Making Faces: Facial Expressions In Animals

Facial expressions -The human face is extremely expressive, able to express countless emotions without saying a word. And unlike some forms of nonverbal communication, facial expressions are

Science released an article entitled “Facial Expressions—Including Fear—May Not Be as Universal as We Thought”, written by Michael Pierce on October 17, 2016. In this article Pierce discusses how 50 years ago it was assumed that facial expressions were universal. However, it has been found that in the present day, this may not be the case. Expressions such as happiness, anger, sadness, fear, disgust, or hunger, were all assumed to be expressed the same way as well as interpreted the same way. A study was conducted in the Trobriand Islands, were Trobrianders were shown as series of photos with facial expressions. They were asked to describe the emotions they interpreted from the photos, the results were intriguing. Pierce (2016) describes how

Facial Expression: The facial expression such as happiness, sadness, anger and fear helps a lot in conveying a message. These facial expressions are similar all over the world but non- verbal communication and behaviour varies hugely between the cultures in the world.Since the look on a person’s face is noticed , before we hear ,facial expression contributes a lot in a successfully non-verbal communication .

When mom and dad smile with their baby, the baby smiles back. If mom or dad makes a sad face, the baby sees there is no joy in their face and will start to instinctively begin to frown. Even though that this pattern of happy and sad facial expressions are intuitive, it is also providing the baby with experience of how facial expressions are displaying playing happiness and sadness.

| Facial expressions – Facial expression reveals a great deal about our feelings. A blank facial expression makes it much harder to interpret what is being said and makes it harder for the service user to understand the nature of the conversation.

Play is expressed as being one of the most sophisticated forms of primate-to-primate interaction (Demaru et al. 2015). During play, the main form of emotional communication is through facial expression (Demaru et al. 2015). In humans, facial expressions are a universal display of non-verbal communication, and they are immediately read and responded to by conspecifics that bear witness to them (Cattaneo & Pavesi 2014). Play faces (PF) – an open mouth, or an open mouth with teeth showing- are used to signal the want to play and are influenced by characteristics of the play interaction (Demaru et al. 2015). For instance, aggressive behavior during play can influence the PF (Demaru et al. 2015).

Rifkin is evidently right about how animals express their emotions and have similarities to us humans. This article

According to sources, after performing studies at the University of Sussex, Jennifer Wathan and Karen McComb made a breakthrough--readable horses. Frankly, multitudes of animals communicate to each other; more than none. Adversely, humans do not know and understand all of a horse’s movements that relate to their decision making process. Fortunately, these two university researchers have an answer: Use visual cues to read a horse's mood. Jennifer Wathan assessed that being decisive to cognition and emotion is a fundamental skill; even for animals. In relation to horses, their ears and eyes tell the tale.

However many skeptics argue that this is not enough evidence to determine whether animals have emotions or if they are just exhibiting primary instincts. Nevertheless many researchers studying animal emotions believe that humans are not the only animals to experience emotion.

In the article Emotion Expressions: On Signals, Symbols, and Spandrels—A Response to Barrett, Azim F. Shariff and Jessica L. Tracy talk about whether emotional expression can be evolved. They acknowledge the view of an opposing author, Barret, that they are culturally different and that they are byproducts of evolution. They state that although they don’t have sufficient evidence, that this conclusion can be deduced through cognition of other evidence. To support their argument, they use the example of how blind people express their emotion, similar to how non-blind people do, even though they have never seen someone else express emotions, which holds up through cultures. They mention how we use our emotions

animal behaviour when it supports his arguments. However, it is in fact difficult to judge the causes for animal distress based on their reaction (i.e. writhing, facial contortions, moaning, and yelping) as these reactions may not be based on a cognitive awareness but on a self‐preservation instinct. Singer and we can only hypothesize what an animal might be feeling, not make categorical arguments as Singer has done.

Scientists have identified certain features that make babies and some animals look cute to us, but these features also enables animals to survive. People think pandas are cute because of their big head and cute eyes! Cute cues make it appear that an animal is young and harmless. People around the world use cute cues in their culture. Regardless of the cute cues, it's done for the animals survival. My final thought is that cute cues are very cute, but they're looks also aid in their survival,

I believe dogs do smile, or at least show a happy facial expression. Based on the article, dogs are proven to be more happy during scratches and belly rubs. My dog is a great example of this. He is constantly alert and skittish, but when given affection, he relaxes his facial expressions. I am not sure if all animals smile, but I believe dogs show more emotions. I have also heard from sources that dogs show no emotion, but we as humans, portray emotions onto the dogs, and believe they are smiling. I also believe that dogs cry. When my dog is hurting or uncomfortable, like when clipping his nails, his eyes water. He gets tear marks on his nose. I have also seen my sister's dogs do this too. To conclude, whether or not dog's really do smile,

Ways in which gibbons (Hylobatidae), a small ape species, altered their use of facial expressions in relation to the recipient’s behavior was explored in a different study by Scheider, Waller, Ona, Burrows, and Liebal (2016). More specifically, the researchers investigated how attention state of the receiver influenced the expression produced, as well as whether recipients would respond by using a facial expression (Scheider et al., 2016). Mated pairs of five different gibbon species were observed and researchers used GibbonFACS to code and define facial expressions. 45 different expressions were discovered, used in different contexts (Scheider et al., 2016). When facing

Most people are surprised to learn exactly how much information they communicated about themselves through their facial expressions. The intricacies of what one does with their the eyes, eyebrows, forehead, lips, tongue, teeth, and mouth while listening or talking combine to send some