Little by little, science is coming closer to understanding emotion as the universal operating system of animal consciousness. In this study,
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329873.100-primal-pull-of-a-baby-crying-reaches-across-species.html#.VBzBnsZ3RBV
various species of animals are found to respond to the distress calls of other species’ infants. This is because an infant no matter the species is an emotional ground, a preyful essence. Similarly, when an animal is in distress, it is emitting prey energy, i.e. vulnerability. It is broadcasting that it can absorb and conduct another being’s Drive and this draws others toward it, emotion running from predator to prey is the universal base line of code, this is the case whether one is looking at an infant, a paramour, or a defenseless prey. It’s a thermodynamic principle, the very architecture of the animal mind, a universal principle of attraction. Now because an infant can manifest a predatory aspect pronounced enough to reflect the projection of emotion back to the adult, then a caregiving urge and species-specific suite of reflexes becomes available to the adult. Care giving follows from prey-making because the oldest relationship between sentient beings is the predator/prey dynamic, not the parent/offspring one, and evolutionarily the latter must follow from the former.
Emotion is thermodynamic, it moves from high to low pressure, which behaviorally translates from predator to prey, this is consistent across the animal bandwidth no matter the context, it is a principle of conductivity.
It makes sense that the dynamic underlying the interspecies (and intraspecies) play that we’ve been seeing so many videos of (dog/goat, dog/bird, etc.) would be the same dynamic at the root of this interspecies (and intraspecies) exchange.
I’m sure people will object to this notion because they’ll have trouble getting past the paradoxical notion of caregiver as “predator”.
It’s noteworthy I think that these scientists are on to the emotional aspect of behavior, whereas dog behaviorists who are just now recognizing the hunt (predator/prey) as the fundamental motivator for behavior (and thus training), per the SPARCS presentations, but are fixated on the process (“seeking”, per Panskeep) as if it’s a dis-emoted action born of a lust for the production of pleasing neurotransmitters. There’s no accounting for what causes the action that exposes them to that neurological pathway in the first place.
What’s the argument for predator/prey predating parent/offspring? Are you saying that predator/prey preceded the ability to mate or that initial mating was a product of predator/prey?
What accounts for the infant’s ability to manifest a predatory aspect? Is it the capacity to maintain eye contact?
I expect that it will be discovered that the copulatory actions of animals is but an elaboration of the prey/predator dynamic. Theoretically speaking, it seems only logical that prey-making evolved into love-making as paradoxically as that might first appear and this is logical because the predator projects its “self” (p-cog plus all physical memories, which is the basis of how an animal feels) and becomes an emotional counterbalance to the prey which it strives to bring down. Therefore the prey becomes an extension of the predator’s self (and vice versa since the prey projects its self into the predator in order to avoid being brought down) and the very real seed of an emotional bond is thereby implanted. That seed can then come to fruition as a bond if the prey is able to reflect back to the predator, and then the predator to prey in turn, so that an emotional process of elaboration can evolve between them. Once one sees all behavior as a function of attraction, then these kinds of linkages become quite vivid. Similarly an infant’s capacity to reflect the projection of emotion back at the parent is a function of its eyes and its capacity to generate resistance (note how strongly the infant cries when disturbed) which thus triggers the physical memories of its parent back to its earliest flow imprint acquired during its infancy. This sets the stage for the process of elaboration into a bond between parent and offspring.
Indeed the problem for the seeking system is that it doesn’t account for the “path” that any given individual would orient to follow. This is not at random, there is no such thing as seeking for the sake of seeking. It’s merely one part of a process.
At what point would an adult male lion whom has just taken over a pride , savaged the lioness cubs and chased away any older males become social
In that I mean, would the act of copulation or the lenght of time spend with the lioness before cubs are born or the first sight of preyfull cubs , which if any fits the bill for social harmony n the new pack , does been around the females in a pack absorb his predatory edge with new cubs ??
Thanks Kevin
I would speculate that copulation and a certain length of time, plus the lions’ immune system recognizing its “self” in the new cubs, would promote a more social orientation to the cubs.