life. The young and old of all species are most at risk for finding themselves in the role of “prey animal.” Their survival depends on the actions of courageous parents, siblings, pride or pack members, herd members, and even individuals from other species who put themselves at risk to protect the vulnerable.
Still, there are important distinctions between the assertive, nonlethal forms of power herbivores develop and the killing-consuming orientation of carnivores, though lions, wolves, and their domesticated cousins can also adopt nonpredatory behaviors, especially in relationship to animals and people they consider kin. Nature depends upon predators to keep life in balance with available resources, but through mutual aid, the hormone oxytocin, and the impressive protective abilities of potential prey, four-legged carnivores are prevented from decimating large herbivore populations. In trying to justify callous, sociopathic tendencies, conquest-oriented human cultures overidentify with inaccurate, cartoonlike images of humanity’s status as “king of the jungle,” using the idea that we are at the top of the food chain to exploit other species without reservation. The repercussions are reliably catastrophic.
To mitigate the dysfunctions that lead to war, economic crises, and environmental devastation, our species needs to cultivate an advanced knowledge of natural principles. In an act not unlike pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps, we must learn to function more like ecosystems rather than rabid predators or meek and disempowered prey. If we cannot evolve, consciously, in this way, apocalyptic predictions will become a devastating reality, and life on this planet may reach the point of no return.
Here’s the good news: A pattern for this transformation already exists, one that occurs over and over again, throughout history and around the world, whenever carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores combine forces through the process of mutual domestication.
Made for Each Other
In 1992, Meg Daley Olmert, an Emmy Award–winning documentary filmmaker, was developing a series about the human-animal bond. Her interdisciplinary findings resulted in unexpected insights on how our ancestors formed associations with other animals, eventually resulting in interspecies partnerships that, in the process, changed the behavior and neurophysiology of our own species.
Olmert’s years of dedicated research eventually led to her 2009 book Made for Each Other: The Biology of the Human-Animal Bond, which I highly recommend reading for its amazingly accessible discussion of interspecies evolution and, in particular, of the role of the hormone oxytocin in this process.
Over the last thirty years, studies involving rats, prairie voles, dogs, and humans have demonstrated that oxytocin makes mammals less fearful and more curious, encouraging individuals not only to form pair bonds, nest, and nurture their young but to leave the nest and explore unfamiliar territory, most especially new relationships. In her book The Oxytocin Factor, Swedish scientist Kerstin Uvnäs-Moberg, reports that “when given oxytocin, groups of rats of the same sex become more gregarious and less afraid of contact. As aggression in the group decreases noticeably, friendly socialization replaces it. Rather than avoid each other, the rats prefer to sit next to each other. This closeness leads in its turn to the release of still more oxytocin.”
The hormone is increased on both sides of an interaction when mothers nurse their young, and when animals of any age groom one another. In undertaking her influential research to understand how the hormone works, Uvnäs-Moberg used oxytocin injections to isolate its effects. Subsequent experiments showed ever-more-startling results, including elevated pain thresholds, faster wound healing, and heightened learning capacity. But she could never fully separate oxytocin’s influence on an individual’s physiology from the hormone’s prime directive: to calm and connect with others.
“Surprisingly, to a lesser degree, animals that live in the same cage but have not directly received the oxytocin also show the same changes,” she marvels. “The other animals in the cage become calmer and have lower levels of stress hormones.” Subsequent experiments showed that oxytocin’s benefits could be spread not only through nursing and direct touch, but through smell, vocal tone, and the concentrated attention that mothers engage in when adoring their newborns and people exhibit in gazing at beloved pets. This potent little peptide has also been shown to dramatically increase focus and social memory, while making people more trusting and trustworthy.
As Meg Daley Olmert contends in Made for Each Other, “The triumph of trust over paranoia enabled humans and animals to come together in domesticated partnerships and emboldened people to move beyond the social limitations of kinship and tribe and live harmoniously in a civilized world. . . .When humans began to keep animals and animals submitted to our care, we inadvertently created a chemical biofeedback system that changed our hearts and minds.”
Olmert’s wide-ranging, multidisciplinary research also makes a strong case for the hormone’s influence on people helped through animal-assisted therapy. Most significant is a 2003 South African study led by Johannes Odendaal and R. A. Meintjes showing that “when eighteen men and women interacted with their dogs (talking to them and gently stroking them) the owners’ blood levels of oxytocin almost doubled — and their dogs were also twice as enriched with oxytocin!” Along with this rise in the hormone came a significant decrease in blood pressure and the stress hormone cortisol, as well as an increase in beta endorphins and dopamine.
Promising studies have confirmed that oxytocin relieves some of the antisocial tendencies of autistics and can help people with attention deficient hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to calm down and focus. But the hormone doesn’t easily pass through the blood-brain barrier, making pharmaceutical versions used in scientific studies problematic for daily use. “Repeated injections of oxytocin in high doses has been shown to affect the emotional centers in the brain,” Olmert explains, “but that method of delivery is neither painless nor efficient. Nasal sprays also manage a degree of penetration. The problem is to reach the brain with the spray, you have to inhale almost three tablespoons of the substance. Even after all that unpleasantness, the effects are short-lived.”
Nature’s way is currently the only way for large numbers of people to benefit from oxytocin’s impressive, multilayered effects. With this realization, however, comes an inescapable paradox: City-based life works at odds with the very biochemical processes that made our species less aggressive and more likely to collaborate with others. Citing psychiatrist and animal-assisted-therapy pioneer Aaron Katcher, Olmert observes, “In our abrupt shift from farm to factory, we did a lot more than just put down the plow. More critically. . .we broke the bond with animals that helped make us civilized human beings. Katcher sees the fallout from this sudden interspecies divorce every day in children who are too wild to participate in polite society,” namely the increasing number of kids diagnosed with ADHD.
And what about all those hyperactive, hyperaggressive wolves on Wall Street? Wouldn’t it be the ultimate irony to discover that after eons of evolutionary trends encouraging sociability and mutual aid, concrete jungles cause people to devolve into increasingly more vicious behavior?
The Biology of Power and Connection
As decades of studies have shown, oxytocin buffers the fight-or-flight response, making mammals braver and more open to collaboration. But there’s another hormone that adds just the right amount of spice to the mix, particularly in the context of leadership development. In The Oxytocin Factor, Uvnäs-Moberg compares the “calm and connect” effect with a similar substance, vasopressin, which differs by only two amino acids. This behavior-altering peptide also encourages pair bonding, especially during sexual activity, but in a wider social context, it promotes a decidedly more active approach.
Vasopressin, Uvnäs-Moberg writes, “instills courage by making the individual feel aggressive and fearless. The rat, male or female, is prepared to attack, mark territory, and vigorously defend itself. Oxytocin instead fosters courage by diminishing the feeling
