Fwd: Gene Valicenti wrong : " Your dog does not love you " ? Darwin or Saint Francis : Animals FEEL too !

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Ron Ruggieri <radicalron72647@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2021 at 10:42
Subject: Gene Valicenti wrong : " Your dog does not love you " ? Darwin or Saint Francis : Animals FEEL too !
To: <tara@630wpro.com>

 [ To convince the sceptics, it was important for Darwin to accumulate as much evidence for humans' and animals' shared roots as possible. The Expression was intended to do just that. Prior to its publication, the benchmark work on the human face was written by the creationist Sir Charles Bell (1774-1842). Bell believed that human facial muscles were divinely created to express uniquely human emotions. Darwin refuted this; he was sure that inner feelings of humans and animals were outwardly manifested in similar ways.³  For example, in both humans and animals, lips purse during concentration, anger leads to eye-muscle contraction and teeth exposure, while mouths hang agape when listening intently.⁴  He believed that such expressions must have developed through common evolutionary mechanisms, and that they were "daily, living proof of [our] animal ancestry".⁵]

      630 WPRO radio talk show host Gene Valicenti - thinking he was being oh-so-scientific - told his listeners this morning in so many words : Do not believe that your dog LOVES you ".    Forget about sentimental slop " proof "  that your pets do love you . Just consult a chapter in the work of that great biologist Charles Darwin :  " The expression of emotions in humans and animals ".    The fact that the higher mammals like monkeys, dogs, cats  and HUMANS have evolved from  common ancestor species would suggest immediately that animal emotions - like your dog's HAPPY face , your cat's HAPPY purring - are no more a FALSE appearance than any HUMAN expression of emotions .  Does Valicenti think that a beloved dog's PAIN is an empty show  ?   Perhaps he is lacking in the very emotion which makes people LOVE their pets and FEEL their LOVE : we call it EMPATHY !    It does seem that something of ourselves did emerge from the " dumb" animal world .  God was more generous with the LOVE emotion than some narrow minded humans think . Just observe with what PASSION a mother bear guards her babies.   So people who think their dogs and cats LOVE them are not idiots !       Darwin or Saint Francis - Animals FEEL too !

   Ron Ruggieri , 75 Mathewson St. , Cranston, Rhode Island  ( 401-712-1928 )