26 ms·

Dogs are good models for human psychiatric disorders, study argues

87 points by whack 5y ago

motohagiography 5y ago
Just last week I saw Daniel Dennet get asked by an interviewer whether he had a dog, and what it might like to be his dog, with the implication that Dennet's takes on animal consciousness tend to diminish the relevance of a dogs thoughts or emotions as lacking meaningful sapience and self awareness because of their lack of a complex verbalized langage. He said he has had dogs, but is mostly allergic, and has a robot dog of some sort now, which I thought was a complete dodge of the question, and even later in the interview, it was as though he hadn't really thought his language model of self and consciousness though. He's got a new book out, which I should probably read as he's likely more of a writer than an interview, but I heckled my screen most of the way though anyway. If this study has more details, it would be interesting to see what consequences it has for other theories of mind.
- legalcorrection 5y ago
  This is a guy who wrote a whole book trying to deny that subjective experience even exists. Are you surprised that he's obtuse?
  - spindle 5y ago
    In my opinion that one view of his is obtuse, and TBH I'm happy that you agree with me about that, but he has many other views and overall he's extremely smart (according to me, and according to almost all philosophers). Perhaps sadly, obtuse ideas are not limited to obtuse people.
  - IIAOPSW 5y ago
    The guy wrote a whole book arguing why subjective experience doesn't exist. You wrote a whole sentence asserting subjective experience does exist.
    - legalcorrection 5y ago
      Insisting subjective experience isn’t real is like pissing on someone’s leg and telling them it’s raining. Seriously, if you read the book, you realize his main angle of attack is (intentionally?) substituting a different definition of consciousness. The position he is arguing against is the existence of qualia/subjective experience, but the book is mostly about showing that we overestimate our capacity for higher order cognitive synthesis of sensory input. In new editions/epilogue/? (it’s been a while), he finally does address the hard problem (though doesn’t admit that his whole book misses the point), and just makes a few dismissive points.
      - IIAOPSW 5y ago
        When you say "substituting a different definition of consciousness", exactly what definition of consciousness was there in the first place such that one could usurp that throne? What exactly is "subjective experience" and "qualia". For a moment lets go with the banal wikipedia example: "The 'redness' of red is a commonly used example of a quale" (followed by a graphic that is entirely just red pixels). When I take a picture with my phone, does the phone not experience "redness"? If so then consciousness and machine consciousness are trivial and we are done. If not then the "quale" of redness must involve some sort of processing which happens along the path from the eye to wherever-the-train-of-thought-lives. So suppose I write an app such that when I point my phone at something it either prints the words "that's red" or "that's not red". Is my phone experiencing the quale of red yet? How sophisticated must the processing get before my phone has subjective experience? Thus we arrive at my real gripe and why I'm inclined to agree with Dennet. The entirety of the conversation around "subjective experience" and "qualia" seems to be a word game designed to rig the definition of consciousness so that machines can't have it. We could get all the way to a Turing-test-passing AI having this very conversation with you, and some people would still reject my consciousness and call me "a p-zombie without real qualia or subjective experience". It comes off as being in denial about materialism out of an egotistical need to believe ones consciousness is somehow better than computation, and that ones atoms are somehow more special than the atoms in my phone. Give a definition of qualia/subjective experience which isn't just "cognitive synthesis of sensory input" and also isn't contorted such that only humans could have it.
- spindle 5y ago
