Reading and thoughts on wild animal's fear versus curiosity responses

<p>Just finished reading Temple Grandin & Catherine Johnson's "Animals Make Us Human". Although the book is 99% about pets, domesticated animals or wild animals in captivity, it includes some interesting ideas about animal psychology and our ability to influence their behavior for better or for worse. Their writing combines Grandin's unique personal experience of autism as a window on the mind of animals, with the "blue-ribbon emotions" proposed by neurobiologist Jaak Panksepp as the main drivers of animal behavior = seeking, caring, play, lust, fear, panic and rage. The book focuses mostly on the first one and the last three, applying interpretations of personal experiences as frameworks for how we can or should interact with a variety of different animals to minimize their stress as pets at home, or as our future food on the farm and in the slaughterhouse, or as live displays in zoos. What makes it all the more interesting is that they speculate on how the different basic emotions have a greater or smaller priority for different species.</p>

<p>At different times they write about the sometimes subtle interplay of seeking (curiosity, exploration, hunting etc) versus fear and panic. For example, inquisitive grazers (like cattle or antelopes) will very cautiously check out novel objects like a notebook on the ground, but retreat at any surprise like its pages flapping in the wind. If people try to force the animals to walk towards or past a novel object however, then the seeking mechanism doesn't come into play and instead they will stay as far as possible, or panic when forced to come closer.</p>

<p>Another interesting topic that comes up repeatedly is that of handling cattle and horses effectively without negative reinforcement (sticks, shouting etc) but by reading their behavior instead and moving into their flight zone (aka distance within which they'll run off) and then not immediately/relentlessly pursuing them, to give them time to register positive reinforcement instead (in this case I guess most of us would describe that as the feel-good effect of relief at being able to move away from a threat). All of that sounds a bit abstract but they make the link with the rare animal handling skills of horse whisperers and their equivalents with other animal species. Not sure if I've ever come across any reference to self-avowed pig whisperers, but apparently there are people known as cattle/dog/cat whisperers. And another part of the book that I found really impressive is how to train super-edgy antelopes in zoos so they will let the vet walk up to them, jab a needle in their neck and inject medication or take a blood sample, rather than bolting in such a panic as to crash into the steel fence at fatal speed.</p>

<p>All of that got me to thinking about the behavior of raptors when a pushy photographer tries to get close enough for better shots. My own experience is mostly limited to redtails, red-shouldered hawks, kestrels, white-tailed kites and northern harriers aka marsh hawks. While the first three will typically head off and hardly ever return as I invade their flight zone, the latter two actually tend to double back about 30-50% of the time once they're in the air, often providing the best BIF opportunities as they come check me out from overhead and then move on with their respective typical scanning-for-prey flight patterns. It seems like once they're aloft they have switched from fear to seeking, like the cattle approaching the notebook, then retreating at the sound/sight of flapping paper, but then coming closer again with their noses pointing & ears pricked.</p>

<p>Or purely subjectively, to me it's as if the kites and harriers are often more embarassed than really scared. Almost as if my approach suddenly reminded them that they were supposed to catch up on some hunting work, rather than lazing about all day on a branch or on the ground! Does anyone have similar or opposite impressions/experiences? Or are there other types of wild animals that might have similarly diverse reactions to an approaching "optics-heavy threat"?</p>

<p>(BTW: I would have posted this in the subcategory "techniques" if there was one for PN's Nature forum)</p>

<p>She's an interesting character (Grandin), and I also recommend the bio film made about her youth and how she came to be her current self with her insights. It's fascinating.<br /><br />As someone who is a passionate student of versatile hunting dogs (these are animals trained to seek, point, dispatch if called to do so, and retrieve birds and small furry game), I've had a front row seat to many trainers and many techniques. There's no question that those who understand the dog's motivations produce far more effective companions and workers than those who focus mostly on human-minded postive/negative reinforcement. The people who really do learn to think like a dog, and to see things from the dog's perspective, always seem to have "the best dogs" - no surprise!<br /><br />It was a little out of my familiar element, but the other day I spent some time photographing herding dogs (and the herd-ees, sheep). It was a laboratory for all of the things that Grandin discusses. Here's "Red" (a young Border Collie fresh from Ireland) that - after this photo - started to get just a little too aggressive in handling the sheep.<br /><br /><img src="http://static.photo.net/attachments/bboard/00Z/00ZKOS-398237584.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="466" /><br /><br />Back to the truck, Red! He'll get better as he gets past being a teenage punk with a fast car, which is what he is right now. The responses to some of those motivations get moderated by experience, just like for all of us.</p>

