Emotions in Science?

What are some advantages that emotions give to an animal? I can understand that emotion could sometimes help the young to survive by influencing a mother's response when danger is near her younglings, like an elephant mother desperately trying to save her child from sinking completely into a swamp, but how is this superior to certain maternal/paternal instincts that we see in lower animal?

Omnivorous,

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I'm leery of "lower" and "higher" comparisons of animals.

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I assure you that I did not use those words as a reference to superiority.

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Perhaps it is more useful to think in terms of different strategies.

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I can go with that.