That’s a very Cartesian world view on biology, luckily abandoned a long time ago. Animals where merely automatons and scientists dissecting dogs alive could gleefully ignore their cries as nothing more than automatic response stimuli. Today we know that physiologically humans are not very different from other mammals, even if we want to be. We all have a limbic system and that means we all have the same emotions. Animals have feelings and emotions. When things happen to them, they react with emotions be it sorrow, anger, happiness, fear.