Top Quotes: “The Inner Life of Animals: Love, Grief, and Compassion: Surprising Observations of a Hidden World” — Peter Wohlleben
Introduction
“To shed some light on the matter, let’s turn to recent studies of the brain. The Max Planck Institute in Leipzig published the results of an astonishing study carried out in 2008. With the help of magnetic resonance imaging (Mr), which translates brain activity into digital images, test subjects were observed making decisions (whether to push the computer button with their right hand or with their left). TAs activity in their brains clearly showed what their choices were going to be up to seven seconds before the test subjects themselves were aware of them. This means that the behavior had already been initiated while the volunteers were still considering what to do. And so it follows that it was the unconscious part of the brain that triggered the action. It seems that what the conscious part of the brain did was to come up with an explanation for the action a few seconds later.
Research into these kinds of processes is still very new, and so it’s impossible to say what percentage and what kinds of decisions work this way, or whether we’re capable of rejecting processes set in motion unconsciously. But still, it’s amazing to think that so-called free will is often playing catch-up. All the conscious part of the brain is doing in this case is coming up with a face-saving explanation for our fragile ego, which, thanks to this reassurance, feels it’s completely in control at all times. In many cases, however, the other side — our unconscious — is in charge of operations.
In the end, it doesn’t really matter how much our intellect is consciously in control, because the fact that a surprising number of our reactions are probably instinctive shows only that experiences of fear and grief, joy and happiness are not at all diminished by being triggered instinctively.”
“Emotions are linked to the unconscious part of the brain, not the conscious part. If animals lacked consciousness, all that would mean is that they would be unable to have thoughts. But every species of animal experiences unconscious brain activity, and because this activity directs how the animal interacts with the world, every animal must also have emotions.”
“The target of Moses’s attention was a potential enemy — a housecat — albeit an extremely small and relatively helpless one, because the kitten had obviously lost its mother and had not had anything to eat in a long time. The little stray popped up in Ann and Wally Collito’s yard. The couple lived in a cottage in North Attleboro, Massachusetts, and they watched in amazement at what happened next. A crow attached itself to the little orphan and was clearly looking after it, feeding it with earthworms and beetles. Of course, the Collitos didn’t just stand by and watch; they fed the kitten, as well. The friendship between the crow and the cat continued after the cat grew up, and it lasted until the crow disappeared five years later.”
“In people, it is the limbic system that allows us to experience the full range of joy, grief, fear, or desire and, together with other areas of the brain, it facilitates the appropriate physical reactions. These brain structures are very old in evolutionary terms and so we share them with many mammals. Goats, dogs, horses, cows, pigs — the list goes on and on. According to recent research, not only mammals but also birds and even fish, which biologists rank far lower on the evolutionary scale, belong on this list.”
“Victoria Braithwaite, a professor at Penn State who earned her doctorate from the University of Oxford, discovered something quite different. Years ago, she identified more than twenty pain receptors around fishes’ mouths right where anglers’ hooks usually catch hold. Ouch! But all that proves is that a dull feeling of pain is within the realm of possibility. And so Braithwaite poked needles into the areas she had identified, which caused a reaction in the fishes’ hindbrain, which is exactly where pain stimuli are processed in people. That should be enough to prove that fishing injuries cause fish to suffer.
But what about emotions? Let’s consider fear. In people, fear arises in the almond-shaped amygdala. For a long time that was not proven, even though it was suspected. It wasn’t until January 2011 that scientists from the University of lowa published a paper about a woman identified as SM. SM was afraid of spiders and snakes — until the cells in her amygdala died after a rare illness. That was, of course, tragic for SM; however, it offered researchers a unique opportunity to investigate what happens when this organ is lost. They took SM to a pet shop and confronted her with the animals she feared. The woman could now touch the animals, something she could never have done before, and she reported that she simply felt curious about them and no longer felt in the least bit frightened. And so the seat of fear can now be precisely located in people. But what about fish?
Manuel Portavella García and his team at the University of Seville have indeed found comparable structures in the outer areas of the fish brain, a place where no one had looked before. (In people, the fear center lies deep inside the lower part of the brain.)”
“First, the researchers trained goldfish to swim quickly away from one corner of their tank as soon as a green light came on. If they failed to do this, they got an electric shock. Then, the researchers disabled a part of the fishes’ brain known as the telencephalon. It corresponds with our fear center, and switching it off had the same result as in people: from then on the goldfish were no longer afraid of the green light and they ignored it. From this, the researchers concluded that fish and terrestrial vertebrates have inherited the same brain structures from common ancestors that lived more than 400 million years ago.
