These articles are getting tiresome. Anything thinking must have feelings to motivate their thoughts, otherwise the brain is useless. The basic assumption should be that anything with a brain has feelings.
In other words: the nervous system is there for action, hence specifically to take decisions, and decisions imply a notion of the peri-optimal and counteroptimal.
Your jump to "feelings" is not that short; but one could note that, as «brain» is above better replaced by "nervous system", the one directly apparent thing of the nervous system is the peripheral side of sensation (feeling - that of "action" being the clearly functional one).
