Photo by Rick Geary

Animals can feel the stress of loss, abandonment, injury.

Do animals cry? — Michael Lopez, Imperial Beach

Uh-oh.... ROCK [me] HARD PLACE. This is potentially as volatile as those vegetarian questions. Well, here goes. Most people involved in the animal sciences will say no, animals don’t cry. But there’s a whole flock of seagulls out there who believe the anecdotal evidence in favor of blubbering Boston terriers, sobbing salamanders, and weeping weevils. Did all of chickendom burst out in tears when River Phoenix died? Well, I’ll side with the crown prince of cry-ology, biochemist William Frey, who says no one’s yet offered him scientifically verified proof. Animals can feel the stress of loss, abandonment, injury, or another situation that we humans might call “sad,” but scientists doubt that they reflexively sob and gush tears in response. But try telling that to a puppy-owner listening to momma’s little ookum-snookum whimper on his first night alone in his doggie bed. Most animals do make a distress sound in response to any number of situations. Their eyes might even water. Is that crying? Frey says no.

According to Frey’s research, humans produce emotional tears and irritant tears, and they’re quite different things, chemically, even though they come from the same place. Doctors can even block the production of one type without affecting production of the other. The frequency and volume of emotional tears seem to be related to the amount of pituitary secretions in a person’s bloodstream; and emotional tears help wash certain proteins out of the body, so there’s likely physiological as well as psychological benefit to human crying. That said, I’ll refer you to Jeffrey Masson and Susan McCarthy’s book, When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals, which argues that spiders snivel and lemurs lament. Believe what you like.