Whatever it is that you are currently involved in, please, stop doing it immediately and click on the below link to read a truly astonishing article on mental illness in animals recently published on BBC’s Earth blog.

The excellent article documents insights gained by scientists over the past years into not only how sensitive and susceptible to trauma animals are, but more broadly into just how similar other animals minds are to our own.

For starters, animals experience many of the same emotions human animals do: “they can become excessively sad, anxious, or even traumatized.”

The article cites a study done on chimpanzees that had been orphaned, trapped by snares, captured in illegal trade, or held in research laboratories. All showed clear signs of depression and posttraumatic stress disorder. “After the loss of a companion,” the article notes, “sometimes, their loss is too deep to recover from, and they may even die.”

Not only do other animals experience many of the same emotions humans do, but “animal mental illness can be triggered by many of the same factors that unleash mental illness in humans. That includes the loss of family or companions, loss of freedom, stress, trauma and abuse.”

And here is where you begin to encounter hard scientific evidence that our minds do not only appear to outwardly resemble other animal minds, but are in fact are very similar to them in so many crucial ways.

The similarities go down to the genetic level. The BBC article cites a study of Dlg genes that are known to be involved in human cognitive behavior. The same four genes (albeit in slightly different forms) are found in all vertebrates. One of the genes is even found in invertebrates.

This evidence implies, the article continues, “that both intelligence and psychological disorders also began early in animal evolution.”

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. All living beings on earth are related and evolved from the same common ancestors. Some evolutionary lines did not lead to brains and pain receptors: the plants evolved along this line. But other lines did lead towards intelligence and emotional depth: the animals evolved along this line. We share so much in common with other animals because we are so closely related to them.

Regardless of where one stands as to whether animals should be treated with compassion or kindness (yes, apparently there is disagreement on this issue), there aren’t many people alive who aren’t aware that we, as a species, are subjecting our coinhabitants on this planet to unimaginable violence and horrors. The German philosopher Schopenhauer said it well when he wrote: “Mankind are the devils of the earth, and the animals the souls they torment.”

One can ask with all sincerity: how is this possible? Without question, big agriculture and the fashion industries are partially to blame. But there is an even deeper seated cause that lies at the heart of our monstrous behavior. It is so obvious as to be almost invisible. And yet our ignorance of it turns the world into a hell.

The cause of which we write is our assumption, spoken or unspoken, that animals have no minds.

Make no mistake. If we admitted, as a species, that all animals (including fish and other animals of the sea, as well as insects) have rich interior lives, experience love, play, and suffer just as we do, the entire world would be remade.

As this wonderful BBC article documents, science has turned its attention to animals minds over the past years. What they have found is astonishing – if obvious to anyone who has played with a dog or cat – and would be cause for celebration if it did not fall under the shadow of our industrialized global slaughter of more or less every species but our own.

Huge commendations to the BBC and especially author Shreya Dasgupta for investing in such an astonishing and thorough piece. It is very rare indeed that one of the major news sources publish something of this breadth, depth or quality. Truly phenomenal work. Please share this post with your own commentary as well if you agree. Thanks for caring!

Read it here.