On this day in vegan history · February 12, 1809
Darwin Makes the Case That Animals Feel
Born on this date in 1809, Charles Darwin spent his last major book proving that a dog's guilt and a cat's fury are kin to our own, illustrated with photographs no one had dared print in a science book before.
The facts
- Darwin born
- 12 February 1809, at The Mount, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England
- Book published
- 26 November 1872, by John Murray
- Illustration method
- Seven heliotype photographic plates bound directly into the text
- Core emotions studied
- Anger, fear, surprise, disgust, happiness, sadness
Charles Darwin was born on 12 February 1809 in Shrewsbury, England. Sixty-three years later, on 26 November 1872, his publisher John Murray released The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, the book that closed out the argument he had opened with On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man. Darwin studied how anger, fear, surprise, disgust, happiness, and sadness show up on the same muscles across species, and he backed the claim with seven photographic plates bound straight into the pages, a costly and unusual choice for the time. His point was blunt: expression is not a human invention borrowed by lesser creatures, it is a shared inheritance.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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The young and the old of widely different races, both with man and animals, express the same state of mind by the same movements.
Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, 1872
Source: Wikipedia -
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) was an early work of psychology, and one of the first books to feature photographs.
Wikipedia, Charles Darwin entry
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
By treating animal feeling as continuous with human feeling rather than a lesser copy of it, Darwin gave later scientists studying animal sentience and welfare a foundation to build on.
Sources
This history is still being written.
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