Feeling joy, sorrow, wanting to play, to seduce or to make love… These emotions seem a priori to be the prerogative of man.
However, explains ethologist Jessica Serra on Tuesday on Europe 1, animals are also crossed by this type of emotion, sharing with humans much more in common than the latter wants to admit.
INTERVIEW
"We tend to forget it, but people are first and foremost animals."
For ethologist Jessica Serra, man may think of himself as "above the animal kingdom", he remains a close cousin of the monkey and looks much more like other animals than he likes to imagine.
Being happy, angry, wanting to play, to seduce, to make love ... These are all characteristics that we often think, wrongly, to be the prerogative of men.
Jessica Serra, author of
The beast in us
, tells Tuesday in
Sans rendez-vou
s on Europe 1, the close links that humans and animals still maintain.
Animals also use tools
"We thought for a long time that the mastery of tools was the proof of our supremacy. We now know that they are mastered by many species, sometimes very distant from us genetically", explains Jessica Serra.
Among these resourceful beasts, we find in particular the crow, able to bend stems in order to give them the adequate shape to extract larvae of beetles hidden in trees.
Another example: some species of octopus manage to drag empty coconuts for several meters and, by nesting inside, to make a sort of shell to escape predators.
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Animals also feel joy and sorrow
Like us, animals don't always have an even mood.
They may be sad, angry, or want to have fun.
"Dolphins, for example, make air circles underwater and have fun with them. What other explanation for their behavior than play for the sake of play?" Asks Jessica Serra.
Many studies have also looked at the ways animals show their joy.
Some are not that different from humans.
"It was long thought that a smile was a human specificity. However, researchers have observed that Japanese macaque babies, like young humans, smile in their sleep."
Animals also know how to seduce
Many species of animals use love displays to seduce potential mates.
This is the case of the peacock, which deploys its multicolored feathers to attract females, or the deer, which relies on the size of its antlers and the strength of its roar.
"These are undoubtedly assets of seduction", emphasizes Jessica Serra.
Contrary to what one might think, animals also sometimes have sex for fun.
"We tend, as humans, to think of this through the sole prism of reproduction. It is a received idea."
Animals have many impulses that cause them to take action.
As proof, Jessica Serra mentions the recent study by an ethologist who showed that macaques masturbate almost daily, and all the more often when they have no partner to seduce.