From elephants showing care to tigers exhibiting frustration, global animal welfare NGOs celebrate the breadth of animal emotions
To commemorate World Animal Day 2026, animal welfare organisations from across the world have curated The Atlas of Animal Emotions, an online book illustrating some of the most familiar, as well as the more unexpected emotions that those in the animal kingdom experience. From curiosity to sadness, empathy to jealousy, the Atlas shows the complexity of animals’ feelings, all supported with scientific evidence.
Scientific consensus increasingly confirms that animals experience complex emotions such as joy, grief, empathy, curiosity and fear. Yet this is often ignored in public discourse, which primarily values animals in relation to their human benefit, be it for food, companionship or entertainment. The Atlas aims to challenge this narrow view, amplifying the stories of a selection of lesser-known animal emotions in a compelling and engaging format.
The chapters, collectively compiled by WFA members, include:
- Rats expressing curiosity: Rats spontaneously approach and investigate new elements in their environment. Researchers describe this exploratory behaviour as a way to actively seek and process new information, consistent with curiosity (Pisula & Modlinska, 2023). Te Protejo witnessed this when visiting an animal facility for pharmaceutical research, where a rat ‘Bruno’ voluntarily approached them, making physical contact and interacting, despite their unfamiliarity.
- Tilapia fish experiencing fear: Nile tilapia show measurable behavioural indicators of fear when responding to unfamiliar stimuli (Tatemoto et al., 2021). During field research in Uganda, Wasseem Emam, founder of Ethical Seafood Research, observed that released Nile tilapia were rarely recaptured using the same type of fishing gear, raising questions about whether previous capture influenced their subsequent behaviour, including the possibility of learned avoidance.
- Hens experiencing contentment: Research has found that gentle interactions with humans can promote positive affective states in chickens (Calderón-Amor, J., Alhawas, B., Tadich, T., Edgar, J., & Lecorps, B., 2026). Sinergia Animal provides an example of a rescued chicken who chooses to sleep inside the house with humans, climbs onto laps of familiar people, producing soft vocalisations when held and stroked.
The Atlas has been curated by the World Federation for Animals, a coalition of animal welfare NGOs from across the world, which works to embed animal welfare into international sustainable development policy. Members work across a wide range of issues, from farmed and companion animal welfare to protecting those used in science, in entertainment, as working animals and in the wild.
Stevan Harnad, Editor, Animal Sentience: “Sentience is not a theory. For any creature that feels, it is simply true, undeniable and inescapable that it is feeling whatever it is feeling while it is feeling it, whether pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. Yet humans have talked themselves out of this knowledge, discounting animal sentience for convenience, ready to put animals at risk for human ends — for food, research, labour, entertainment or commerce .This is why a project like the Atlas of Animal Emotions matters, and why journals devoted to this question exist: to give our evolved capacity to recognise feeling in other creatures the evidence, and the voice, it needs to be heard and acted on — not talked out of itself yet again.”
Dr James Yeates, CEO, WFA: “Animals feel. Scientific research has proved this. Whether it is chickens displaying empathy for their companions, or zebrafish changing their behaviour to avoid harm, there are myriad ways that animals express feelings. World Animal Day is an opportunity to celebrate the wonder of the animal kingdom, and the ways in which they experience and express emotions, from pain and joy to affection and fear – just like us. The rich and complex inner lives of animals are so often underestimated, so to mark this annual event, we’ve brought the compelling stories and scientific insights from across the animal protection movement to life in a visual and powerful way.”
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For further information or interview requests, please contact Victoria Evans: victoria.evans@wfa.org / +44 (0) 7766 244 322
Notes to Editors
- The World Federation for Animals is a not-for-profit global federation comprising over 70 animal welfare organisations. Established in 2020, it works to embed animal welfare into sustainable development worldwide. A UN-accredited organisation, it works towards the recognition and integration of animal welfare into international health, food, and environmental regimes and trade and development finance rules.
- You can read the Atlas of Animal Emotions here.
- Contributors to the Atlas were: Africa Network for Animal Welfare, American Anti-Vivisection Society, Animal Nepal, Animals Australia, Brooke Action for Working Horses and Donkeys, Coalition of African Animal Welfare Organisations, Code Animal, Ethical Seafood Research, Eurogroup for Animals, Helen Woodward Animal Center, Sinergia Animal, Wellbeing International, and Working Animals International.
