More mind-blowing animal instincts. (With human implications.)

[cthulu2016]

Last edited Tue Oct 2, 2012, 02:39 PM - Edit history (1)

Monkeys are afraid of snakes. They are afraid of real snakes, rubber snakes, and garden hoses... if it's snaky they don't like it.

But scientists found that a baby monkey raised in isolation will play with a rubber snake without fear. Hmmm... so monkeys are not born afraid of snakes.

But then put an adult monkey in with that monkey and when the adult sees the rubber snake she goes nuts. And after the adult leaves the baby monkey is reliably afraid of snakes.

Okay so far... a learned fear of snakes similar to our own. Human babies don't have many innate fears. A baby raised with a crib-full of snakes would probably not fear them, but many of us get that fear from somewhere along the way. Probably from adult reactions.

So they decided to see whether a baby monkey could learn snake-fear via video. They showed the monkey video of an adult on the left side of the screen freaking out with a rubber snake on the right side of the screen. And fearless baby monkeys watching the video became afraid of snakes.

But here's the mind-blowing part...

They then showed the video with different things on the right side of the screen... so that the freak-out reaction appeared to be in response to a donut, or a rubber ball, or a stuffed bear... various things... and it doesn't work.

It only works for snaky things!

So monkeys are born with an innate mechanism to fear snaky things, in specific, but that fear has to be triggered through a process. Without the predisposition to fear something the trigger doesn't work. Without the trigger the innate predisposition doesn't work.

And why is that? Because evolution operates with the tools on hand. It works through small changes, not big leaps. It would be arguably more efficient to have monkeys born fearing snakes but the instinct for learning to fear snaky things was easier... it required fewer steps. And if it works that jury-rigged way then there is no evolutionary pressure to "perfect" it.

(A baby monkey in the wild that never sees an adult is dead either way, with or without snakes. A baby monkey that never sees an adult freak-out over a snake is probably somewhere without many snakes.)

In a species where you will be raised by a mother it is more efficient to have an ability to learn from her experiences than to try to hardwire those experiences in the prenatal brain. Birds flying, kittens hunting, monkeys knowing what fruits are good... once you have parental involvement then you have a sort of culture and a lot of essential knowledge can be acquired after birth.

(Again, a baby without a mother is a goner in every scenario, so evolution treats having an adult role model as a given. It is as much a part of the creature's natural life-cycle as pre-natal development of the brain.)

Kittens are not born with a book on hunting hard-wired in their heads. They are, however, born with a set of instincts for individual hunting related actions and behaviors and an instinct for learning more about hunting. Birds have flying instincts that are triggered by a parent. And so on. We have a language instinct but are not born knowing a language—we will learn whatever language culture hands us.

Innate anxieties that must be triggered by society is a fascinating concept. I think of racism that way. It is obviously both learned and instinctual. Racism toward people one can see are only distantly related to one's own tribe is powerfully adaptive on the selfish-gene level. (Evolution is not pretty or good, it is merely what it is.) And everything we know about history and society suggests an instinct for learning clannish attitudes that is a lot more powerful than our instinct for learning trigonometry, but our innate preference for our tribe, our gene-pool, has to be activated by culture.

Very, very few things are all genetic or all environmental.

[jsr]

1. Great post

Thanks.

[KittyWampus]

2. Why no video of another animate being? Not doing that invalidates any hypothesis.

Showing a video of a snake (animate object) and videos of inanimate objects is not comparing apples to apples.

[cthulu2016]

4. They used a rubber snake, not a real snake.

[RobertEarl]

3. It's in the DNA

And when it is awakened it becomes a personal reality.

Think of DNA as a background running computer program that our bodies are plugged into, and you get the idea.

[hifiguy]

14. Excellent analogy. What has evolved is an operating system

that can have programs added to it by experiences.

[loli phabay]

17. oh shit i think im seeing the blue screen of death..

[porphyrian]

5. . n/t

[Gregorian]

6. Animals communicate.

I recently came to the same conclusion that you are making in your post, which is really odd for me to read.

I personally enjoyed catching spiders as a child, until one day that I clearly recall. My mother essentially taught me the fear.

And how do flocks of crows know when all 500 of them are to leave, and where they're going? I've watched them in large groups. There must be deliberate and very specific communication in order for this to happen.

[DollarBillHines]

9. Elephants

A friend of mine has the Elephant Conservation Concession in a Central African country. He sent this to me last month.

Sorry, no link.


Lawrence Anthony, a legend in South Africa and author of 3 books including the bestseller The Elephant Whisperer, bravely rescued wildlife and rehabilitated elephants all over the globe from human atrocities, including
the courageous rescue of Baghdad Zoo animals during US invasion in 2003.
On March 7, 2012 Lawrence Anthony died. He is remembered and missed by his wife, 2 sons, 2 grandsons and numerous elephants.

