Farhad

Honestly, that interpretation stretches both de Waal and Horowitz beyond what they actually show. De Waal described empathy, fairness, and cooperation as precursors to morality, not morality itself. He was careful to distinguish between instinctual social behaviors and the reflective, normative systems humans develop. To call those animal traits “morality” is to confuse building blocks with the fully formed structure.
As for dogs, Horowitz does not argue that they “know” fairness in the way humans do. She documents reactions to unequal treatment—like dogs refusing to perform a task if another is rewarded and they are not. But that is not evidence of moral judgment. It is evidence of frustration, competition, or simple expectation violation. The leap from behavioral reaction to moral awareness is enormous, and the data does not support it.
Two decades of working with Livestock Guarding Dogs shows the same: their reactions are practical, not ethical. They protect, they bond, they protest when treated unequally—but nowhere in their actions is there the reflective dimension of morality. They do not weigh right and wrong. They do not reason about justice. They respond to instincts honed by evolution to keep packs cohesive and individuals alive. If you were just a little smaller, your pets would not hesitate to eat you. That is not morality, that is survival instinct.
De Waal himself warned against anthropomorphism as much as against anthropodenial. To ascribe humanlike morality to dogs or primates is to project our categories onto behaviors that have different evolutionary functions. Animals have social instincts. Humans built morality out of them—but morality itself remains a human construction.