
New research on PTSD in elephants and other animals - pseudolus
https://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/blog/new-research-shows-that-elephants-and-other-animals-can-suffer-from-ptsd
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modriano
My girlfriend and I are currently fostering two pigeons (pet pigeons, hatched
from other pet pigeons) who were abused by the children of their prior owners
(they shot the pigeons with BBs and broke one's wing). It's obvious that they
suffer PTSD and they are afraid of people now, much more than other pigeons
we've fostered.

~~~
sachdevap
How does one distinguish a legitimate acquired fear of some things vs PTSD? I
am prone to feeling anxious in social situations, but I doubt that counts as
PTSD.

If the two pigeons had seen people humans be bad to them, it would imo be a
natural response to be fearful of humans.

I am not trying to diminish the idea that animals have PTSD. I think it is
only natural to imagine they do and so I find the title weird - it should
rather be a confirmation of what should be a normal thing to assume.

I just want to know how one could distinguish between acquired justifiable
fear and PTSD.

~~~
vector_spaces
I mean, IANAD, but it might count as PTSD.

I think the main differentiator is that PTSD leaves sort of a lasting
impression on your nervous system that alters your behavior even when the
threat isn't around.

For example, in my case, the aspect of my PTSD that most impacts my quality of
life today is hypervigilance. I'm constantly scanning for threats, watching
people's hands, looking for exits, aware of people coming and going, noticing
changes in tones or language, trying to anticipate sources of conflict in
social situations before they happen. I'm obsessive about keeping doors
locked. I deliberately keep lights dimmed and use noise canceling headphones
as much as possible to keep my environment low stimulation.

And I can't sleep until I'm completely exhausted because I don't like being
impaired. Like I'll take melatonin, and fight the sleepiness until it wears
off.

This isn't to mention stuff like nightmares, feelings of distrust and the
tendency to self-isolate and cut people off. These aren't so much issues for
me these days though. And while my description of my hypervigilance might
sound pretty dire, I think it's the most under control today that it's ever
been.

But back to your question, I sort of think of anxiety due to a
learned/justifiable fear as something that really only comes into play when
the trigger is imminent.

But TBH, I prefer to think of this stuff as existing on a continuum. Like, a
"learned fear" is just a different shade of PTSD, not something where there's
a super well-defined barrier. But again, IANAD, just a patient :)

~~~
sachdevap
Thanks for the detailed response. Must be frustrating I imagine. I hope you
feel better with time.

I can understand many of your observations, and I would imagine that it is a
spectrum. But this only makes the observation of PTSD in other species more
muddy. I would imagine there could be some sort of behavioral or physiological
observations, and that is what I am hoping we will have some day.

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jnordwick
Considering PTSD affects the amygdala part of the brain and our base instincts
(fight, flight, or freeze is pretty primitive), I wouldn't be too shocked if
even reptiles could have PTSD.

I've had two rescue animals, and they most definitely had PTSD issues (ones
with people and the other with cars). Seems pretty obvious.

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reportinglive
[https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/mother-elephant-
uproot...](https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/mother-elephant-uproots-
transformer-andhra-day-after-her-calf-dies-electrocution-106008)

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vector_spaces
There was a beautiful, but gut-wrenchingly sad article about trauma in
elephants in the NYT about 13 years ago. It's a super long read but it's
highly recommended if you're interested in this topic.

It starts off by describing how elephant attacks are on the rise throughout
the world, which for people in regions with wild elephants is totally
unprecedented, describing how in the aftermath of government sponsored
cullings roving bands of young elephants in places like Uganda would target
humans and other animals. It then follows a Ugandan researcher at Cambridge
interested in the parallels between the trauma in elephants and trauma in
communities impacted by the Ugandan civil war (particularly the Acholi,
targeted by the now infamous Kony for recruitment).

"For Bradshaw, these continuities between human and elephant brains resonate
far outside the field of neuroscience. ‘‘Elephants are suffering and behaving
in the same ways that we recognize in ourselves as a result of violence,’’ she
told me. ‘‘It is entirely congruent with what we know about humans and other
mammals. Except perhaps for a few specific features, brain organization and
early development of elephants and humans are extremely similar. That’s not
news. What is news is when you start asking, What does this mean beyond the
science? How do we respond to the fact that we are causing other species like
elephants to psychologically break down? In a way, it’s not so much a
cognitive or imaginative leap anymore as it is a political one.’’

...

‘‘I started looking again at what has happened among the Acholi and the
elephants,’’ Abe told me. ‘‘I saw that it is an absolute coincidence between
the two. You know we used to have villages. We still don’t have villages.
There are over 200 displaced-people’s camps in present-day northern Uganda.
Everybody lives now within these camps, and there are no more elders. The
elders were systematically eliminated. The first batch of elimination was
during Amin’s time, and that set the stage for the later destruction of
northern Uganda. We are among the lucky few, because my mom and dad managed to
escape. But the families there are just broken. I know many of them. Displaced
people are living in our home now. My mother said let them have it. All these
kids who have grown up with their parents killed — no fathers, no mothers,
only children looking after them. They don’t go to schools. They have no
schools, no hospitals. No infrastructure. They form these roaming, violent,
destructive bands. It’s the same thing that happens with the elephants. Just
like the male war orphans, they are wild, completely lost.’’

[https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/magazine/08elephant.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/magazine/08elephant.html)

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zamazingo
Anyone who ever interacted with any animal who had trauma in their part
already knows this. The experiences of "other"s that people are too ready and
wanting to ignore simply because those experiences were not rubber stamped by
academic journals is astonishingly depressing.

