Reddit reviews The Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology)

Yup! While there's a lot of pushback from the scientific community about ascribing emotional states to animals, the evidence is pretty overwhelming that non-human animals have affective states. Dr. Panksepp has done a lot of work on brain regions and pathways which control emotions. He's recently published a new book, about all of his work from the past few decades. Laughter has been found in a number of species, here's a paper about it:
Laughter in different contexts. And, bonus, here's a later paper from Panksepp with newer data on rat laughter.

It's not that weird. We share a lot of the same neurobiology. The seeds of our emotional brains are present in other animals. The late Jaak Panksepp did a lot a lot of great work on the neurobiology of animal and human emotion. Here's a TED talk by him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65e2qScV_K8

Humans didn't evolve the capacity for emotions out of nowhere, just like we don't have eyes or arms or a spine out of nowhere. (For more detail, I recommend Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish, and Panksepp's The Archaeology of Mind.) The rudiments are there in the animals, whose ancestors we share, though they may have gone onto divergent evolutionary pathways.

Here's a book about the evolution of the mind focusing on the brain and emotions. With its 592 pages it should be quite heavy.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Archaeology-Mind-Neuroevolutionary-Interpersonal/dp/0393705315

>Mainstream science considers gender, race, sexuality, etc. to be in line with the liberal view.

That is because mainstream science is politically correct science, not necessarily 100% accurate or representative of the full picture. There are many studies not shown as mainstream. I have definitely had classes about Marxism, but for the sake of this post not being novel length, I can bring up the deal with science instead. There is science that agrees with liberals and, shocker, science that supports conservative views. For example, how is the liberal belief that gender doesn't exist or that gender is a spectrum align with science? As referenced in one of my other posts here, take a look at these studies that have taken place over decades at Stanford: https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2017spring/how-mens-and-womens-brains-are-different.html. You learn very differently about gender in psychology classes, and this research is never discussed despite its validity. There's also science that talks about the importance of a child having two parents, or if you want to really, really upset liberals, a mom and a dad. That requires first, accepting or at least humoring science which explains the two sexes are different, and then second, understanding each parent has a vital parenting role ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393705315/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1 and http://marripedia.org/effects_of_fatherless_families_on_crime_rates ). There's even research which shows a lack of a father in a son's life could increase the likelihood of ADHD, which is important to know. But you'll never learn of that in a child's development class (which I have taken; it was called Human Growth and Development or something to that effect). I don't dislike gay parents, but maybe the research could better inform a gay couple about the need for female role models in a child's life. There is a problem when research is not allowed to be mentioned out of concern for upsetting feelings.