I thought this was an interesting article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/science/02tier.html?_r=1

This made me smile,

" a young tiger .., after tearing up all the newly planted trees at a California animal park, covered his eyes with his paws when the zookeeper arrived. "

That is interesting.

I think that animals don't feel regret.

>female chimpanzees at the Tulsa Zoo that took advantage of a renovation project to steal the painters' supplies, don gloves and paint their babies solid white. When confronted by their furious keeper, the mothers scurried away, then returned with peace offerings and paint-free babies.

I don't expect the chimps in the above snippet actually regretted painting thier babies (LOL that is funny!), they probably were trying to appease the 'furious' keeper, I would bet that if the keeper was acting exactly the same as he normally would have been the chimps would have no reason to appease him or to look like they may 'regret' what they had done.
I don't think animals have the same sense of right & wrong as we do, they just learn what consequences there are to different things so they know what is worth repeating and what is best avoided, and that social animals will do thier best to appease others as the group is important to them.

>Do pet cats ever regret anything? Taken from the article.

I have never seen any behaviour from my cat that could remotley be mistaken for regret! She will happily walk around the kitchen sides knocking things off onto the floor if she is hungry, she doesn't care is she breaks anything, despite in making me cross. My cat does not know the meaning of the word appease!

Just read that article. The bit at the end about the gorillas getting so fond of their keepers that they make sexual overtures to them had me in stitches. Imagine going home to your wife and trying to explain away the love-bite on your neck, or imagine your wife's face if she found the gorillas panties in the glove compartment. One male gorilla even took to dragging his female keeper around by the hair. I've seen some of those big silverbacks and believe me......I've had worse!!!

this is very thought provoking. i agree with mastifflover that

> they probably were trying to appease the 'furious' keeper, I would bet that if the keeper was acting exactly the same as he normally would have been the chimps would have no reason to appease him or to look like they may 'regret' what they had done.
> I don't think animals have the same sense of right & wrong as we do, they just learn what consequences there are to different things so they know what is worth repeating and what is best avoided, and that social animals will do thier best to appease others as the group is important to them.
>

but then what do we mean by regret? i would think that the emotion of regret is simply a more complex form of reacting to consequences. if we care for someone we regret hurting them, so say (hypothetically lol) a dog decides he wants a cuddle and clambers onto you accidentally bashing your head in the process (bloomin Tio...) and you respond by showing pain (ouch!) and he then displays appeasing behaviour (snuffle?) the dog is surely responding to the negative consequence of someone he cares for being sad (since our hypothetical owner would never give punnishment to make the dog feel the need to appease them)

so i think they do feel regret, but only in the sense that regret is simply an advancement on the need to avoid a negative consequence.

Yes, I suspect "regret" is a human concept - perhaps shared by monkeys according to the article, they are after all our closest relatives.

... hmmm, when I think about it though, if regret means that we are unhappy about a previous decision or action because of its consequences, then perhaps more animals do experience regret.

The article reminded me of all those people who say that they came home, found the puppy had left a puddle or a poop on the rug, and looked very sorry about it.  Although I always dismissed that as silly, perhaps it's not so silly. 

In any case, the range of emotional response and thought processes in animals always amazes me.

I tried an experiment once, when I got home I said in an annoyed voice-"who's done that"all the dogs looked away from me-however they hadn't actually done anything ! I did make a big fuss of them immediately afterwards & did the reverse also when I came home & found someone had chewed something up-I ignored it went, gave the dogs a lot of eye contact & played with the dogs & cleared up when they weren't around-none of them showed any"regret/submission etc-why should they I shouldn't have left where they could reach it

When I found my new mobile phone being chewed down the garden (by a Yorkshire Terrier puppy) I said Amber "what have you got?"  She wagged her tail like mad!  So I'm sure that she didn't regret it.

But I'm sure that my tone of voice made the difference in her reaction.  I knew that it was my fault.  A bit pointless me getting up in the air about it when I had left my bag on the floor, with my mobile out in view on the top of it. 

So, I think that it's the anger in our voices that instigates an apologetic response.

Wouldn't mind, but she had used all my credit phoning her mates!  ;-)

Bailey certainly doesn't regret anything! At this stage nothing makes her look or feel guilty!

I always think how can someone regret what they do not know is wrong :-)

Um I know if I give one dog a biscuit the other one wants one as well.
If Im sad he comes and sits with me.
Jake sulks if OH goes off and leaves him with me in the office!! he's doing it now.
But they could be instinct, but its a good thought.