  You'll be pleased to hear that I've heard John Searle mention his (Searle's) dog as evidence in an argument with Dennett.
  - motohagiography 5y ago
    This laugh made my morning, thank you. That would have been a pleasure to watch. I in fact agree with Dennet's self-as-effect of language comments if I've interpreted them correctly, but I think it's a small part, and he was even emphasizing physical competence as a way to interpret and develop it, but doesn't appear to want to take the leap into more interesting but maybe dangerous territory. Perhaps he dodged it because he thought the question about his dog seemed a bit searly.
    - spindle 5y ago
      It was a pleasure to watch, and made me very fond of Searle, who clearly loved his dog (even though I disagree with him - Searle, not his dog - about lots of things too ... but, you know, all philosophers disagree with all other philososphers about lots of things). > seemed a bit searly. Good pun but also nail on head. He must be so very bored of the main arguments against his most famous position. In my opinion those main arguments are right but in terms of Dennett's boredom that's not even relevant.
celeritascelery 5y ago
I really like the phrase “study argues” over the more common “study says”. It implies science is process of making arguments that can be challenged instead simply new “findings”.
jjtheblunt 5y ago
This is alarming: this means what's totally obvious to ten thousand years of humans is now being touted as a funding-needed topic, where dogs will be subjected to various nonsense so flunky "scientists" can observe what most humans across the planet know as obvious.
- ninesnines 5y ago
  I agree -- although I think some scientists will do rigorous science with dogs; as in any field there will be a Gaussian curve. However, although I do think this is a set up to ask for more canine funding, I do think the public is not super keen on canine research -- I even feel the illogical repulsion and I understand the good outcomes that could come of this work. Also, we learn in basic neuroscience classes that animals can often seem like they are understanding you or have anthropomorphic characteristics, but oftentimes this is just imitation. An example of this is with Koko the gorilla that they taught sign-language to: she is thought to actually just be repeating things for treats, etc in order to make her handler happy.
RickTM 5y ago
Cool, I've never gone up to another human while he barks at me, and pee directly in his face, but apparently it is now justified due to my "psychiatric disorder". Thanks science!
ajb 5y ago
On the one hand, it's not obvious how much this helps research, since dogs can't be asked what they feel. On the other- psychological practitioners should totally not be let onto people before they've successfully treated an animal. Get past that whole "your problem will disappear when I've revealed my brilliant insight" thing.
throwaway81523 5y ago
Jeffrey Masson wrote a book called "Dogs Never Lie About Love" that said similar things. The book was pretty good iirc, regardless of the controversies the author later got into.
Terry_Roll 5y ago
I'd recommend have a dog dna tested to see what breeds they might be. I got a rescue dog from a well known UK canine trust, they said the dog was a particular middle class docile breed mix, prey drive was too strong based on my limited knowledge, dna test later, none of the breeds mentioned by the trust were there! Someone had been breeding something else, which explained the dog's prey drive. As a personal protection dog it would have fetched a very high amount considering its ability at seeing off a couple of loose German Shepherds and a couple of loose staffie's that wanted to attack him. If I wasn't allergic to dogs which I have also found out, I'd probably get another one, but with hindsight there is alot of things nobody really teaches you about dog ownership which might make people think twice about having one. They will take up a large part of your time which is something you may not want. Glycine can have anti anxiety effects and tastes much like sugar so may be useful for dogs displaying signs of anxiety.
cercatrova 5y ago
