of as owls due to their appearance and nocturnal habit, but are in fact part of a closely related family – the nightjars.

• The question of whether or not animals feel emotions is an important one in determining how humans relate to them. If animals do not feel emotions, scientists are more likely to experiment on them without great consideration for their mental welfare. If animals are able to feel higher emotions – such as love and grief – then they should be accorded rights that would challenge current animal husbandry practices, hunting, scientific experimentation and even petkeeping.

• The clip reveals that some animal behaviour is not instinctive but needs to be taught. For example this tawny frogmouth must learn how to recognise prey, capture it and return with it to its perch. The process of training – usually performed in the wild by the parents – is very time-consuming but is essential in making a young bird independent and able to fend for itself.

• Australian scientist Dr Gisela Kaplan, featured in the clip, is Professor in Animal Behaviour at the University of New England’s Centre for Neuroscience and Animal Behaviour, where she specialises in bird behaviour and higher cognition in animals. She also rears and rehabilitates native Australian birds. She is author of several bird books and her latest, Tawny Frogmouth (2007), draws on her detailed observations of about 60 birds in the wild and in captivity.