ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Laurel Braitman - Science Historian + Writer
Science historian Laurel Braitman is the author of Animal Madness, a book that takes a close look at our non-human friends and their mental anxieties.

Why you should listen
Laurel Braitman is a science historian who wants to know: Why is your cat so sad? For her book Animal Madness, the TED Fellow delves into the history of mental illness in animals, revealing a world of parrots that pluck themselves, cats with PTSD and donkeys with deep neuroses. Braitman holds a PhD in history and anthropology of science from MIT and works as an affiliate artist at the Headlands Center for the Arts.
More profile about the speaker
Laurel Braitman | Speaker | TED.com
TEDSalon NY2014

Laurel Braitman: Depressed dogs, cats with OCD — what animal madness means for us humans

Filmed:
1,649,249 views

Behind those funny animal videos, sometimes, are oddly human-like problems. Laurel Braitman studies non-human animals who exhibit signs of mental health issues -- from compulsive bears to self-destructive rats to monkeys with unlikely friends. Braitman asks what we as humans can learn from watching animals cope with depression, sadness and other all-too-human problems.
- Science Historian + Writer
Science historian Laurel Braitman is the author of Animal Madness, a book that takes a close look at our non-human friends and their mental anxieties. Full bio

Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.

00:13
Oliver was an extremely dashing,
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handsome, charming and largely unstable male
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that I completely lost my heart to.
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(Laughter)
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He was a Bernese mountain dog,
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and my ex-husband and I adopted him,
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and about six months in,
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we realized that he was a mess.
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He had such paralyzing separation anxiety
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that we couldn't leave him alone.
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Once, he jumped out of our third floor apartment.
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He ate fabric. He ate things, recyclables.
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He hunted flies that didn't exist.
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He suffered from hallucinations.
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He was diagnosed with a canine compulsive disorder
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and that's really just the tip of the iceberg.
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But like with humans,
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sometimes it's six months in
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before you realize that
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the person that you love has some issues.
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(Laughter)
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And most of us do not take the person we're dating
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back to the bar where we met them
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or give them back to the friend that introduced us,
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or sign them back up on Match.com.
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(Laughter)
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We love them anyway,
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and we stick to it,
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and that is what I did with my dog.
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And I was a — I'd studied biology.
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I have a Ph.D. in history of science
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from MIT,
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and had you asked me 10 years ago
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if a dog I loved, or just dogs generally,
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had emotions, I would have said yes,
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but I'm not sure that I would have told you
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that they can also wind up with an anxiety disorder,
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a Prozac prescription and a therapist.
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But then, I fell in love, and I realized that they can,
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and actually trying to help my own dog
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overcome his panic and his anxiety,
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it just changed my life.
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It cracked open my world.
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And I spent the last seven years, actually,
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looking into this topic of
mental illness in other animals.
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Can they be mentally ill like people,
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and if so, what does it mean about us?
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And what I discovered is that I do believe
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they can suffer from mental illness,
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and actually looking and trying
to identify mental illness in them
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often helps us be better friends to them
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and also can help us better understand ourselves.
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So let's talk about diagnosis for a minute.
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Many of us think that we can't know
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what another animal is thinking,
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and that is true,
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but any of you in relationships —
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at least this is my case —
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just because you ask someone that you're with
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or your parent or your child how they feel
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doesn't mean that they can tell you.
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They may not have words to explain
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what it is that they're feeling,
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and they may not know.
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It's actually a pretty recent phenomenon
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that we feel that we have to talk to someone
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to understand their emotional distress.
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Before the early 20th century,
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physicians often diagnosed emotional distress
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in their patients just by observation.
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It also turns out that thinking about
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mental illness in other animals
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isn't actually that much of a stretch.
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Most mental disorders in the United States
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are fear and anxiety disorders,
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and when you think about it, fear and anxiety
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are actually really extremely
helpful animal emotions.
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Usually we feel fear and anxiety
in situations that are dangerous,
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and once we feel them,
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we then are motivated to move away
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from whatever is dangerous.
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The problem is when we begin to feel fear
and anxiety in situations that don't call for it.