I mean, we're both mammals with a somewhat recent common ancestor, I'd assume the brain doesn't change that much between such species.
- throwaway684936 5y ago
  We share some commonalities with animals - they can have OCD, anxiety, or PTSD for instance. Animal models makes sense for those. But animals cannot, for example, experience schizophrenia or other psychoses. Nor can they be autistic. Directly from our capacity for improvements in intelligence and self-awareness comes psychosis. Directly from our unique social evolution comes autism. Brain differences that are wholly unique to humans are what underpin a lot of disorders. The animal model approach has a very limited scope. Some "researchers" think animals can be autistic (under an outdated idea of what autism is from over 60 years ago). It's dangerous pseudoscientific research being used to propose dangerous quackery treatment models.
- readhn 5y ago
  dogs were built up by humans. dogs are connected to humans on emotional level, so this is not surprising.
  - Sharlin 5y ago
    Eh, it's extremely unlikely that dogs have developed any totally new types of emotions during the domestication process. More like they were easy and useful to domesticate because as intelligent, mammalian, social pack predators, their ancestors were already a good fit for humans, mentally.
    - hellotomyrars 5y ago
      There are papers/studies that show that dogs have facial muscles that wolves lack that effectively give them expressive eyebrows. You could argue this is the result of human selective breeding but it does allow them to portray emotion in a way wolves can’t. Not sure how one would define “new emotion” but certainly their ability to communicate emotion to people at least has changed/increased.
alehlopeh 5y ago
In my experience, dog owners tend to anthropomorphize their dogs quite a bit. They’ll dream up motivations for their dog’s behaviors, often with very little basis in reality. Surveying dog owners about their dog’s personality will tell you a lot more about the dog owners than the dog.
- BucketsMcG 5y ago
  Dogs certainly think for themselves, they just don't necessarily think like us. Every so often I get an insight into how my dog's brain works, and I find it absolutely fascinating. For example, recently I had to carry a big heavy bag of stuff from home to a couple of streets away, and I took the dog with me. As we walked along, he kept going up to random parked cars and stopping by their doors. I couldn't understand why he was doing that. Did he smell something interesting? Was there a small critter hiding under the car? Then it dawned on me. We don't have a car of our own, but from time to time we use a carsharing scheme. Particularly when I need to transport stuff. He saw me carrying a big bag and figured that meant we were getting in a car. So he was just going up to any old car and saying "This one?" I realised he'd been observing this over time and he thought he understood it. So if he's spotted and figured out this pattern with a fairly rare event, it's reasonable to infer that he does this with everything else too. What's his motivation? I don't know, but he seems to really enjoy anticipating things, like he gets satisfaction from understanding how things work. He's visibly excited when he "gets it right". Like many of us, I'm sure. Related to that is his propensity for steering people and events in a direction favourable to his interests. "Oh, while you're on your feet, if you would just follow me I'd like to draw your attention to this food bowl over here which doesn't seem to have any food in it". "Please lift this blanket so I can get under it and snuggle". And so on. I don't think it's anthropomorphising at all to say he's got goals, can plan ways to achieve those goals, and communicate with us to get us to play along. Quite the opposite, in fact. He communicates these messages very clearly, he just does it in a doggie way that takes a bit of effort on our part to understand.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  Until you see a labrador pup makes big sad eyes because you puting him back in the car because he was jumping around too much.
clairity 5y ago