<p>I am no psychologist, just a good ol' fashion Biologist. I don't mean to belittle findings like this, but it sounds to me like a lot of anthropomorphizing. If there is good science, properly controlled and peer reviewed analysis of the findings, then fine.</p>

<p>For what it's worth, Doug, Grandin's <em>applied</em> findings are now in use in a large number of stockyards, slaughterhouses, and other livestock facilities around the world. The facility designs she came up with, based on exactly this sort of analysis, have made a big difference in those areas. People who work with cattle, for example, have broadly recognized and adopted many of her strategies (and many of her it's-all-in-the-details tactics) despite the - at first glance - seeming silliness of many of those recommendations. It's her autism-based <em>inability</em> to (classically) anthropomorphize that gives her such interesting insights in this area.</p>

<p>They actually write in different sections of the book about behaviorism and express their strong personal conviction that animals do have emotions understandable to human observers. I can't find the section exactly now, but IIRC they refer to the relative lack of interest by the scientific community in the ideas of Panksepp - who is very much an experimentalist by the way - as being partly due to an (in their opinion) excessive bias on treating animals as emotional unknowables.</p>

<p>That said, I'm entirely to blame for the anthropomorphizing in the last paragraph - and I'm actually a biologist too but firmly operating in anecdotal mode when I'm stalking photography subjects ;)</p>

<p>Like Matt said the movie about Grandin's teenage years is absolutely fascinating, as is her earlier book "Thinking In Pictures" on which the film is partly based, and which should probably be read by all of photo.netters just for its title alone. Animals Make Us Human on the other hand draws upon a large number of recounted anecdotes and experiences from her professional career, including not just cattle handling installations but also consulting small farmers as well as zoos and giant corporations on their animal handling equipment and procedures. She writes for example about her work for MacDonald's to improve the procedures of its multiple suppliers of broiler chickens.</p>

<p>Despite the suspicion with which proper experimental science has approached animal "mind reading" in the past decades, Grandin's perspective as an autistic scientist has generated a lot of unusual insights that provide perfectly testable hypotheses and are supported by many anecdotal situations when her advice has been followed, despite initial incredulity about its likely effectiveness from the side of her customer ranchers/breeders/corporate execs/zookeepers. Most of these stories do not fit the mold of rigorously replicated and statistically verified experiments, but they do usually consist of a pattern where her assumptions about the reasons why particular animals panic or fight in a particular setting (for example a slippery loading ramp) are subsequently confirmed when her advice turns out to really lower stress levels of the previously misbehaving animals, in some cases as verified by measuring heartbeats or measuring cortisol/adrenalin levels in blood samples.</p>

<p>For example, a point that keeps coming back again and again is her conviction that (like many autistic humans) animals can learn and be trained very effectively, but are usually not good at all at generalizing from specific settings to more widely valid rules, and therefore do not perceive their prior training to apply when they encounter even just a single novel action or object. One example are the zoo antelopes trained to calmly receive a jab in the neck: apparently one antelope did go nuts the one time when the vet did not stick exactly to the trained sequence and tried to jab it in the shoulder instead of the neck.</p>

<p>By the way Matt: great shot! If I were one of those sheep Red's lock-on stare would have me worried too :)</p>

<p><< "Animals Make Us Human" >><br /> I just ordered this book and "Animals in Transition". Thank you! :)</p>

<p>I adopted a Yellow Lab from a Mississippi shelter a few days ago. He is a sweetie. I really want to understand his mind better, and how he sees the world in pictures. </p>

<p>Here's my big boy, shot by a friend.</p><div></div>

<p>There has been plenty of animal behavior and psychology research on this. The fright/flight/fight/freeze response is characteristic of all animals (including humans; with chronic child abuse being a classic case). Hormonal and rudimentary neuronal systems have been keeping entire species alive long before primates arrived and started simplifying observations into rules. It is too soon to tell if Nature bet all it's got on some simplified logic and decided to do away with the other time tested networks.</p>

