Fortunately, there has recently been a renewed interest in these behaviors and these studies are being newly appreciated. Yes, we observe that animals dramatically adapt their instinctive responses depending on their environment. For example, animals can become more avoidant of other animals, a form of social fear, if they are bullied by other animals and this avoidance can last for weeks even if the animal is not further bullied.
We have some ideas of how this plasticity works. Cortical structures that record past experiences are able to reach into the brain regions that control the production of instinctive fear behaviour and suppress them. And we have found that these circuits are conserved in primates, so it is very likely that humans use them as well to suppress avoidance behavior.
We also know that the capacity to control instinctive behaviours increases around adolescence when humans begin to interact with peers and presumably need to regulate their instincts so as to balance their immediate needs with those of the group.
If you talk to psychiatrists about the things that bother their patients most, they often say it is the negative symptoms such as aggression, fear, and lack of pleasure. A drug that selectively ramped down aggression, for example, even if it did not improve cognitive symptoms, could be very useful in autism or schizophrenia.
It would depend on where you intervene between the sensory input and motor output. For example, humans could have access to very early sensory information with emotional content, and blocking this could be much more complex than in mice and rats. We use the full range of neural circuit and molecular manipulation and monitoring tools adapted to behaving mice. Many of these are new and truly revolutionary, but we still need more selectively ways to subtly up and down modulate synaptic connections without altering endogenous neural firing activity.
This is because our current tools are still very crude as they globally activate or suppress cells, essentially breaking the circuit. Ideally, you want to leave the circuits intact and tweak their computational properties up or down, increasing or decreasing the gain to see what happens.
Another advance that is desperately needed is the ability to record from thousands or even millions of neurons simultaneously across many brain regions. This will allow us to see brain states encoded in a distributed manner and understand how the brain works as a single organ.
At the same time we need to go down to the sub-cellular level and understand the cell biological mechanisms of circuits. When I eventually released the bunny, Jethro followed her trail and continued to do so for months.
Over the years Jethro approached rabbits as if they should be his friends, but they usually fled. Fish are often difficult to identify with or feel for. Nonetheless, Chino, a golden retriever who lived with Mary and Dan Heath in Medford, Oregon, and Falstaff, a inch koi, had regular meetings for six years at the edge of the pond where Falstaff lived. Falstaff did this repeatedly as Chino stared down with a curious and puzzled look on her face.
Their close friendship was extraordinary and charming. When the Heaths moved, they went as far as to build a new fishpond so that Falstaff could join them. Embarrassment is difficult to observe. But world famous primatologist Jane Goodall believes she has observed what could be called embarrassment in chimpanzees.
Fifi was a female chimpanzee whom Jane knew for more than 40 years. Freud always followed Figan as if he worshiped the big male. Once, as Fifi groomed Figan, Freud climbed up the thin stem of a wild plantain. When he reached the leafy crown, he began swaying wildly back and forth. Had he been a human child, we would have said he was showing off. Suddenly the stem broke and Freud tumbled into the long grass.
He was not hurt. He landed close to Jane, and as his head emerged from the grass she saw him look over at Figan. Had he noticed?
If he had, he paid no attention but went on being groomed. Freud very quietly climbed another tree and began to feed. Harvard University psychologist Marc Hauser has observed what could be called embarrassment in a male rhesus monkey. After mating with a female, the male strutted away and accidentally fell into a ditch.
He stood up and quickly looked around. After sensing that no other monkeys saw him tumble, he marched off, back high, head and tail up, as if nothing had happened.
Stories about animals rescuing members of their own and other species, including humans, abound. They show how individuals of different species display compassion and empathy for those in need. In Torquay, Australia, after a mother kangaroo was struck by a car, a dog discovered a baby joey in her pouch and took it to his owner who cared for the youngster.
The year-old dog and 4-month-old joey eventually became best friends. On a beach in New Zealand, a dolphin came to the rescue of two pygmy sperm whales stranded behind a sand bar. After people tried in vain to get the whales into deeper water, the dolphin appeared and the two whales followed it back into the ocean. Dogs are also known for helping those in need. A lost pit bull mutt broke up an attempted mugging of a woman leaving a playground with her son in Port Charlotte, Florida. And outside of Buenos Aires, Argentina, a dog rescued an abandoned baby by placing him safely among her own newborn puppies.
Do you taste good? What is it? But dogs also lick to clean, to communicate, and to calm themselves down. Mother dogs even lick newborn pups as a way to get them to breathe. Is your dog just bored when she buries her toys? Is it a game? Not exactly. Wild dogs had to bury their food so no one else would come along and steal it before they were ready to eat it. Which one of these sounds like your typical dog walk? In the wild, dogs naturally gravitate to one of three spots : the front, where they guide the way and handle danger; the back, where they follow and warn of dangers from the rear; or the middle, where they relay messages from the front to the back.
Humans should always be the Pack Leaders, which means you lead and your dog follows. Picture this. Suddenly you spot a dead and decaying bird. Can you think of a behavior that your dog or a dog you know has learned? People also have instincts, and like animals, many of our instincts help us to survive. Children will learn about instincts, both animal and human, and how they guide behavior.
Children will also begin to consider the difference between learned behavior and instinctual behavior.
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