my dog exhibits insecurity (as discussed in the article) mostly in relation to me, as well as some strangers who she deems to be sketchy in some way. the first months were spent working through severe anxiety (and cleaning up overnight fear diarrhea) while slowly building trust at home. she was hyper-sensitive to my moods and movements, and would hyperventilate if she thought i was even slightly upset with her. this is why i think she was probably abused by her previous caretaker(s). thankfully, she's gotten much better, and now enjoys a mostly carefree and social dog life, though she's still vigilant and standoffish at times with both humans and other dogs. i can definitely see parallels to human behaviors, and even use techniques you might use with people to build up her confidence (as well as curb unwanted behavior). she's been great overall, and i wouldn't trade her for the world.
- teakettle42 5y ago
  Overnight nervous diarrhea? In your home? Tons of effort to keep that from happening, and to have a pet that doesn’t destroy your home? I really don’t understand dog ownership.
  - maccard 5y ago
    > Tons of effort to keep that from happening, and to have a pet that doesn’t destroy your home? It's their home too. OP's situation was a rescue dog from a likely abusive previous home. There are often pets available for people who are not able to handle that situation; My dog peed on the rug occasionally for about 3 weeks, and pooped indoors twice, and it's not happened again in 3 years. To pull the "children" card, children make huge messes, cannot be unattended or unsupervised for years, destroy homes, and yet that's not seen as "burdensome"
    - ako 5y ago
      Children are seen as burdensome, but as most parents will say: "It's all worth it, you get so much in return"... I think what parent was really asking is "why bother having a dog at all"?
marcodiego 5y ago
I don't think a dog is worried about losing his job or his significant other getting pregnant.
- ozim 5y ago
  I bet a dog is terrified of losing food source so basically the same as losing job.
  - agumonkey 5y ago
    It's an interesting parallel. I discovered how insanely deep this fear run in me. A job is not just a job (for my reptilian brain anyway) it's: 1) a group i belong too 2) roof and food Saying this because technically, I have a roof (parents house), I have money (unemployment benefits). But I don't feel secure at all. Whenever I got into a job, the anguish vanished (no matter how smart I tried to be, meditating over it, thinking abstractly about ill emotional reflexes, it stayed there). Whenever leaving a job (toxic workplace) was on the line I was gutted. Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised that animals (mammals or else) can sense what behaviors get them to belong to a group and ensure a regular daily life of friendly people and nice meals.
  - refurb 5y ago
    I bet it’s not - at least not worried in the same way humans are. Animals live in the moment. They don’t think “will this food source be here tomorrow”, they just deal with it as it comes.
    - ozim 5y ago
      Biochemically I expect there is not much difference. We probably have more stressors like imaginary ones and ones created just by society like reading news.
    - heavyset_go 5y ago
      From what I've seen, an animal that knows what it's like to be hungry tends to treat every meal as if it's their last meal, even after they're in a place with abundant food and consistently timed meals.
heavyset_go 5y ago
I'd bet most mammals have the same types of emotions, just tuned a bit differently for survival.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
FredPret 5y ago
My dog has email and back-to-back meetings?!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- k8sToGo 5y ago
  They do. Through peeing :)
porknubbins 5y ago
Now that I think about it pets avoid the narcissistic boomer parent who likes to drink, yell at the tv, be unpredictable or pet too aggressively and gravitate towards quiet friendly people, which is probably a good model for the way humans naturally feel. Over the years I have tried to overcome this aversion for the sake of family but its really hard to be totally calm with someone you can’t trust to behave.