It follows that all vertebrates have had the hardware for emotions for a very long time, but does that mean that animals feel things the same way we do? Much points in that direction. Scientists have even found oxytocin in fish, the hormone that not only brings joy to mothers but also strengthens the love between partners. Joy and love in fish? We’re not going to be able to prove that, at least not in the foreseeable future, but if there’s any doubt, why do we assume they are guilty as charged?”
Brainpower
“Researchers find some kinds of slime molds so interesting that they regularly observe them in the laboratory. Physarum polycephalum, with its somewhat awkward Latin name, is just such a customer, and it loves rolled oats. Basically, the creature is one giant cell with countless nuclei. What researchers are now doing is placing these slimy unicellular organisms in a maze with two exits and putting food at one of the exits as a reward. The slime mold spreads out into the maze and after a hundred hours or more, finds the exit with the oats — not bad, really. To do this, it clearly uses its own slime trail to recognize where it has already been. It then avoids those areas because they have not led to success. In nature, such behavior is of practical benefit, because the creature knows where it has already been in its search for food and, therefore, the places where there isn’t any food left. It’s quite a feat to be able to solve a maze when you don’t have a brain, and researchers credit these moving mat-like creatures with having some kind of spatial memory.”
“The fox’s hunting repertoire includes playing dead, and a fox may even let its tongue hang out to make the scene more convincing. A corpse out in the open. There are always takers, most often crows, which are happy to help themselves if there’s delicious meat on offer, even when it’s a bit past its prime. In the case of the fox, it’s super fresh — too fresh, as it turns out. Any black-feathered guest that decides to grab a bite suddenly finds itself in the jaws of the wily fox and ends up being the meal instead.”
“A team from Wilkes University in Philadelphia observed gray squirrels digging empty caches. The squirrels did this in clear sight of others of their kind to lead them astray, but only when they thought they were being watched. When the eyes of other squirrels were on them, they dug around a bit in the dirt and pretended to bury something. According to the researchers, this is the first report of rodents using deceptive tactics. When lots of unfamiliar squirrels were watching, up to 20 percent of the caches were empty. As part of the experiment, the researchers then had students raid the caches that had food in them, and guess what happened? The squirrels reacted immediately and from then on used deceptive tactics in the presence of suspect humans, as well.”
“The largest ant hill I ever found measured 15 feet from side to side. There are usually multiple queens inside laying eggs to ensure the survival of the colony. The queens are cared for by up to a million workers, all female. The lowest on the social ladder are the winged males that fly out to mate with other queens and then die. The female workers, with a life span of up to six years, are unusually long lived for insects, but the queens, which live for up to twenty-five years, eclipse even this impressive achievement.”
“Bees can definitely remember people. They will attack people who have annoyed them in the past and allow people who have left them in peace to venture much closer.”
Mating
“Goats behave in many ways like deer, and every year in late summer, we observe a somewhat more elaborate ritual. At that time of year, our billy goat, Vito, turns into a monster of stink. To please the ladies, he perfumes his face and forelegs with a very special fragrance: his own urine. And he doesn’t just spray the yellow liquid onto his skin; he also sprays it into his mouth. What would make us gag obviously doesn’t fail to have the desired effect on the female goats. They rub their heads over his coat to absorb the smell. This clearly stimulates hormone production in all involved, and the fires of desire are lit. The billy goat keeps testing with his nose to see if one of the does is ready to let him in. He does this by driving her around the pasture while bleating with his tongue hanging out, which actually looks a bit ridiculous. If the lady of his dreams stands her ground and squats to pee, he shoves his nose into the stream. Then he snorts and curls back his upper lip to check her hormone levels to see if this will be his lucky day. After many days of testing, the does finally allow Vito a few seconds of bliss.”
“Quite a few animals have been observed pleasuring themselves. Deer, horses, wild cats, or brown bears — all have been seen either laying a hand (that is to say a paw) on themselves or taking advantage of natural aids such as tree trunks.”
Names
“Ravens cultivate lifelong relationships, not only between parents and children, but also among friends. Naming calls are the way to go if you want to communicate over long distances and identify which individual is doing the talking. These inky black birds can master more than eighty different calls, a raven vocabulary if you will. Amongst these is a personal identification call a raven uses to announce its presence to other ravens. But is this call really a name? That would only be true in the way we use the word if other ravens also “addressed” the speaker using its personal identification call — and that’s exactly what ravens do. They remember the names of other ravens for years, even if they’ve had no contact. If an acquaintance appears in the sky and calls his or her name from afar, there are two possible responses. If the returning raven is a former friend, the other ravens answer in high-pitched, friendly voices. However, if the raven is unpopular, the greeting is low-pitched and brusque. Similar observations have been made for human greetings.”