<p>Another author one may like: Desmond Morris</p>

<p>Came across <a href="http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/4342">this fairly detailed essay/review of the book</a> that discusses the neurobiology side a bit more, and also quotes natural horseman Monty Roberts on the subject of "seeing like a horse". The question for wildlife photographers is: have some of us figured out how to see like a hawk in some ways, with or without the artifical aid of a big monster lens to potentially catch sight of the rabbit's whisker from a mile away?</p>

<p>Sammy is certainly one distinguished-looking canine gentleman Mary! I love the panda-like eye patches and the folding fur around his neck gives him the air of wearing a silk scarf or an elizabethan ruff.</p>

<p><< Sammy is certainly one distinguished-looking canine gentleman Mary! I love the panda-like eye patches and the folding fur around his neck gives him the air of wearing a silk scarf or an elizabethan ruff.>></p>

<p>Thank you Paul! He is a real sweetheart - a "gentleman" giant indeed. He is taller and longer than the typical Lab Retriever. The Vet said he may have some hound in him. His favorite toy? - A stuffed mallard duck! Probably true in Retriever fashion, he releases the duck to me every time when asked. :)</p>

<p>Would love to understand dogs more - I look forward to reading the books.</p><div></div>

<p>Coopers hawks - I wonder if, since they are ambush hunters, they tend to stay put longer and tolerate approaches better. Northern Harriers seem to hunt by flying around lower than reds and go over the same ground repeatedly, and confront others in their space. Kestrals seem contentious with each other, more likely to cling to a spot, and they don't fly off as far when they notice they are noticed. What I haven't seen, which doesn't mean it doesn't nevertheless happen regularly, are other birds mob the smaller raptors. in contrast, maybe, Reds seem to be seen by other and smaller birds as pariah almost from birth, eg. <a href="../photo/10281710">http://www.photo.net/photo/10281710</a> where this young one hasn't accepted his outcast status, is struggling with how other birds view him. My guess is that reds are poorly treated, expecct to be treated poorly and pursued for long distances when noticed, and like long distances from anything that spots them, experience being their guide. On the other hand I've seen the reds go to the next tree, and then the next tree, and the next as opposed to just heading for the next county. The only thing that seems to keep them from leaving is when they are eating something, though I'm not moved to bait them.</p>

<p>My take away from Animals in Translation, about the curiousity-fear mixed emotion, was that the way that feels to an animal is the way it feels to us when portrayed in horror movies, where the person hears something move in the cabinet and then can't leave it alone, the audience yelling, "Don't open that cabinet!" and we all know the person in the film will open it, can't resist though they know its risky and scary. I'ld offer that the harrier or kite is just going about its business after having been disturbed, not exhibiting the fear-curiousity emotion.</p>

<p>I saw a TV programme here in the UK about Temple Grandin's life and work. Her autism seems to have given her unparalleled insights into animal behaviour. The programme concentrated on her insights into 'prey' animal behaviour - cattle especially - and her work with slayghter houses.</p>

<p>I am not sure whether her insights work so well for predator behaviour. Perhaps someone can put me right there. For dogs I have found Cesar Millan's observations enlightening about the dog social structure, it's pack instincts and the role of pack leader.</p><div></div>

<p>Yesterday and today, I did a little unintentional experiment with white-tail deer. I wanted to get pictures of the new bucks this year and set myself up behind a tree on their path to their nighttime sleeping area. I didn't use camouflage and simply sat behind a tree. In every case, the white-tails went up when they sensed me. One doe even stamped her hoof and snorted at me and seemed mad that I was in their way.</p>

<p>This morning I went back to the same spot to catch them going in the other direction; however, this time I brought my stool and covered myself with a camouflage, throw-over blind. I sat right out in the open on a little rise. This time there was great curiousity, but not a single white tail raised. The doe seemed excited, the bucks ignored me and this little fawn rewarded me by coming so close that I couldn't fit it all in the viewfinder:</p>

