> Panksepp and Burgdorf showed that the animals remembered areas in their enclosures where they had been tickled before and routinely returned to those sites.
> And in the current study, rats were observed performing something called Freudensprünge, or “joy jumps,” after tickling.
> Rats showed both a behavioral sign of regret (turning and looking at the missed high-value reward) and were then more willing to wait for a reward following regret-inducing instances, indicating that they learned from their mistake.
You have no idea what it's like to be a rat, and no basis by which to make this claim. Given that they are intelligent mammals closely related to humans and with similar brain structures, it seems plausible, even likely, that they experience emotions thst are similar (if not entirely the same) as ours.
Humans are driven by food and reproduction too, but that doesn't mean we don't also experience a wide range of complex emotions.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/rats-tick...
> Panksepp and Burgdorf showed that the animals remembered areas in their enclosures where they had been tickled before and routinely returned to those sites.
> And in the current study, rats were observed performing something called Freudensprünge, or “joy jumps,” after tickling.
They can also apparently feel regret:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rats-experience-f...
> Rats showed both a behavioral sign of regret (turning and looking at the missed high-value reward) and were then more willing to wait for a reward following regret-inducing instances, indicating that they learned from their mistake.