Experts who spend tons of time with animals (like in zoos) also assume animals feel affection for their handlers. This may be the case for some animals but I've seen it said for animals like snakes. A snake doesn't have any concept of love/affection (especially for a human).
I dont know about snakes, but affection is absolutely visible among the elephants, as I saw them often during my childhood. Baby elephants act a lot like toddlers; curios, playful, affectionate towards things they like, not caring about other things, needing their mother (or any female adult in case of elephants)
They can't read and write but they do react "emotionally"
I have read that all mammals seem to share some of the same emotional patterns and ability to relate to each other. Snakes and other reptiles, I have heard, don't have any of these traits and have no capability to feel any emotions at all. Supposedly, your pet snake that you care for every day, will never see you as a friend, just a warm thing in its environment, and bigger ones will happily try to eat you anytime they feel hungry. You're supposed to feed them often enough that they don't feel hungry and so aren't a threat to any humans, including children or other household pets.
But maybe even a snake could experience a rudimentary kind of “joy” based in a conditioning - the handler always bringing food, warmth and other attention. Maybe it on some very primitive level “appreciates” the thing in it’s environment?
Maybe? I'm not an animal behavior expert or anything. But I do know that:
Reptiles are not social/herding animals
Many handlers report that a hungry snake will be happy to eat anything that looks edible, including you, your kid, your dog, etc.
Humans do have a tendency to anthropomorphize, or attribute human emotions to things that absolutely cannot feel them, including machines, insects, plants, rocks, etc.
Knowing that, I wouldn't trust the assumption that it must feel something. Animals, especially non-mammals, are near-alien in how their behavior may differ from what we're used to. Ignoring the advice of experts on how they actually behave is a good way to get killed.
Agreed. I didn't mean the snake would feel something akin to affection. And I didn't mean it would hesitate to eat you. I meant if might feel some kind of appreciation of you (the handler) being around because of all past good stimuli.
After all, it's not social, but it might have a use for such a feeling in the wild, to learn about good hunting conditions.
(This is all so much speculation and I have no great hope snakes might feel anything at all.)
I had a pet spider and did happen to witness it's suddenly dying (of old age) and even though it's anthropomorphic, in that moment I really could sense terror and pain so even insects can be capable of some 'emotion'. But not affection (that I know of).
