In his very readable and fascinating new book, “The  Inner Life Of Animals,”  biologist and author Peter Wohllleben seems tired of hearing that there’s  no point comparing animal emotions to human emotions, because animals act instinctively, whereas humans act consciously.

Science, he points out, uses the term “instinctive behavior” to describe actions that are carried out unconsciously without being subjected to any thought processes. These actions can be genetic or they can be learned. What is common to all of them, he writes, is that they happen very quickly because they bypass cognitive processes in the brain.

“Often these actions are the result of hormones released at certain times – anger, fear – and thus trigger physical responses. The question is this: are animals nothing more than biological automatons on autopilot, or do they possess human-like emotions?

Wohllenben points out that humans also posses instinctive behaviors, suggesting animals are more similar to us than previously believed or acknowledged.

“In my opinion,” he writes, “it makes no difference whether a mother’s love is triggered by unconscious demands or comes after conscious deliberation. At the end of the day, it’s just the same.”

I much enjoy Wohlleben’s writing (he wrote the quite wonderful “Hidden Lives Of Trees,” which was published last year), but to me, the question does matter. For me, it’s not a question of science and squishy animal love, it’s a matter of animal welfare.

Scholars love to ask whether or not animals like us? They are far more reluctant to ask what is best for them in terms of how we see them. We are not only the most violent of species, we are the most selfish.

For some years, researchers, writers and academics have been advancing the argument that animals are much more like us than we have been led to believe, and actually possess a range of sophisticated human-like emotions that make them very similar to us.

Since the 1960’s when television, divorce, interstates then computers and social media have been disconnecting human beings from one another and leaving them lonely and fragmented, the belief in animals as an almost human or child-like emotional surrogate has grown. The new work of animals is no longer protection or hunting, it is tending to the fragile emotions of people.

No writer (I can testify to this) ever wrote a best-selling book arguing that animals are different from people, or that this difference ought to be protected,  not diminished.

And no researcher ever got a big fat grant trying to prove that dogs and cats are dumber than people, and generally don’t really understand thousands of words, or need to.

People want to believe that they are furbabies and much like children, or that they cure cancer or spot it in its early stage, or forecast death well before doctors or technology.j They are no longer permitted to just be animals, they must also be seers, spiritual healers and psychics.

This issue matters because there is growing evidence that this emotionalizing of our beloved pets is causing them considerable harm, making training difficult if not impossible, and drawing animals into the expensive and complex world of human medications and medical procedures .

Hundreds of thousands of pets are not on medication for depression, separation anxiety and a wide range of neurotic behaviors – yes, we are medicating them and making them crazy.

More and more believe it is immoral to purchase a dog from a breeder, even an ethical and responsible one.

People no longer just want a dog, they want a rescue dog, preferably one that has been repeatedly and severely abused. Hundreds, if not millions of dogs, now languish for years, or all of their lives in “no-kill” shelters that confine dogs in the most unnatural – and abusive – way so that human can feel good about themselves.

It is quite common to hear animal lovers actually say there is only one way to get a dog, and that is from a shelter or a rescue group. Thus getting a dog is no longer a personal or family or practical decision, it is a moral one.

And this is considered moral and humane. But the emotionalizing of dogs isn’t just about loving them and feeling good about ourselves, it is really about what is best for them, something Wohllenben doesn’t discuss anywhere in his book.

People have benefited from turning their pets into adoring children, but the pets have no been faring so well.

In my lifetime with dogs, I have come to believe the most loving and humane way to view them is as animals, wonderfully unique and different from people. Dogs don’t scream at each other on cable news or sue one another, or argue incessantly on Facebook about politics.

I believe dogs are simple creatures, adaptable and advanced in the most Darwinian way. They know how to manipulate humans and thus are almost unique in the animal world – they get to sleep inside, on beds, get human names,  expensive medical care and the best and most expensive foods any animals anywhere in the world get to eat.

Dogs have never needed Prozac before, and any vet can tell horror stories about dogs subject to surgery after surgery, often in great pain and distress, because people simply cannot let them go.

This seems to not be right for many people, they also need to believe that animals are just like us, so we can love them all the more and fill our growing emotional needs. The more divisive and stressful our society is, the more we turn to animals to soothe and comfort us.

No one has ever expressed what it to me the truest way to view animals than Henry Beston, in his book “Outermost House,” published more than a century ago.

“We need a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals,” he wrote. “The animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren; they are not underlings, they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.”

Animals deserve better than being converted into four-legged versions of human beings, who are the most destructive and greedy species on the earth. Animals are not destructive. They are not us. They are not our children. They are not the same as us. They do not possess our language and narratives, and could not possible have the same emotions that we have.

This does not mean they don’t have emotions. Quite the opposite. They just don’t have our emotions, and why would be possible want them to?

“It is difficult to prove than an animal truly loves a person of its own free will,” writes Wohlleben. I think that’s because it isn’t true. Animals like dogs and cats are totally dependent on us for everything they need – food, water, shelter, medical care.  In human terms, they are slaves, totally under out control and unable to refuse or reject our bidding and survive. Their very lives depend on getting us to love them.

We dictate the very boundaries of our loves.

We love them powerfully, and they love us gratefully and, yes, instinctively. A slave does not have free will because it obeys the master. I love Beston’s idea. hey are not our children, our lovers, our wards. They are not our brethren or siblings. They are their own nations, living with us as partners on our journey through the world.

I don’t need for them to be just like me. I need for them to be different than me.