Humans have become so socialized that rarely do our facial expressions fully reveal primitive complex emotions when we're dealing with each other. Yet we can often find in the rest of the animal kingdom true portraits of our feelings and especially among dogs who live closely with humans.
The Husky in the above screenshot from a video is conveying to his master that he is beside himself with fury because of the trammeling of his dignity at the veterinarian's office. And in another blow his master is laughing at his fury in an effort to jolly him along. But even the attempt and the "I'm so, so sorry, baby" from the master was adding insult to injured pride.
I think we can all remember having been in something like that dog's situation in relation to a parent, if we can recall far back enough in our childhood. It's clear what the Husky wanted was to see tears of guilt. That wasn't going to happen because dogs who live in human families do have to get treated on occasion by veterinarians and sometimes wear large, uncomfortable, ridiculous-looking floppy plastic cone collars to prevent them from biting at an infection on their back and licking away medication used to treat it.
The topper is that the Husky sensed all this. He knew the master was doing this for his own good. That's why he didn't snap and growl. He also knew there wasn't a damn thing he could do about the collar.
All he could do was attempt to solicit some indication of guilt and thus, the refusal to be jollied along, to change his expression of cold fury. The question I find fascinating is whether the Husky had enough self-awareness to know just what his expression conveyed. Certainly seems so.
Anyhow, the incident is a great thumbnail sketch of the nature of complex emotions and how they're conveyed amongst mammals.
Here's the video at Sputnik.
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