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Mood disorders, too, may actually just be
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the unfortunate downside of being a feeling animal,
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and obsessive compulsive disorders also
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are often manifestations of
a really healthy animal thing
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which is keeping yourself clean and groomed.
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This tips into the territory of mental illness
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when you do things like
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compulsively over-wash your hands or paws,
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or you develop a ritual that's so extreme
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that you can't sit down to a bowl of food
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unless you engage in that ritual.
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So for humans, we have the
"Diagnostic and Statistical Manual,"
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which is basically an atlas
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of the currently agreed-upon mental disorders.
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In other animals, we have YouTube.
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(Laughter)
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This is just one search I did for "OCD dog"
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but I encourage all of you
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to look at "OCD cat."
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You will be shocked by what you see.
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I'm going to show you just a couple examples.
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This is an example of shadow-chasing.
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I know, and it's funny and in some ways it's cute.
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The issue, though, is that dogs
can develop compulsions like this
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that they then engage in all day.
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So they won't go for a walk,
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they won't hang out with their friends,
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they won't eat.
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They'll develop fixations
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like chasing their tails compulsively.
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Here's an example of a cat named Gizmo.
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He looks like he's on a stakeout
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but he does this for many, many, many hours a day.
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He just sits there and he will paw and paw and paw
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at the screen.
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This is another example of what's considered
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a stereotypic behavior.
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This is a sun bear at the
Oakland Zoo named Ting Ting.
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And if you just sort of happened upon this scene,
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you might think that Ting Ting
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is just playing with a stick,
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but Ting Ting does this all day,
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and if you pay close attention
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and if I showed you guys
the full half-hour of this clip,
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you'd see that he does the exact same thing
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in the exact same order, and he spins the stick
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in the exact same way every time.
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Other super common behaviors that you may see,
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particularly in captive animals,
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are pacing stereotypies or swaying stereotypies,
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and actually, humans do this too,
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and in us, we'll sway,
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we'll move from side to side.
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Many of us do this, and sometimes
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it's an effort to soothe ourselves,
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and I think in other animals
that is often the case too.
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But it's not just stereotypic behaviors
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that other animals engage in.
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This is Gigi. She's a gorilla that lives
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at the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston.
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She actually has a Harvard psychiatrist,
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and she's been treated for a mood disorder
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among other things.
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Many animals develop mood disorders.
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Lots of creatures —
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this horse is just one example —
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develop self-destructive behaviors.
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They'll gnaw on things
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or do other things that may also soothe them,
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even if they're self-destructive,
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which could be considered similar
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to the ways that some humans cut themselves.
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Plucking.
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Turns out, if you have fur or feathers or skin,
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you can pluck yourself compulsively,
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and some parrots actually have been studied
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to better understand trichotillomania,
or compulsive plucking in humans,
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something that affects
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20 million Americans right now.
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Lab rats pluck themselves too.
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In them, it's called barbering.
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Canine veterans of conflicts of Iraq and Afghanistan
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are coming back with what's
considered canine PTSD,
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and they're having a hard time reentering civilian life
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when they come back from deployments.
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They can be too scared to
approach men with beards
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or to hop into cars.
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I want to be careful and be clear, though.
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I do not think that canine PTSD
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is the same as human PTSD.
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But I also do not think that my PTSD
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is like your PTSD,
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or that my anxiety or that my sadness is like yours.
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We are all different.
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We also all have very different susceptibilities.
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So two dogs, raised in the same household,
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exposed to the very same things,
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one may develop, say, a
debilitating fear of motorcycles,
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or a phobia of the beep of the microwave,
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and another one is going to be just fine.
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So one thing that people ask me pretty frequently:
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Is this just an instance of humans
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driving other animals crazy?
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Or, is animal mental illness just
a result of mistreatment or abuse?
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And it turns out we're actually
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so much more complicated than that.
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So one great thing that has happened to me
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is recently I published a book on this,
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and every day now that I open my email
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or when I go to a reading
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or even when I go to a cocktail party,
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people tell me their stories
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of the animals that they have met.
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And recently, I did a reading in California,
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and a woman raised her hand
after the talk and she said,
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"Dr. Braitman, I think my cat has PTSD."