“To help bring some civility back into the process, researchers from the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut (the German Federal Research Institute for Animal Health), specifically from the institute’s pig team, tried to teach manners to pigs at an experimental farm in Mecklenhorst in Lower Saxony. Here, using small school “classes” of eight to ten animals, they trained yearlings to respond to individual names. The young porkers were particularly good at catching on to three-syllable female names. After one week of training, the pigs went back into a pen in a larger group. And now meal times got really interesting. Each pig was called up by name when it was its turn. And, as it turns out, it worked. As soon as “Brunnhilde” rang out from the loudspeaker, the only pig that sprang up and raced to the trough was the one that had been called, while all the others continued doing whatever it was they were doing, which for most of them was simply snoozing. The measured heart rate of the other pigs did not increase, and the only pig that registered a higher pulse was the one that had been summoned. The new system had a success rate of 90 percent, and is one way to bring peace and order to the pens.”
“Every squirrel has a distinctive call, and the solitary creatures use these calls to recognize one another. After all, they don’t see each other very often because their territories rarely intersect, so the only way they can communicate is by sound. What is even more astounding is that some animals come looking when they stop hearing their relatives’ calls. This means they have to leave their own territory and enter an unfamiliar one. Does that make them nervous? We can only speculate about that, but we do know that when they come across orphaned young during their forays into alien territory, they take the helpless young into their care.”
Grief
“There are times, however, when disaster strikes the alpha doe, for example when her fawn dies. In earlier times, the cause of death was usually disease or a hungry wolf. These days, it is often a blast from a hunter’s gun. For deer, the same process is set in motion as for us. First, unbelievable confusion reigns, and then grief sets in. Grief? Are deer even capable of experiencing an emotion like that? Not only can they, but they must. Grief helps them to say goodbye. The bond between doe and fawn is so intense that it cannot be severed from one moment to the next. The doe must slowly accept that her child is dead and that she must distance herself from the tiny corpse. Over and over again, she returns to the spot where her child died and calls for her fawn, even if the hunter has carried it away. A grieving alpha doe endangers her kin by remaining close to the scene of death, which also means close to danger. What the herd needs to do is to move to a safer place, but departure is delayed until the bond between mother and fawn finally dissolves. There is no question that under such circumstances, it is time for a change in leadership, and this happens without any struggle for dominance. Another similarly experienced doe simply steps forward and takes over leadership of the group.”
Body Language
“I learned how sensitive horses are and how they react immediately to the slightest cues. If my wife or I were not on task or were on edge, they ignored our commands or shoved inconsiderately when we were feeding them. It was the same when we were riding them. The horses knew just by how tense our bodies were whether our cues (for instance, a small adjustment of weight in the direction we wanted them to go) were to be taken seriously or not.”
Remorse
“Bonnie Beaver from Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine came to the following conclusion: dogs give their owners the typical puppy dog look because they learn what their owners expect when they scold, which means the dogs are reacting to the scolding and not to their guilty conscience. Alexandra Horowitz from Barnard College in New York came to the same conclusion. To do this, she asked fourteen dog owners to each leave their dog in a room with a bowl full of treats, after giving the dog a strict warning not to touch anything. Some owners were then misinformed about whether their dogs had eaten the treats or not. The result: although some of the dogs obeyed the order, all of the dogs made the puppy-dog face as soon as they were scolded. And yet that doesn’t necessarily mean that dogs pretend to feel sorry for their actions. If the scolding comes right after the deed, dogs connect their owner’s reaction with their behavior, and then their look probably really does express the remorse we ascribe to them.”
Envy
“To prove that a sense of fairness exists in dogs, Friederike Range’s team at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna had two dogs that knew each other sit side by side. All the dogs had to do was follow a simple command: “Give me your paw.” After that, there was a reward, which could vary greatly. Sometimes it was a piece of sausage, sometimes only a piece of bread, and sometimes it was nothing at all. As long as the rules of the game were the same for both dogs, everything was fine, and the dogs were happy to play along. To make the dogs feel envious, as the experiment progressed, the dogs were rewarded most unfairly. If both offered up a paw, only one got a reward and the other didn’t. The more stringent tests rewarded one dog with sausage while the other got nothing, even though it had offered its paw like a good dog. The unfair gift of food to the other dog was eyed suspiciously. It didn’t matter whether the other animal got the tastier treat with or without doing anything; at some point the dog that was being unfairly treated got fed up and refused to cooperate. But if the dog was sitting alone and wasn’t able to compare itself with its companion, then it didn’t object and continued to cooperate even when there was no reward. Before this experiment, researchers had observed such feelings of envy and unfairness only in primates.”
