The Connection between Emotion and Hunting Part Two

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27675-monkeys-cosy-alliance-with-wolves-looks-like-domestication.html?utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=SOC&utm_campaign=hoot&cmpid=SOC%257CNSNS%257C2015-GLOBAL-hoot#.VXL2Xs7FuRt

 

In this report we learn of wolves and monkeys developing an amicable relationship that is apparently beneficial for the wolves as hunting around the monkeys increases their success rate in catching small rodents threefold. Having wolves in their midst may confer some benefit to the monkeys as well, for example  keeping other predators at bay, although I think this kind of linear analysis is ultimately shortsighted. Animals have emotion, emotion functions as a “force” of attraction, hence, all animals are attracted to all other animals. That’s a network function of emotion that doesn’t need an actual tangible reward because emotional connections are satisfying in and of themselves. I do believe that the rapport between these two species illustrates once again how hunting forms powerful emotional connections that can even cross the species’ divide. The monkeys begin to occupy role of social peer in the hearts of the wolves because they associate them with emotional flow and so can even be schooled by monkey “discipline.” Incidentally this trans-species communication is on the same continuum of ravens leading wolves to a carcass they can’t open, and wolves looking upwards and following the ravens. Consensus science currently sees nature as a system of disconnected parts converging only due to material benefits that increase genetic fitness. This misses the interconnectedness based on a common emotional attraction and resulting flow system that is based on the predator/prey dynamic. Since sociability is based on the prey/predator dynamic, social bonds arise from the phenomenon of hunting, nature’s “oldest profession.”

At some point expect consensus science to conclude that domestication of the dog is every much a part of the natural evolutionary process, it’s not something man did to change the wolf into the dog.

 

 

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Published June 7, 2015 by Kevin Behan
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5 responses to “The Connection between Emotion and Hunting Part Two”

  1. b... says:

    “Consensus science currently sees nature as a system of disconnected parts converging only due to material benefits that increase genetic fitness. This misses the interconnectedness based on a common emotional attraction and resulting flow system that is based on the predator/prey dynamic.”

    I think your analysis points to the limitations of the binary manner in which most science, and information in general, is currently discussed. Viewing the world as a collection of relationships where two parties gain or lose, based on a particular transaction seems rather primitive. We obviously live in a system, surrounded by systems.

    I think we’re seeing the effects of this myopic view in everything from economics to health to governance. For example, we’re now realizing that when it comes to matters of health or psychology, when we look at what’s happening in one part of the body (e.g., brain) without evaluating what’s concurrently happening in another (e.g., gut), we miss the bigger picture.

    I hope that with the advent of your theory of attraction as guiding principle of life, we can see beyond the competition model and embrace a systems approach that allows us to become scientific rather than political. With the aid of Constructal Law, I suspect that we have the technology to analyze and plan most everything that touches our lives in a much more useful way.

  2. Kevin Behan says:

    Yes there is difficulty in our intellectual, linear view of nature with combining the terms term predator/prey and care giver/child within the same framework of information. But if we remember that the Brain-to-gut connection, is the same as the Predator — > Prey dynamic, then the systems application becomes quite clear. In other words the Brain-to-gut connection is a principle of emotional conductivity and is an individual’s metric of what feels good or not so an organism is a physical embodiment of this principle of conductivity, and which links us with other emotionally coherent aspects of our surroundings so as to manifest a more complex system of interconnections. So there is an internal action potential, the Brain-to-gut connection, that replicates itself in external action potentials, an individual relative to other individuals, a group of individuals relative to other groups, and so on.

  3. b... says:

    Sorry, I might’ve been unclear. I meant that your analysis uncovers the same limitation of binary reward/punishment assessment that’s also prevalent outside of animal behaviorism. Thanks for the elaboration. I can feel what you’re saying.

    I think that we cognitive beings get into trouble when we get conditioned to misassociate system-flow-disrupting stimuli with good feelings and learn to choose palliative comfort and satiation over humanity and consciousness. It’s a gradual process and we have the reasoning power to rationalize its validity in hindsight, so it’s thorny that way. Ultimately we too must stretch ourselves towards the path of highest resistance to fully realize our potential for group flow.

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Books about Natural Dog Training by Kevin Behan

In Your Dog Is Your Mirror, dog trainer Kevin Behan proposes a radical new model for understanding canine behavior: a dog’s behavior and emotion, indeed its very cognition, are driven by our emotion. The dog doesn’t respond to what the owner thinks, says, or does; it responds to what the owner feels. And in this way, dogs can actually put people back in touch with their own emotions. Behan demonstrates that dogs and humans are connected more profoundly than has ever been imagined — by heart — and that this approach to dog cognition can help us understand many of dogs’ most inscrutable behaviors. This groundbreaking, provocative book opens the door to a whole new understanding between species, and perhaps a whole new understanding of ourselves.
  Natural Dog Training is about how dogs see the world and what this means in regards to training. The first part of this book presents a new theory for the social behavior of canines, featuring the drive to hunt, not the pack instincts, as seminal to canine behavior. The second part reinterprets how dogs actually learn. The third section presents exercises and handling techniques to put this theory into practice with a puppy. The final section sets forth a training program with a special emphasis on coming when called.
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