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And I said, "Well, why? Tell me a little bit about it."
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So, Ping is her cat. She was a rescue,
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and she used to live with an elderly man,
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and one day the man was vacuuming
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and he suffered a heart attack, and he died.
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A week later, Ping was discovered in the apartment
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alongside the body of her owner,
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and the vacuum had been running the entire time.
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For many months, up to I think
two years after that incident,
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she was so scared she couldn't be in
the house when anyone was cleaning.
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She was quite literally a scaredy cat.
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She would hide in the closet.
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She was un-self-confident and shaky,
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but with the loving support of her family,
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a lot of a time, and their patience,
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now, three years later,
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she's actually a happy, confident cat.
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Another story of trauma and
recovery that I came across
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was actually a few years ago.
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I was in Thailand to do some research.
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I met a monkey named Boonlua,
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and when Boonlua was a baby,
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he was attacked by a pack of dogs,
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and they ripped off both of his legs and one arm,
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and Boonlua dragged himself to a monastery,
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where the monks took him in.
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They called in a veterinarian,
who treated his wounds.
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Eventually, Boonlua wound up
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at an elephant facility,
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and the keepers really decided
to take him under their wing,
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and they figured out what he liked,
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which, it turned out, was mint Mentos
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and Rhinoceros beetles and eggs.
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But they worried, because he
was social, that he was lonely,
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and they didn't want to put
him in with another monkey,
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because they thought with just one arm,
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he wouldn't be able to defend himself or even play.
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And so they gave him a rabbit,
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and Boonlua was immediately a different monkey.
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He was extremely happy to be with this rabbit.
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They groomed each other,
they become close friends,
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and then the rabbit had bunnies,
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and Boonlua was even happier than he was before,
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and it had in a way given him
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a reason to wake up in the morning,
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and in fact it gave him such a reason to wake up
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that he decided not to sleep.
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He became extremely protective of these bunnies,
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and he stopped sleeping,
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and he would sort of nod off
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while trying to take care of them.
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In fact, he was so protective and so affectionate
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with these babies that the sanctuary
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eventually had to take them away from him
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because he was so protective, he was worried
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that their mother might hurt them.
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So after they were taken away, the sanctuary staff
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worried that he would fall into a depression,
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and so to avoid that,
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they gave him another rabbit friend.
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(Laughter)
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My official opinion is that
he does not look depressed.
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(Laughter)
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So one thing that I would really like people to feel
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is that you really should feel empowered
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to make some assumptions
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about the creatures that you know well.
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So when it comes to your dog
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or your cat or maybe your one-armed monkey
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that you happen to know,
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if you think that they are traumatized or depressed,
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you're probably right.
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This is extremely anthropomorphic,
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or the assignation of human characteristics
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onto non-human animals or things.
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I don't think, though, that that's a problem.
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I don't think that we can not anthropomorphize.
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It's not as if you can take your
human brain out of your head
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and put it in a jar and then use it
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to think about another animal thinking.
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We will always be one animal wondering
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about the emotional experience of another animal.
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So then the choice becomes, how
do you anthropomorphize well?
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Or do you anthropomorphize poorly?
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And anthropomorphizing poorly
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is all too common.
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(Laughter)
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12:02
It may include dressing your corgis
up and throwing them a wedding,
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12:04
or getting too close to exotic wildlife because
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12:07
you believe that you had a spiritual connection.
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12:09
There's all manner of things.
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12:11
Anthropomorphizing well, however, I believe is based
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12:15
on accepting our animal
similarities with other species
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12:17
and using them to make assumptions
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that are informed about other
animals' minds and experiences,
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12:24
and there's actually an entire industry
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that is in some ways based
on anthropomorphizing well,
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12:29
and that is the psychopharmaceutical industry.
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12:32
One in five Americans is currently
taking a psychopharmaceutical drug,
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12:37
from the antidepressants
and antianxiety medications
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12:40
to the antipsychotics.
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12:41
It turns out that we owe this
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12:43
entire psychopharmaceutical arsenal
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12:46
to other animals.
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12:47
These drugs were tested in non-human animals first,
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12:50
and not just for toxicity but for behavioral effects.
