Mammals & Affects:

>The BrainMind is clearly an evolutionary layered organ, grounded on affects, where major passages are still evident in brain organization - the more ancient functions are concentrated in lower and more medial brain regions, and the more recent ones are in higher and more lateral regions. Within an evolutionary framework, animal brain research can provide most profound guidance in understanding the foundations of human feelings. Indeed, with such work, we may eventually come to understand how much human affective experiences arise from mammalian brain dynamics. This is not to suggest that animals develop the sophisticated cognitive-affective sentiments of humans, nor do they ruminate about their misfortunes the way we do, but we should come to recognize that the primary process affects, genetically built into animal BrainMinds in their raw form, are not all that different from the ones that come to guide the affective proclivities of human brains. Sadly, the seemingly endless conceptual debates in human psychology and philosophy often drown out the empirical signals that neuro-evolutionarily sensitive animal research has long provided: All mammals are intensely affective creatures.<

Jaak Panksepp and Lucy Biven, THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MIND, Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions, 2012
[Emotions are not luxuries. For mammals emotions are indispensable to survive and reproduce successfully.]