<p><a title="Mommy, what's this big cloth that keeps moving? by dcstep, on Flickr" href=" src="http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6168/6155637767_0f0a76fe65_z.jpg" alt="Mommy, what's this big cloth that keeps moving?" width="640" height="639" /></a></p>

<p>Beautiful shot, David.</p>

<p>Bik looks like he's ready to fetch the rest of the tree next, Colin! Great shot and I love the brown iris highlight from the angled sunlight. Grandin & Johnson do discuss Millan's premises about the significance of pack structure and dominance, though they put that in different perspective (at least that's what they write - don't have a dog myself so haven't read the books focusing specifically on dog behavior) from newer data on behavior & family structure of naturally wild wolf packs, as opposed to the earlier research mostly on "forced packs" in zoos or from reintroductions. Apparently vicious aggression almost never occurs within truly natural packs for (according to G & J) two reasons: family ties are massively significant to wolves, and teenage wolves learn various submissive behaviors to defuse rather than escalate any potential conflict with dominant members of the pack.</p>

<p>They claim that family ties may in at least some cases be a more precise framework for understanding dogs, and the goal of the dog owner should not be to establish and maintain dominance at all times, but rather to establish the equivalence of parental status - in which case a dog will not consider his/her owner as a competitor in pack hierarchy at all (so no need to worry about who wins at tug-o-war or who sits the highest etc).</p>

<p>A related point they develop quite a bit is that different breeds have changed more or less drastically in appearance as well as in behavior, and many dogs never fully outgrow puppy-like behavior compared to adult wolves. They cite research showing that the smaller/cuter pure breeds develop fewer submissive behaviors than the full repertoire of six peacemaking displays of adult wolves, and speculate that this may be why they tend to get in more fights with other dogs as well as having more tantrums and other "authority issues" with their owners - again not so much an issue of pack hierarchy as a parenting challenge (more similar to educating your socially inept kids than to a "top dog" rivalry).</p>

<p>At least in deer there's no fetching and tugging challenges to worry about at all! That's probably the shiniest nose I've seen in a very long time David, I think I can see your lens reflected in there somewhere :)</p>

<p>Yeah Paul, I looked at the nose and eyes in the Original size to try to see what I could make out of my rig. I'm really only a big blob under my camouflage cover.</p>

<p>It's been interesting observing white-tail buck behaviour. The young bucks will tussle amongst themselves in training exercises. When a mature buck approaches the young bucks will approach in almost a salute type gesture. We're a few days before the does come into heat, so the mature bucks are still benign and tending to stay more to themselves. When the ladies go into heat I'm hoping to capture some mature bucks fighting. We'll see...</p>

<p>I'm surprised you report that the red tailed hawks shy away from you. When I see them, they could care less about me. I often see them on top of poles, and I can sit right at the bottom of the pole taking their picture all day long and they hardly even look at me. Of all the animals I see they are probably the least likely to be fazed by my presence. Herons, on the other hand, will take off the moment they notice me.</p>

<p>Chris, around here (suburban Denver) it seems to be the height of the perch that matter the most to the red-tails. If they're in a lower tree and you approach on foot, then they're likely to fly. On power lines they'll sit for a long while and seem unconcerned about activity on the ground. When I approach in my car, then they're tolerant even in low trees, but they'll fly when I get out of the car.</p>

<p>The GBH are the same around here, they fly at any human within 200-yards.</p>

<p>Looks it has been awhile since this thread has been posted in but I thought I would weigh in anyway.</p>

<p>When it comes to getting close to any critter domesticated or wild I seem to have remarkable luck most of the time when they present themselves to me and I have always been a huge proponent of positive reinforcement training when it comes to the domesticated varieties and yes Paul it does work with animals voted most tasty as bacon. </p>

<p>What as driven me crazy though are birds. I read a book once called "Dangerous To Man" and in the section on birds the author in the very first paragraph describes birds as "bird brained". I have been lucky enough to get within 20 yards of a GBH sitting on a piling in the Chehalis River in Aberdeen, Wasington (I'll post a picture) it had no clue I was there until I went to change from my UV to my CPL filter when it did notice me off it went. Some days they cooperate some days they don't. </p>

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