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12:54
The very popular antipsychotic Thorazine
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12:57
first relaxed rats before it relaxed people.
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3746
13:01
The antianxiety medication Librium
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13:03
was given to cats selected for
their meanness in the 1950s
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13:07
and made them into peaceable felines.
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13:09
And even antidepressants
were first tested in rabbits.
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13:14
Today, however, we are not just giving these drugs
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13:17
to other animals as test subjects,
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13:19
but they're giving them these drugs as patients,
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13:21
both in ethical and much less ethical ways.
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13:26
SeaWorld gives mother orcas
antianxiety medications
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13:30
when their calves are taken away.
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2644
13:32
Many zoo gorillas have been given antipsychotics
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13:35
and antianxiety medications.
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2066
13:37
But dogs like my own Oliver
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13:40
are given antidepressants and
some antianxiety medications
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3239
13:43
to keep them from jumping out of buildings
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13:45
or jumping into traffic.
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2063
13:47
Just recently, actually, a study came out in "Science"
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3199
13:50
that showed that even crawdads
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13:52
responded to antianxiety medication.
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13:54
It made them braver, less skittish,
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13:56
and more likely to explore their environment.
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14:01
It's hard to know how many
animals are on these drugs,
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14:04
but I can tell you that the
animal pharmaceutical industry
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14:07
is immense and growing,
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14:09
from seven billion dollars in 2011
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2723
14:12
to a projected 9.25 billion by the year 2015.
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5579
14:17
Some animals are on these drugs indefinitely.
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3847
14:21
Others, like one bonobo who lives in Milwaukee
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4235
14:25
at the zoo there was on them
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1586
14:27
until he started to save his Paxil prescription
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14:29
and then distribute it among the other bonobos.
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14:31
(Laughter) (Applause)
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14:36
More than psychopharmaceuticals, though,
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14:39
there are many, many, many other
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14:42
therapeutic interventions that help other creatures.
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14:44
And here is a place where I think actually
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14:47
that veterinary medicine can teach something
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14:49
to human medicine,
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1686
14:51
which is, if you take your dog, who is, say,
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14:53
compulsively chasing his tail,
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1800
14:55
into the veterinary behaviorist,
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1778
14:56
their first action isn't to reach
for the prescription pad;
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2804
14:59
it's to ask you about your dog's life.
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2956
15:02
They want to know how often your dog gets outside.
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2936
15:05
They want to know how much
exercise your dog is getting.
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2654
15:08
They want to know how much social time
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1485
15:09
with other dogs and other humans.
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2419
15:12
They want to talk to you
about what sorts of therapies,
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2210
15:14
largely behavior therapies,
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2515
15:16
you've tried with that animal.
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15:19
Those are the things that
often tend to help the most,
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2397
15:21
especially when combined with
psychopharmaceuticals.
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3329
15:24
The thing, though, I believe, that helps the most,
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2453
15:27
particularly with social animals,
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1957
15:29
is time with other social animals.
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3138
15:32
In many ways, I feel like I became a service animal
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3908
15:36
to my own dog,
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2504
15:38
and I have seen parrots do it for people
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4027
15:42
and people do it for parrots
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1710
15:44
and dogs do it for elephants
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1538
15:46
and elephants do it for other elephants.
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3178
15:49
I don't know about you;
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1333
15:50
I get a lot of Internet forwards
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2580
15:53
of unlikely animal friendships.
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2216
15:55
I also think it's a huge part of Facebook,
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3287
15:58
the monkey that adopts the cat
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2877
16:01
or the great dane who adopted the orphaned fawn,
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4636
16:06
or the cow that makes friends with the pig,
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3004
16:09
and had you asked me eight,
nine years ago, about these,
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957237
3936
16:13
I would have told you that they
were hopelessly sentimental
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2490
16:15
and maybe too anthropomorphic in the wrong way
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3123
16:18
and maybe even staged, and what I can tell you now
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966786
2779
16:21
is that there is actually something to this.
