What Makes Man Different from Animals.20

Joy:

Both agree that joy is something much more than the bodily pleasures that satisfy an animal.  As Smith puts it, animals always “choose a pleasure over a joy.”  Aquinas, agrees, though with a philosophical refinement: “We do not attribute joy to brute animals”—it’s not quite that animals choose pleasure over joy; there’s no choice because they are incapable of experiencing joy in the sense that humans do.

--Gary Gutting, "The Joy of Zadie Smith and Thomas Aquinas"