87 points by whack 5y ago

Just last week I saw Daniel Dennet get asked by an interviewer whether he had a dog, and what it might like to be his dog, with the implication that Dennet's takes on animal consciousness tend to diminish the relevance of a dogs thoughts or emotions as lacking meaningful sapience and self awareness because of their lack of a complex verbalized langage. He said he has had dogs, but is mostly allergic, and has a robot dog of some sort now, which I thought was a complete dodge of the question, and even later in the interview, it was as though he hadn't really thought his language model of self and consciousness though. He's got a new book out, which I should probably read as he's likely more of a writer than an interview, but I heckled my screen most of the way though anyway. If this study has more details, it would be interesting to see what consequences it has for other theories of mind.

legalcorrection 5y ago
This is a guy who wrote a whole book trying to deny that subjective experience even exists. Are you surprised that he's obtuse?
- spindle 5y ago
  In my opinion that one view of his is obtuse, and TBH I'm happy that you agree with me about that, but he has many other views and overall he's extremely smart (according to me, and according to almost all philosophers). Perhaps sadly, obtuse ideas are not limited to obtuse people.
- IIAOPSW 5y ago
  The guy wrote a whole book arguing why subjective experience doesn't exist. You wrote a whole sentence asserting subjective experience does exist.
  - legalcorrection 5y ago
    Insisting subjective experience isn’t real is like pissing on someone’s leg and telling them it’s raining. Seriously, if you read the book, you realize his main angle of attack is (intentionally?) substituting a different definition of consciousness. The position he is arguing against is the existence of qualia/subjective experience, but the book is mostly about showing that we overestimate our capacity for higher order cognitive synthesis of sensory input. In new editions/epilogue/? (it’s been a while), he finally does address the hard problem (though doesn’t admit that his whole book misses the point), and just makes a few dismissive points.
    - IIAOPSW 5y ago
      When you say "substituting a different definition of consciousness", exactly what definition of consciousness was there in the first place such that one could usurp that throne? What exactly is "subjective experience" and "qualia". For a moment lets go with the banal wikipedia example: "The 'redness' of red is a commonly used example of a quale" (followed by a graphic that is entirely just red pixels). When I take a picture with my phone, does the phone not experience "redness"? If so then consciousness and machine consciousness are trivial and we are done. If not then the "quale" of redness must involve some sort of processing which happens along the path from the eye to wherever-the-train-of-thought-lives. So suppose I write an app such that when I point my phone at something it either prints the words "that's red" or "that's not red". Is my phone experiencing the quale of red yet? How sophisticated must the processing get before my phone has subjective experience? Thus we arrive at my real gripe and why I'm inclined to agree with Dennet. The entirety of the conversation around "subjective experience" and "qualia" seems to be a word game designed to rig the definition of consciousness so that machines can't have it. We could get all the way to a Turing-test-passing AI having this very conversation with you, and some people would still reject my consciousness and call me "a p-zombie without real qualia or subjective experience". It comes off as being in denial about materialism out of an egotistical need to believe ones consciousness is somehow better than computation, and that ones atoms are somehow more special than the atoms in my phone. Give a definition of qualia/subjective experience which isn't just "cognitive synthesis of sensory input" and also isn't contorted such that only humans could have it.
spindle 5y ago
You'll be pleased to hear that I've heard John Searle mention his (Searle's) dog as evidence in an argument with Dennett.
- motohagiography 5y ago
  This laugh made my morning, thank you. That would have been a pleasure to watch. I in fact agree with Dennet's self-as-effect of language comments if I've interpreted them correctly, but I think it's a small part, and he was even emphasizing physical competence as a way to interpret and develop it, but doesn't appear to want to take the leap into more interesting but maybe dangerous territory. Perhaps he dodged it because he thought the question about his dog seemed a bit searly.
  - spindle 5y ago
    It was a pleasure to watch, and made me very fond of Searle, who clearly loved his dog (even though I disagree with him - Searle, not his dog - about lots of things too ... but, you know, all philosophers disagree with all other philososphers about lots of things). > seemed a bit searly. Good pun but also nail on head. He must be so very bored of the main arguments against his most famous position. In my opinion those main arguments are right but in terms of Dennett's boredom that's not even relevant.

celeritascelery 5y ago

I really like the phrase “study argues” over the more common “study says”. It implies science is process of making arguments that can be challenged instead simply new “findings”.

jjtheblunt 5y ago

This is alarming: this means what's totally obvious to ten thousand years of humans is now being touted as a funding-needed topic, where dogs will be subjected to various nonsense so flunky "scientists" can observe what most humans across the planet know as obvious.

ninesnines 5y ago
I agree -- although I think some scientists will do rigorous science with dogs; as in any field there will be a Gaussian curve. However, although I do think this is a set up to ask for more canine funding, I do think the public is not super keen on canine research -- I even feel the illogical repulsion and I understand the good outcomes that could come of this work. Also, we learn in basic neuroscience classes that animals can often seem like they are understanding you or have anthropomorphic characteristics, but oftentimes this is just imitation. An example of this is with Koko the gorilla that they taught sign-language to: she is thought to actually just be repeating things for treats, etc in order to make her handler happy.

RickTM 5y ago

Cool, I've never gone up to another human while he barks at me, and pee directly in his face, but apparently it is now justified due to my "psychiatric disorder". Thanks science!

ajb 5y ago

On the one hand, it's not obvious how much this helps research, since dogs can't be asked what they feel. On the other- psychological practitioners should totally not be let onto people before they've successfully treated an animal. Get past that whole "your problem will disappear when I've revealed my brilliant insight" thing.

throwaway81523 5y ago

Jeffrey Masson wrote a book called "Dogs Never Lie About Love" that said similar things. The book was pretty good iirc, regardless of the controversies the author later got into.

