Do insects feel emotions?

[ErikB]

No idea. I will have to look that up. But phorid flies are Hell on Earth for fire ants. They are the strongest of a handful of native insect predators of fire ants.

Alan Compton is an entomologist that wrote a book about ants and describes the "Golden Gnome" (he listed the Latin name though I do not recall it as I read the book back in the 70's). Which is a tiny microscopic ant that sets up house next to fire ant colonies and digs tunnels around the diameter of a grain of sand.

They are chemically sensitive and can locate the nursery and egg chambers of fire ant nests. These tiny ants have powerful jaws.

They are far too small to pose a threat to adult fire ants in fact fire ants are dangerous to them (if they can catch them which is difficult as the golden gnomes are swift and tiny moving under and around the nursery attendants and guards before they can stop them).

But the target is eggs and larvae which the gnomes cut up into tiny pieces and take back through tunnels too small for fire ants to follow.

They will decimate fire ant colonies, but because they also feed on formic ants and carpenter ants they were never introduced in the US.

 

[Stuart Suffel]

The problem about things like regret is that even with other people they have to tell you that they regret something to actually be aware that they regret something. So in a sense its tangled up with memory and communication as well as considering the perception of a situation (even if a dog could regret it might not regret what we would given the same situation).

In truth its a fascinating area but one where we are still just getting to grips with it.

That's true enough.

I'd also point out that regret isn't an emotion, since there's no physical component that goes with it. All human emotions have a physical component, most (possibly all) of which interfere with "rational thought". Why that might be is perhaps the most fascinating area for debate.

Overread is correct, though - this is an area we're only just getting to grips with. But you'd expect that after more than a century of male psychologists telling us things.

[/quote]

Not sure what you mean (in bold)

Is there a Human thought without a physical component?

Sure , some are more visceral than others, but those 'others' still exist, and do have a physical expression.

anyway...

Regret is an emotion. It's expression is relentlessly sucking on a series of fags, kicking a beach ball into the sea, pacing a room at 4am, staring into the distance while sitting on a park bench....

 

[Stephen Palmer]

All true human emotions have an unavoidable physical component. The point of the unavoidability is that the meaning (cognitive knowledge) of the emotion cannot then be missed, as a normal human thought can be missed. That's why emotions seem to "take over" from rational thought; but in fact the opposite is true - emotions convey the more profound meanings, ie their knowledge is high value. Regret, on this reading, is a state of mind, not a true emotion.