Wildly In Love

By Carolyn Sayre

Before adolescent crushes became widely known as puppy love, people had another name for them: calf love. That may be just a metaphor, but it could also have been the start of a theory that some scientists now believe to be true: in their own way, animals feel love.

It's not a secret that all sorts of critters display elaborate courtship rituals. But the capacity to woo a mate is hardly the same as the capacity to love a mate. Nonetheless, chimps appear to feel sorrow and glee; elephants appear to grieve their dead. Couldn't animals feel romance as well? They could and--to hear at least some scientists tell it--they do.

"They don't write each other love letters," says Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University and author of Why We Love. "But animals can definitely feel romantic love." What's more, say Fisher and others, love exists not just among complex animals like higher mammals but also among those we think of as little more than a collection of behaviors. And indeed, from affectionate kisses to romantic getaways to monogamous relationships, the wild does appear to be a surprisingly cuddly place.