Two days after his passing, the wild elephants showed up at his home led by two large matriarchs.
Separate wild herds arrived in droves to say goodbye to their beloved man-friend.

A total of 31 elephants had patiently walked over 12 miles to get to his South African House.

Witnessing this spectacle, humans were obviously in awe not only because of the

supreme intelligence and precise timing that these elephants sensed about Lawrence 's

passing, but also because of the profound memory and emotion the beloved animals

evoked in such an organized way:


Walking slowly - for days - Making their way in a solemn one-by-one queue from their

habitat to his house.


Lawrence's wife, Francoise, was especially touched, knowing that the elephants

had not been to his house prior to that day for well over 3 years! But yet they knew where they were going.


The elephants obviously wanted to pay their deep respects, honoring their friend

who'd saved their lives - so much respect that they stayed for 2 days 2 nights without eating anything.


Then one morning, they left, making their long journey back home............

[Gregorian]

20. Thank you for sharing that.

Hearing about these kinds of things both brings me happiness as well as disappointment and rage. It just means I understand. I always have.

Humans are a lost specie. I'm presently in a situation where I am selling my ranch. It's the fifth farm or ranch I've owned over a 20 year period. I'm trying to find a place that isn't polluted by the vermin known as the automobile, jet, quadrunner, stereo, guns, etc. I had no idea it would be this difficult.

In all honesty I have a sense that our situation on this planet is part of a dilemma. It transcends my simplistic description. We have to survive, and that has taken it's toll, especially since we managed to proliferate beyond any reasonable natural equilibrium.

I think the bottom line is that there is beauty at the core. We're losing it very fast. And many people know nothing but concrete.

What an accomplishment. Taking the animals away from our invasion in Iraq. That must have been a very good feeling.

Thanks again.

[glowing]

7. Did anyone think that the baby monkey knew the freak out moment was specifically about a snakey item

and that a round ball or donut clearly wasn't a snakey looking item..

[cthulu2016]

8. The baby(s) had not encountered the freak-out reaction previously

so they had no experience with it. The ones seeing a rubber-ball freak-out were seeing the freak-out reaction for the first time.

[glowing]

15. I must have been distracted.. I meant... communication... Last I knew we don't speak monkey

The "kids" might understand better than we do what "snaky" things mean over round donut or ball.

[csziggy]

19. Communication is possible

Birds have different calls for snakes, cats, and flying predators. If my cat and I are outside I can tell where the cat is by the song bird calls. When he is not outside with me, I've been alerted to the red shoulder hawks or other predator birds flying overhead. I've even been alerted to a snake in the crape myrtles by the calls of the birds.

Each call is different for each predator but they are similar across the smaller birds.

Crows have various calls for various threats - they mob hawks and foxes and the calls they use while doing so are different for each and different from those the smaller birds use.

Monkeys and apes also have various warning calls for threats. While those may be learned the urgency of such calls may be enough to alert the young until they can learn the specific calls.

[mick063]

10. Read Brocca's Brain by Carl Sagan

I can only paraphrase but it goes something like this:

The three most common nightmares for humans are:

Falling
Snakes
Being pursued and unable to get away.

The three most common forms of death unrelated to illness for an infant monkey are:

Falling
Snakes
Being pursued and unable to get away.

Ssgan believes we are preprogrammed with behaviors that stretch back to the dawn of man.

In the book, Sagan describes the "evolution of human intelligence" and even ties common human behavior to the R complex otherwise known as the reptilian portion of the brain.

The book is a very interesting read.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

11. Fear of snakes fundamental to bible. Fear of falling to hell fundamental to all Fundamentalists.

[Art_from_Ark]

16. Speaking for myself,

I have had several nightmares about being pursued and unable to get away. But I can't remember ever having a falling dream, and only one bad snake dream, right after watching the movie "Ssssssss"

My most common nightmares recently are sensing that someone or something is in my room that shouldn't be there, and getting lost on my way to an important event.

Also, the first nightmare that I remember (I was no older than four at the time) was of half of a giant heart beating on the horizon.

[SoCalDem]

18. I was bitten by a poisonous snake when I was a child, but I do not have an inordinate fear of them

I do not go out of my way to encounter them, but I cannot say I am afraid of them

Treacherous humans cause me more angst

[Delphinus]

12. I really like what you say -

(Evolution is not pretty or good, it is merely what it is.)

That is something I need to learn.

Good information in here - thanks for sharing.

[hifiguy]

13. A most excellent post, Old One.

Yet there are those on this very board who deny that evolution has any part to play at all in the way the brain is wired and how human psychology has evolved.

[RainDog]

21. k&r n/t