Didn't the idea that animals have no sense of right or wrong, or any other human like emotions come from just one quote? "I think, therefore I am"

None of this 'new' research is really new, what is new is the acceptance of it, even Leonardo Di Vinci questioned perceptions of animals.

To accept that animals have feelings and morals, would mean radical re-thinking of the way we treat them and eat them.

Every one thought the world was flat once, some still do.

Not sure about "morals" and animals, the humane approach is spotty enough. 

The U.K.-based research recently that debunked the whole dominance theory of dog behaviour I found interesting.   They researchers said that amongst each other dogs behave toward each other mostly on a like-for-like basis.  Meaning if you are nice to me I'll be nice to you.  Not exactly "morals", but underneath our own morals is that same idea - "do unto others as they would do unto you", or something like that, I'm not the best at remembering my Sunday-school teaching!

I used to think that they had regrets. I had 3 dogs at one time. One of them was a bit destructive when left. When I came home & found any damage I would ask 'Who has done that'.The one who I assumed had done it would stand with his head down, tail between his legs, looking very sheepish. The other 2 would bounce about, wagging their tailes. Now, should I have assumed that I knew who the culprit was, by watching his body language, or, were the other 2 plotting against him, to make sure he got the blame??

>Now, should I have assumed that I knew who the culprit was, by watching his body language,

No. Some sensitive dogs will act like that even if you know full well that it couldn't have been them, because they were out of the house with you at the time! They just act like that because they're reacting to your cross tone of voice.

> Now, should I have assumed that I knew who the culprit was, by watching his body language, or, were the other 2 plotting against him, to make sure he got the blame??

Years ago when I lived with my dad, we had littermates, brother & sister. On a couple of occasions a lovely fresh-baked pie had been left to cool on the kitchen counter while we were out, only to find on our return, a missing pie with the dish smashed and every single last piece of broken dish sucked clean

We were convinced who the culprit was - the male, he hung his head in 'shame' when we came in and scampered out of the way, it just had to be him the bitch wasn't tall enough to reach the counter but the male could if he stood on his back legs, also the bitch greeted us like nothing had happened. One day we caught the bitch on the kitchen counter - scoffing a cooling pie while the male lay sleeping in his bed, he got up when we came in and hung his head in 'shame', the bitch jumped off the side and greeted us like normal!!

I don't believe he felt bad for what his sister had done, I think he was just a very sensitive dog that didn't like it if we were cross, his sister on the other hand didn't care less if we were cross or not (much more independant) so she had no reason to try to appease us when she stole the pie and broke the dish.

Don't know if anyone has tried it but tends to indicate its tone what does it...............
call your dog and use all your praise and loving them words in a your telling off voice. give it 10/15 mins then call dog and use your bad dog/horrible creature/ send you to rescue words in your happy voice........................
result is (practically) always the 1st gets tail down, ears back,look guilty, 2nd gets waggy happy licky/kissy dog.
Chris

If you don't do what Tina (mum's dog, Jack and Rory's mummy) wants, when Tina wants it, she will go and look for your newest pair of shoes out of the box and eat 1, just 1, and leave the other one for you to find in a very obvious place.  Not a sign of guilt, but malice in spades.  She glares at you too.  And no I've not humanised the dog, this is how she is.

> Don't know if anyone has tried it but tends to indicate its tone what does it...............
> call your dog and use all your praise and loving them words in a your telling off voice. give it 10/15 mins then call dog and use your bad dog/horrible creature/ send you to rescue words in your happy voice........................
> result is (practically) always the 1st gets tail down, ears back,look guilty, 2nd gets waggy happy licky/kissy dog.
>

it's suprising the changes in our facial expresions and body language when we change the tone of our voice. When we realised our old dog was deaf, we wondered how he could still tell if we were praising him or not. I tried a similar experiement that you did, obviously the dog couldn't hear the tone of my voice, but if you say 'ohhh, what a gooooood boy' in a scolding tone, it does change your expression, this is what the dog was going by. It's amazing how perceptive/observant they are to subtle changes in our body language, tone of voice and facial expressions :)

ETA, you can test this by doing your experiment again, without sound - just mime. You may find your dog will still follow most commands just from you miming the words (words that look similar when mimed can get confusing but can be mimed with thier own hand signal to make the distinction).