Terry_Roll 5y ago

I'd recommend have a dog dna tested to see what breeds they might be. I got a rescue dog from a well known UK canine trust, they said the dog was a particular middle class docile breed mix, prey drive was too strong based on my limited knowledge, dna test later, none of the breeds mentioned by the trust were there! Someone had been breeding something else, which explained the dog's prey drive. As a personal protection dog it would have fetched a very high amount considering its ability at seeing off a couple of loose German Shepherds and a couple of loose staffie's that wanted to attack him. If I wasn't allergic to dogs which I have also found out, I'd probably get another one, but with hindsight there is alot of things nobody really teaches you about dog ownership which might make people think twice about having one. They will take up a large part of your time which is something you may not want. Glycine can have anti anxiety effects and tastes much like sugar so may be useful for dogs displaying signs of anxiety.

cercatrova 5y ago

I mean, we're both mammals with a somewhat recent common ancestor, I'd assume the brain doesn't change that much between such species.

throwaway684936 5y ago
We share some commonalities with animals - they can have OCD, anxiety, or PTSD for instance. Animal models makes sense for those. But animals cannot, for example, experience schizophrenia or other psychoses. Nor can they be autistic. Directly from our capacity for improvements in intelligence and self-awareness comes psychosis. Directly from our unique social evolution comes autism. Brain differences that are wholly unique to humans are what underpin a lot of disorders. The animal model approach has a very limited scope. Some "researchers" think animals can be autistic (under an outdated idea of what autism is from over 60 years ago). It's dangerous pseudoscientific research being used to propose dangerous quackery treatment models.
readhn 5y ago
dogs were built up by humans. dogs are connected to humans on emotional level, so this is not surprising.
- Sharlin 5y ago
  Eh, it's extremely unlikely that dogs have developed any totally new types of emotions during the domestication process. More like they were easy and useful to domesticate because as intelligent, mammalian, social pack predators, their ancestors were already a good fit for humans, mentally.
  - hellotomyrars 5y ago
    There are papers/studies that show that dogs have facial muscles that wolves lack that effectively give them expressive eyebrows. You could argue this is the result of human selective breeding but it does allow them to portray emotion in a way wolves can’t. Not sure how one would define “new emotion” but certainly their ability to communicate emotion to people at least has changed/increased.

alehlopeh 5y ago

In my experience, dog owners tend to anthropomorphize their dogs quite a bit. They’ll dream up motivations for their dog’s behaviors, often with very little basis in reality. Surveying dog owners about their dog’s personality will tell you a lot more about the dog owners than the dog.

BucketsMcG 5y ago
Dogs certainly think for themselves, they just don't necessarily think like us. Every so often I get an insight into how my dog's brain works, and I find it absolutely fascinating. For example, recently I had to carry a big heavy bag of stuff from home to a couple of streets away, and I took the dog with me. As we walked along, he kept going up to random parked cars and stopping by their doors. I couldn't understand why he was doing that. Did he smell something interesting? Was there a small critter hiding under the car? Then it dawned on me. We don't have a car of our own, but from time to time we use a carsharing scheme. Particularly when I need to transport stuff. He saw me carrying a big bag and figured that meant we were getting in a car. So he was just going up to any old car and saying "This one?" I realised he'd been observing this over time and he thought he understood it. So if he's spotted and figured out this pattern with a fairly rare event, it's reasonable to infer that he does this with everything else too. What's his motivation? I don't know, but he seems to really enjoy anticipating things, like he gets satisfaction from understanding how things work. He's visibly excited when he "gets it right". Like many of us, I'm sure. Related to that is his propensity for steering people and events in a direction favourable to his interests. "Oh, while you're on your feet, if you would just follow me I'd like to draw your attention to this food bowl over here which doesn't seem to have any food in it". "Please lift this blanket so I can get under it and snuggle". And so on. I don't think it's anthropomorphising at all to say he's got goals, can plan ways to achieve those goals, and communicate with us to get us to play along. Quite the opposite, in fact. He communicates these messages very clearly, he just does it in a doggie way that takes a bit of effort on our part to understand.
agumonkey 5y ago
Until you see a labrador pup makes big sad eyes because you puting him back in the car because he was jumping around too much.

