Our view of how animals think and feel affects how we value and treat them. Research from the Global North indicates that most adults recognize basic emotions, like fear or joy, in animals. However, many believe that complex feelings and thoughts are exclusive to humans. This belief is likely influenced by social and cultural norms learned early in childhood. Little is known about these patterns in other parts of the world, where children grow up with different relationships to animals and nature. Therefore, a group of researchers investigated four key questions:

• Do children and adolescents believe animals have thoughts and feelings?
• Do children and adolescents consider these thoughts and feelings to be human-like?
• How do adult beliefs compare to those of children?
• Are there differences between countries and between urban and rural areas?

To answer these questions, community members from 33 urban and rural communities across 15 countries interviewed 1,025 children and adolescents (aged four to 17 years) and 190 adults (aged 18+). The countries included China, Colombia, Republic of the Congo, Ecuador, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Namibia, Peru, Switzerland, Syria, Turkey, and Zambia.

The researchers made three main predictions. They anticipated that:

• All age groups would be more likely to believe that animals have feelings rather than thoughts;
• Animal feelings would be viewed as more human-like than animal thoughts; and
• As they get older, children would be less likely to think that animals have thoughts, and human-like thoughts in particular.

Participants’ responses about the presence of thoughts and feelings in animals were categorized as “no,” “partially,” or “yes.” Answers about how similar animal minds are to human minds were coded as “different,” “partially,” or “same.” The researchers then calculated the probability of these responses and investigated how participants’ age, gender, rural or urban residence, and country influenced this probability. They analyzed the data separately for children, adolescents, and adults.

The study found that across age groups and countries, participants were more likely to believe that animals have feelings than thoughts. Participants were also more likely to describe animal feelings as human-like than to perceive animal thoughts as human-like. Contrary to the researchers’ expectations, belief in animal thoughts and feelings increased with age, with older adolescents and adults most likely to attribute mental states to animals.

Among children and adolescents, differences between countries were minimal, but generally larger for belief in the presence of thoughts than for the presence of feelings. Adults believed that animals have feelings and thoughts regardless of the cultural context. However, differences between countries were larger when adults were asked whether they believed those thoughts and feelings were human-like.

Children from urban areas were more likely to believe animals possess feelings and thoughts than children from rural communities. For adults, rural individuals were more likely than urban individuals to say that animals have thoughts. Both rural children and rural adults were more likely than their urban counterparts to describe animal feelings and thoughts as human-like.

This study has three key limitations:

• How the community members led the interviews may have influenced the responses. Differences in tone, encouragement, or the examples interviewers offered could have shaped what participants said in ways that are difficult to detect or account for.
• The study included only a few communities per country and a small sample of adults. This means the findings may reflect the particular communities studied more than the broader populations of each country, and the adult results especially should be interpreted with caution.
• The interview questions didn’t distinguish between different types of animals, such as companion, wild, or farmed animals. This matters because people tend to think about animal minds quite differently depending on the species — attributing more feelings and intelligence to dogs than to pigs, for example. So asking about “animals” as a whole may mask meaningful variation in what people actually believe.

Overall, this study suggests that humans globally reject the idea of human-like thoughts in animals, regardless of age or culture. However, it also shows that people generally acknowledge animals’ ability to feel. To potentially increase support for their work, animal advocates may want to focus on presenting animals as sentient beings and highlighting shared emotions rather than emphasizing thinking capacities. Lastly, considering cultural differences in how people attribute human-like feelings to animals can help advocates design more culturally relevant educational and policy interventions.