Regret is when someone realizes that something he has done in the past is not the right choice among the choices. He regretted and imagined that he had chosen another option which might have yielded better results for his current situation.
As humans, of course we sometimes feel regret for what we did at a certain time in the past, but what about animals? Are animals also capable of feeling remorse?
Charles Darwin, one of the scientists who wrote about the existence of emotions in animals has put it in a book “The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals” that the correlation between emotions that occur in humans and animals evolved from the same mechanism.
In several tests shown in various species including rats, dogs, cats, monkeys, sheep, chicks, honey bees, it has enough characteristics to explain that the stimulus response that occurs describes the action as a state of emotional behavior, one of which is a sense of regret.
Regarding the post title, Do Animals Feel Regret?
misterhidayat.blogspot.com will tell a true story that happened in 1972 at the national circus in Giza, Egypt.
In front of a large audience “Mohammad Al-Helw”, so famous in the world as a lion charmer, marveled at his extraordinary talent along with his lion named “Sultan”. When the action took place suddenly a few moments later the lion jumped from behind and pounced by thrusting its claws and teeth in its back.
He then fell down covered in blood while the lion was raging on top of him, the Guards even some onlookers tried to save the handler and succeeded, but a few days later the handler died in the hospital.
Surprisingly, after the incident, Sultan the lion became very depressed, he did not want to eat, because the circus management deemed him unfit to return to the circus stage, he was then donated to the zoo.
Inside the zoo, hunger strike Sultan continues. The zoo took the initiative to bring a lioness to accompany her, but she was rude to the lioness and told her to leave.
In his loneliness and depression “Sultan” the lion got worse, he started acting strangely by cutting off his tail and started biting his body especially the arm he once used to kill his master.
The Sultan had serious injuries that led to his death due to his actions in ending a sense of regret. The regret of a beast king who is able to know the meaning of a sense of regret from his loyalty to his master where his feelings are sometimes even humans are unable to achieve. It was as if the Sultan was tormented by the last words of his master that nothing dangerous would be done by the Sultan.
Sultan’s story is one of those small examples where even an animal has a sense of remorse and responsibility. The death of the sultan should help us to learn something that we as humans have more thoughts than other living beings to think first in taking an action and decision so as not to regret it in the future.
