A baby elephant is in the womb for 22 months, a human baby is in the womb for 9 months. When a baby is born (human or animal) they are utterly dependent on their mothers because they can do nothing to support themselves. A baby is a part of their mother and babies need the comfort of their mothers to be able to thrive in the world. That mother has brought this baby into the world and gave them their lives, the poor baby elephant want to give his mother back her love she gave to him when she had him! Everyone needs to feel loved and if a baby doesn't feel loved they will cry about it! Babies are the ones who need our love most, so when the elephant did not accept her baby boy, he felt rejected and unloved and needed loving to make him happy again. Yes animals do have many of he same instincts that we have! So yes when a baby (human or elephant) is feeling unloved, they do cry.
@bwaters It is often said that elephants are relatively "smarter" than us. That plus that fact that elephants are essentially born at 2 years old (the age of a toddler who in fact would feel that kind of rejection) raises the debate that they can indeed feel emotions such as this.
I'm still skeptical. Of course this also depends on your definition of emotion. Thanks to evolution, pretty much any baby will start crying in response to certain situations(hunger, discomfort, no presence of something resembling the mother, presence of something resembling what it's instincts tell it to avoid, etc....)
I don't consider that instinct emotion, untill there is more intelligence behind it. Not the baby crying because of the new lack of a large elephant shaped creature.
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