A expressão da alegria no homem e no cão : emoção animal

The manifestation/demonstration of joy is made and understood through facial and bodily expressions. Joy is a positive feeling that is essential to the life of human beings; joy promotes the evolution of individuals. Those who live happily develop self-realization. Smiles and laughter are expressions which can be related to joy (happiness) and help to understand the feelings that one expresses. For example, a dog can also express joy with a laugh. In Art History, animals have been represented, in pre-history, with a magical character, and, in Antiquity, with a symbolic character. They’re present in the themes of greek, roman and nordic mythologies, spreading through the Middle Ages. The dog is found in the representations of hunts led by Man and also in paintings and tapestries, blazons and rubrications. In Renaissance, with the approximation to Nature and the return to Classic Antiquity, animals are present in paintings of religious and mythological themes. In Baroque art with the emergence of genre paintings (petit genre), the presence of pets reached greater representation and realism. Unequivocally, the dog is found throughout the entire History of Art, portraits currently commissioned by their owners and friends, fruit of a deeper integration into human society. All mammals have, at different levels, the ability to establish distinct ways to communicate among themselves or with individuals of other species through body language and facial expressions; they have the possibility to understand others and make themselves understood, establishing a link that originates in a “mirror neuron” system, which is distributed in several fronto-parietal areas of the brain. This synchronizing mechanism, a characteristic of the animal kingdom, is called empathy and its existence between human beings and other animals is verifiabl