Like Us, Animals Suffer

Re “What I Learned Tickling Apes” (Sunday Review, April 10):  As Frans de Waal beautifully describes, what looks like intelligence in animals is intelligence.  The other critical similarity between species is suffering. The misery animals endure at the hands of human animals is nearly unimaginable; “experts” since Descartes have tried to persuade us that the behaviors of suffering animals — seen in pain, depression, loneliness and heartbreak — represent anything but the feelings we ourselves feel.

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