~~~
Ididntdothis
I think it's just very inconvenient that animals can have feelings and can
suffer. Once you accept this then suddenly a lot of things become ethically
very problematic, e.g. zoos, circus animals, pollution, a lot of farming
practices. Much easier to deny that and claim that humans are special and only
they can suffer.

~~~
GuiA
Which is ironic, because I have many old relatives who used to live on farms,
and they are all very attuned to the feelings of animals. They can tell when
one is in pain, how to take care of it, etc. Note that it is not at odds with
the fact that there are raising the animal for meat, in some cases.

What is problematic is when decision chains get abstracted out and decisions
depersonalized, and a bunch of company executives in a room decide how many
chickens they need to fit per square foot of space in order to turn a profit
next quarter, rather than those decisions being made by the people who take
care of the chicken every day.

In that light, the psychology and social systems at play in industrial farming
isn’t too different from that of prisons, internment camps, etc. Lives that
are abstract numbers in profit equations to decision makers who don’t have to
see up too close what those numbers really represent.

~~~
superpermutat0r
Tyson Foods, the biggest chicken firm, gives (sells) chicken to family owned
farms that make the decision to cram the chickens in small space, and then
Tyson Foods buys back the big chickens. The business is done in a way so that
Tyson Foods has all the upside and little downside. I do not think they bore
themselves with the logistics of raising chickens, they think of how to market
their chicken scam to other family farms.

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jjtheblunt
How the hell is that new research, when it's been clear to everyone since time
began?

~~~
morcutt
I wonder the same whenever I see animal posts like this. They experience the
same shit we do.

~~~
DangitBobby
It's surprising, but people are _still_ debating whether animals actually
experience something or they are actually just complex robots that appear
(incredibly convincingly) to experience things.

~~~
rleigh
One could make that claim about every human being on the planet other than our
own self. While both are interesting theoretical philosophical arguments, I
don't believe either are true. It's pretty convincingly clear that most
animals, higher mammals certainly, and birds and reptiles probably, experience
the world in almost essentially the same way we do. From an evolutionary and
developmental angle, every animal has their brain wired up the same way; it
would be extraordinary if they _didn 't_ experience the same world we do in
the same, or very similar, way to ourselves. Similar body plans, similar
senses, similar emotions, similar learning, memory and recall. The
physiological differences are superficial. The only distinguishing feature we
have is advanced spoken and written language, and it's not clear that other
species couldn't take that step eventually. Some already have language of
sorts. Some, such as Chaser the collie, who passed away a short time ago, can
learn huge amounts of human vocabulary and grammar, if they are motivated.

About 20 years ago, while an undergraduate biologist studying immunology, I
worked for a short time in an animal facility studying tropical diseases in
mice. This philosophical argument, and others, were discussed during our
training. It didn't take long to quickly disabuse myself of any lingering
doubts that this argument had any merit whatsoever, and I never did live
animal work ever again after that.

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Kecelij
You mean shell shock?

Shell Shock vs PTSD: George Carlin on euphemisms in today's language
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSp8IyaKCs0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSp8IyaKCs0)

~~~
duskwuff
The term "shell shock" was coined during World War I, under the belief that
these soldiers' symptoms were caused by repeated exposure to exploding
artillery shells. Once it became clear that the actual cause was more nuanced,
the term was abandoned.

Ironically, more recent research into veterans who served in Iraq and
Afghanistan suggests that there may be some real neurological effects of
close-range exposure to explosions, such as IEDs...

