On the question of love’s existence in the hearts and minds of animals, science has been mainly mute. Few textbooks on animals discuss the possibility of love. For instance, the word love can be found in neither the index of The Oxford Companion to Animal Behavior nor the Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior. There are, I think, two main reasons for this. First, it is difficult, if not impossible, to prove feelings of love in another individual, even a human. This is the challenge of private experiences. It is why the study of animal feelings in general was largely neglected for the century following the 1872 publication of Charles Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. But humans can at least give verbal expression to their loving feelings; so far, animals cannot, although there is the potential for revelations from language-taught great apes.
Second, our sense of superiority over other animals has made us loath to accept the idea that they can have such presumably complex feelings as love. That nonhumans are conscious remains controversial for some scientists, although their numbers are dwindling. Nevertheless, biologists usually use the term bond in place of love when referring to nonhumans. This is a safety net to avoid anthropomorphism. link
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