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2952
16:24
This is legit. In fact, some interesting studies
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3595
16:28
have pointed to oxytocin levels,
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1926
16:30
which are a kind of bonding hormone
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2596
16:32
that we release when we're having sex or nursing
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2406
16:35
or around someone that we care for extremely,
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2589
16:37
oxytocin levels raising in both humans and dogs
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2492
16:40
who care about each other
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1394
16:41
or who enjoy each other's company,
386
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1660
16:43
and beyond that, other studies show that oxytocin
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2309
16:45
raised even in other pairs of animals,
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993484
2136
16:47
so, say, in goats and dogs who were
friends and played with each other,
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3605
16:51
their levels spiked afterwards.
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4459
16:55
I have a friend who really showed me that
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2767
16:58
mental health is in fact a two-way street.
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2424
17:00
His name is Lonnie Hodge,
and he's a veteran of Vietnam.
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3999
17:04
When he returned, he started working
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2622
17:07
with survivors of genocide and a lot of people
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2643
17:10
who had gone through war trauma.
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1528
17:11
And he had PTSD and also a fear of heights,
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2484
17:14
because in Vietnam, he had been
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1022151
1899
17:16
rappelling backwards out of helicopters
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2245
17:18
over the skids,
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1435
17:19
and he was givena service dog
named Gander, a labradoodle,
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3069
17:22
to help him with PTSD and his fear of heights.
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3451
17:26
This is them actually on the first day that they met,
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2660
17:28
which is amazing, and since then,
404
1036910
2592
17:31
they've spent a lot of time together
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1765
17:33
visiting with other veterans
suffering from similar issues.
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4250
17:37
But what's so interesting to me about
Lonnie and Gander's relationship
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1045517
3062
17:40
is about a few months in,
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1778
17:42
Gander actually developed a fear of heights,
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3327
17:45
probably because he was
watching Lonnie so closely.
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4297
17:49
What's pretty great about this, though,
is that he's still a fantastic service dog,
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3469
17:53
because now, when they're both at a great height,
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2535
17:55
Lonnie is so concerned with Gander's well-being
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3358
17:59
that he forgets to be scared of the heights himself.
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5974
18:05
Since I've spent so much time with these stories,
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3281
18:08
digging into archives,
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1404
18:10
I literally spent years doing this research,
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2454
18:12
and it's changed me.
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2300
18:14
I no longer look at animals at the species level.
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3936
18:18
I look at them as individuals,
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2228
18:20
and I think about them as creatures
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1572
18:22
with their own individual weather systems
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2759
18:25
guiding their behavior and informing
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1712
18:26
how they respond to the world.
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2309
18:29
And I really believe that this has made me
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2888
18:32
a more curious and a more empathetic person,
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2364
18:34
both to the animals that share my bed
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3443
18:37
and occasionally wind up on my plate,
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2126
18:40
but also to the people that I know
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2850
18:42
who are suffering from anxiety
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2951
18:45
and from phobias and all manner of other things,
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1113894
2627
18:48
and I really do believe that
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1975
18:50
even though you can't know exactly
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2248
18:52
what's going on in the mind of a pig
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3387
18:56
or your pug or your partner,
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2107
18:58
that that shouldn't stop you
from empathizing with them.
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3807
19:02
The best thing that we could do for our loved ones
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2489
19:04
is, perhaps, to anthropomorphize them.
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4296
19:08
Charles Darwin's father once told him
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3501
19:12
that everybody could lose their mind at some point.
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5219
19:17
Thankfully, we can often find them again,
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2831
19:20
but only with each other's help.
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2171
19:22
Thank you.
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2056
19:24
(Applause)
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Laurel Braitman - Science Historian + Writer
Science historian Laurel Braitman is the author of Animal Madness, a book that takes a close look at our non-human friends and their mental anxieties.

Why you should listen
Laurel Braitman is a science historian who wants to know: Why is your cat so sad? For her book Animal Madness, the TED Fellow delves into the history of mental illness in animals, revealing a world of parrots that pluck themselves, cats with PTSD and donkeys with deep neuroses. Braitman holds a PhD in history and anthropology of science from MIT and works as an affiliate artist at the Headlands Center for the Arts.
More profile about the speaker
Laurel Braitman | Speaker | TED.com