clairity 5y ago

my dog exhibits insecurity (as discussed in the article) mostly in relation to me, as well as some strangers who she deems to be sketchy in some way. the first months were spent working through severe anxiety (and cleaning up overnight fear diarrhea) while slowly building trust at home. she was hyper-sensitive to my moods and movements, and would hyperventilate if she thought i was even slightly upset with her. this is why i think she was probably abused by her previous caretaker(s). thankfully, she's gotten much better, and now enjoys a mostly carefree and social dog life, though she's still vigilant and standoffish at times with both humans and other dogs. i can definitely see parallels to human behaviors, and even use techniques you might use with people to build up her confidence (as well as curb unwanted behavior). she's been great overall, and i wouldn't trade her for the world.

teakettle42 5y ago
Overnight nervous diarrhea? In your home? Tons of effort to keep that from happening, and to have a pet that doesn’t destroy your home? I really don’t understand dog ownership.
- maccard 5y ago
  > Tons of effort to keep that from happening, and to have a pet that doesn’t destroy your home? It's their home too. OP's situation was a rescue dog from a likely abusive previous home. There are often pets available for people who are not able to handle that situation; My dog peed on the rug occasionally for about 3 weeks, and pooped indoors twice, and it's not happened again in 3 years. To pull the "children" card, children make huge messes, cannot be unattended or unsupervised for years, destroy homes, and yet that's not seen as "burdensome"
  - ako 5y ago
    Children are seen as burdensome, but as most parents will say: "It's all worth it, you get so much in return"... I think what parent was really asking is "why bother having a dog at all"?

marcodiego 5y ago

I don't think a dog is worried about losing his job or his significant other getting pregnant.

ozim 5y ago
I bet a dog is terrified of losing food source so basically the same as losing job.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  It's an interesting parallel. I discovered how insanely deep this fear run in me. A job is not just a job (for my reptilian brain anyway) it's: 1) a group i belong too 2) roof and food Saying this because technically, I have a roof (parents house), I have money (unemployment benefits). But I don't feel secure at all. Whenever I got into a job, the anguish vanished (no matter how smart I tried to be, meditating over it, thinking abstractly about ill emotional reflexes, it stayed there). Whenever leaving a job (toxic workplace) was on the line I was gutted. Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised that animals (mammals or else) can sense what behaviors get them to belong to a group and ensure a regular daily life of friendly people and nice meals.
- refurb 5y ago
  I bet it’s not - at least not worried in the same way humans are. Animals live in the moment. They don’t think “will this food source be here tomorrow”, they just deal with it as it comes.
  - ozim 5y ago
    Biochemically I expect there is not much difference. We probably have more stressors like imaginary ones and ones created just by society like reading news.
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    From what I've seen, an animal that knows what it's like to be hungry tends to treat every meal as if it's their last meal, even after they're in a place with abundant food and consistently timed meals.

heavyset_go 5y ago

I'd bet most mammals have the same types of emotions, just tuned a bit differently for survival.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

FredPret 5y ago

My dog has email and back-to-back meetings?!

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
k8sToGo 5y ago
They do. Through peeing :)

porknubbins 5y ago

Now that I think about it pets avoid the narcissistic boomer parent who likes to drink, yell at the tv, be unpredictable or pet too aggressively and gravitate towards quiet friendly people, which is probably a good model for the way humans naturally feel. Over the years I have tried to overcome this aversion for the sake of family but its really hard to be totally calm with someone you can’t trust to behave.