Empathy
“The researchers observed evidence of empathy in the tiny mammals, the first non-primates in which such emotions have been documented. The experiments themselves, however, were anything but empathetic. The researchers caused painful injuries by injecting acid into their tiny paws, or, in another experiment, pressed these sensitive body parts onto hot surfaces. If the mice had observed other mice experiencing similar torture, they experienced considerably more pain than if they went into the experiment unprepared. On the flip side, the presence of another, less-traumatized mouse made it easier for the test subject to endure the pain. What was important was how long the mice had known each other. There were clear effects of empathy if the animals had been together for more than fourteen days, which is typical for wild wood mice in Central European woodlands.”
“I’m thinking of the experiments of Dutch scientists at Wageningen University and Research Centre in charge of the experimental pens at the Swine Innovation Centre in Sterksel, where they played classical music to the pigs. Don’t worry, the researchers weren’t trying to find out if pigs are fond of Bach. Rather, they got the pigs to connect the music to small rewards, such as chocolate-covered raisins hidden in the straw. Over time, the pigs in the experimental group came to associate music with particular emotions. And now things got interesting, for other pigs were added that had never heard such sounds and therefore had no idea what they meant. Despite this, they experienced the same emotions the musical pigs experienced. If the musical pigs were happy, the newcomers also played and jumped around; in contrast, if the musical pigs were so scared that they urinated on themselves, the newcomers caught the feeling and exhibited the same behavior. Pigs clearly can experience empathy. They can pick up on the emotions other pigs are feeling and experience those feelings themselves — a classic expression of empathy.”
“Mirror neurons react as though it’s your body that is affected. A classic example is yawning. When your partner opens his or her mouth to yawn, you feel the need to yawn as well. (It’s more enjoyable, of course, when you allow yourself to be infected by someone else’s smile.) More serious situations make this even clearer. If a member of your family cuts their finger, you suffer along with that person as though you had injured yourself, because similar nerve cells in your brain respond. However, these mirror neurons function only if they’ve been trained early in life. People who have loving parents or other caregivers practice mirroring emotions and strengthen these neurons from an early age, while the capacity to feel empathy wastes away in people who are denied early exposure to this skill.”
“Many animals act selflessly — even bacteria. For instance, individual bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics release indole, a substance that serves as an alarm signal. Immediately, all the other bacteria in the area take protective measures. And this means that even those that have not mutated to become resistant to antibiotics are able to survive.”
“Bats recognize one another and know exactly which of their acquaintances are generous and which are not. Those that exhibit especially altruistic traits are the first to be looked after if they themselves ever run into a string of bad luck.”
Learning
“House mice are common where I live. But the research took place far, far away on Gough Island in the raging South Atlantic, thousands of miles from the nearest mainland.
Seabirds such as the enormous albatrosses breed here in complete isolation. That is, they did until one day seafarers discovered the island and inadvertently released house mice that had stowed away on their ships. The mice did there what mice do here. They dug holes, ate roots and blades of grass, and multiplied magnificently. But then, one day, one of them suddenly got a taste for meat. It must have found out how to kill albatross chicks, which, quite apart from the savagery of the act, is no easy feat because the chicks are around two hundred times larger than their attackers. The mice quickly learnt that a large number of them had to keep biting a chick until it bled to death. Especially brutal mice even began to eat the fluffy balls of down while they were still alive.
But back to animal school. The researchers noticed that, for years, chicks were hunted only in particular parts of the island. Clearly, mouse parents demonstrated the technique to their children, passing the skill on to the next generation, while other mice in other areas knew nothing about this hunting strategy.
One approach leaves a bad taste in the youngsters’ mouth. And I mean that literally. We’ve experienced this ourselves with our milk goats. If a mother loses her kids in spring as a result of some misfortune, we have to take matters into our own hands and milk her. If we didn’t do this, her engorged udder could get inflamed, which would be very painful. To say nothing of the fact that we then get delicious milk that we either pour over our cereal or process into cheese. Did I say delicious? Well, in the first few weeks, that’s exactly what it is. It tastes smooth and creamy, and it’s hard to tell from good cow’s milk. However, as spring progresses, the milk tastes increasingly bitter. Eventually, none of us want to drink it anymore. This is when we increase the time between milkings, and the goat’s milk gradually dries up. It doesn’t matter whether it’s us or the kids drinking the milk — the taste makes the udder unappetizing, and the young goats begin to turn to grass and other things green.”
“When hunting was outlawed in Geneva, the behavior of deer and wild boar there changed. They lost their wariness of people and now they show themselves during the day. But it’s not only the Genevese wild boar that have changed their behavior. All around, including in neighboring France, hunters are blasting away. And as soon as the hunting season kicks off especially in the fall, when the drive hunts that use packs of hounds start — the pigs become excellent swimmers. As blasts of the hunting horn reverberate through the air and gunshots begin to ring out, many boar leave the French shore and swim across the Rhône river to the canton of Geneva. Safe on the other side, they can now thumb their snouts at the French hunters.
The swimming swine show three things. First, they are aware of the danger and can remember the previous year’s hunt when family members brought down in a hail of bullets had to be left behind dead or severely wounded. Second, they must be afraid, for this is what drives them to abandon the territory where they have felt so comfortable all summer long. Third, they must be able to remember that they will be safe over in Geneva. Over the extended period of more than four decades, the journey has become a tradition passed from one generation of wild boar to the next: in times of danger, we cross the river to safety. The forefathers of these omnivores discovered this through trial and error in the 1970s. They obviously have a well-developed sense of self-preservation.”
“An animal that has seen a family member collapse covered in blood, or has experienced fear and rising panic deep in its bones, will pass these experiences on, probably over many generations. Researchers have concluded this transfer happens even in the absence of language, for — as reported back in 2009–fear is not only felt in the bones but also expressed in the genes. The Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry in Munich discovered that during traumatic experiences particular chemical markers (methyl groups) get attached to genes. They work like switches and alter the activity of the genes. According to the discoveries researchers made using mice, this means behavior can be changed for life. The research also predicts that, thanks to these altered genes, certain patterns of behavior can be inherited. In other words, our genetic code passes down not only physical characteristics but also, to a certain extent, experiences.”
Climate
“You can even roughly estimate the current temperature by listening. That sounds bizarre, but it’s actually quite simple. Grasshoppers and crickets are our little helpers here. These cold-blooded insects begin their concerts when the temperature reaches about 53 degrees Fahrenheit. The higher the thermometer climbs, the faster they chirp.”
“In the forest I manage, the lush green moss at the bottom of thick beeches is often brown and crispy dry come summer, and the little bears have absolutely no access to water. Then they fall into an extreme form of sleep. Only well-nourished tardigrades survive, and fat plays an important role. If moisture is lost too quickly, death follows; however, if moisture evaporates gradually, the tardigrades adjust, dry out, draw their tiny legs up into their bodies, and reduce their metabolic rate to zero. In this state of suspended animation, they can withstand almost anything: neither searing heat nor bone-chilling cold can touch them. Absolutely no biological activity takes place. They do not dream, because that inner projector requires energy to roll. You could say it’s a kind of death, which means there’s no aging either. In the general scheme of things, tardigrades are not long lived, but under extreme conditions, they can survive for decades, waiting for rain to reanimate them. When rain comes and saturates both the desiccated moss and the tardigrades, it takes no more than twenty minutes for the tiny creatures to extend their legs and get their internal structures back online. Life as they know it resumes.”
Urban Life
“Outside the city limits, fields and pastures are drowning in seas of liquid manure and being transformed into wastelands, and in the forests clearcut logging machines are sawing down one tree after another and compacting the soil beyond repair, while in the cities, between the rows of houses, new, relatively intact habitats are appearing. No wonder a large number of species from the decimated agrarian deserts have fled to these refugia, including thousands of plants. Scientists estimate that about 50 percent of the native regional and national species of plants in the Northern Hemisphere are to be found in cities. This means our suburbs are now becoming hotspots of diversity. Why am I highlighting the distribution of plants in a book about animals? Well, herbaceous plants, shrubs, and trees are food for animals. They are the first link in the food chain, and therefore they are important indicators for habitat quality. And this means that there are encouraging findings to report for animals, as well. For example, 65 percent of all the species of birds in Poland can be found in Warsaw.”
“At first, a disproportionate number of non-native species gain a foothold, because they are “set out” in — that is to say introduced into — gardens and parks by the city’s inhabitants. It takes many centuries for native varieties to proliferate and reclaim neighborhoods. You can look to the US and Italy to follow their progress. The number of nonnative plants in the States decreases from east to west, mirroring the waves of settlement by Europeans, and in Rome their numbers have decreased to just 12.4 percent of the whole. The Eternal City has had more than two thousand years to achieve this balance.”
“Because milk is a valuable food, communities where a genetic mutation made it possible for their members to digest lactose had a better chance of survival. This process can be traced back about eight thousand years and is still ongoing, meaning that in Central Europe only 90 percent and in Asia only 10 percent of the population has this ability.”
