Gayook Wong MS
Facing Trauma Together
The Element of Surprise
A systematic review examines the psychological links between wild animals and humanity.
Posted Apr 29, 2021
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Reviewed by Lybi Ma
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Leopard fish caught at the beach in Australia.
Source: Photo by Gayook Wong, sourced from Wikimedia Commons. Photo by Gayook Wong, sourced from Wikimedia Commons.
In recent years, many scientists began to pay more attention to the fascinating habits of lice. In July 2020, I participated in a workshop with a group of scientists from the Netherlands, Canada, and the UK to analyze some data from the 1200-year-old diary accounts of captive gray wolves that were part of the Raven Project. I had access to the files from the project, as well as the updated reports from the field biologists and my fellow musicians at the University of Reading in the UK. The gist of our presentation was that lice are a fascinating species, one whose natural history is highly suggestive of adaptive evolution. Their enigmatic followers are also part of the fascinating world of taphophores, succulent plants which are part of the order Carnivora. (Sorry, not to bug, but I said that before the 1930s, my experience was limited to my third attempt at buying a cigar. Oops.)
Among the thousands of scientific reports, there were two important clues to help us puzzle out the natural history of this enigmatic creature. One is that during the 1930s, the term "taphophores" was used almost exclusively for purposes of communication. A little later, in the 1950s, the word "trapdoor lizard" was coined to describe a type of lizard that would not normally be found in the Americas. I explained that this creature probably represents a subspecies of the previously mentioned lizards, whose names have not been known. But it was not always so.
In the days since Halloween, countless people have requested (often from strangers) information about their cats, which typically is related to exploring their social world. While my experience has been a little less than stellar, I have offered a much more limited version of the same information, based on more than 6 years of records from both my own research and the research of many other colleagues. Surprisingly, this signal of information related to cats most often came from a website that sells novelty scarves.
Facebook image: timesphoto/Shutterstock
LinkedIn image: eskerlyn/Shutterstock
References
For my data, I used the Social Media Attribution (SOC) projective images from Pixabay and my cat photos in Filepool. This was essentially a modified version of the Atlantic Publication’s "Best of the Best" contest run by the Mûrkre Institute in Brussels, Belgium. Over 400 photographers from around the globe submitted photos of their most favorite cat, offering us a limited set of four different types of cat, as well as their size and color. The top four were chosen by lottery.
I discussed four of the top four choices, ranked high in my decision-making process. The other four were explained in more detail in a Dec. 1971 issue of the American Journal of Bioethics. I omitted the grades, because readers could infer whether a given cat was good or bad without evaluating the quality of the information about which the reader had access to the photo.
Here are the four choices:
1. Cat. This is the default choice in most societies. In the United States, a large portion of the population is residing in rural or suburban areas with many elderly people and other vulnerable members of society in the formerly rural and undeveloped areas. It is reasonable to assume that many elderly people in such areas have Cotard syndrome, which causes anosmia when exposed to the environment. Due to the cultural assumption that inanimate objects such as stuffed animals are gifts from God or otherworldly beings, many people default to the belief that a gift from a loved one is an important present from a human being.
2. Dog. Many people with dementia in later life who are unable to afford their medication must be given medication to manage the many sleep issues that plague them. Usually, it is simply drugs, although in some situations a prescription for alcohol may be required.
Many people with memory loss who are cognitively impaired or have been drinking heavily in order to manage their alcohol use are morally obliged to contact a doctor immediately if they suspect that their drinking may be worsening their cognitive state and may affect their safety.