WRD 104: Composition & Rhetoric II Rotating Header Image

Do Birds Have Emotions?: A Contextual Analysis

“Like some of his predecessors, Darwin considered the vocalizations of birds an expression of their emotions.”

Here’s another good contextual analysis based on an inquiry question — “Do Birds Have Emotions?” 

“Emotions, feelings, awareness, sentience, and consciousness are all difficult concepts. They are tricky to define in ourselves, so is it any wonder they are difficult in birds and other nonhuman animals? Consciousness is one of the big remaining questions in science, making it both an exciting and a highly contentious area of research.”

You can see the writer’s contextual-analysis map:

“Biologists, psychologists, and philosophers have argued over these issues for years, so I cannot hope to resolve them. Instead, I have adopted Darwin’s approach—thinking about what might be going on in a bird’s head and imagining a continuum, with displeasure and pain at one end and pleasure and rewards at the other.”