For as much as we empathize with our canines, we have been stingy about recognizing empathy elsewhere in the animal kingdom, reserving it as a human trait. This belief is changing, however, as a growing line of research demonstrates not just empathy existing in other animals but its subtleties and exceptions as well. Just because other animals do not have the same degree of intelligence as humans do , does that make them any less of the animal we are ? If animals feel love , compassion , anger , jealousy , frustration and they mourn , along with a host of other feelings and emotions , how can we separate us from them ? As someone once asked , "Can you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree ?