CM and Fear

Cant i bring back my silver back gorilla examples then? []

By all means.  Do you have any domesticated gorillas to compare their behaviours to?  No, no really, don't put yourself down you are not that hairy......
 
 

ORIGINAL: Awsomedog

  corvus

So now we're comparing rabbits to dogs? Good greef.

No, we're contrasting our "knowledge" of dogs with our experience with other animals. Fear is universal and fundamental to survival. You were the one who said wild animals didn't have unreasonable fears; I'm providing evidence to the contrary.

espencer, if you know something about gorillas and fear, then by all means chime in. []

As a partially trained behavioural ecologist (haven't got my PhD yet), it's been drilled into me to find the cause of animal behaviour by imagining how it has evolved and how it benefits an animal to behave that way. Evolution often works the same way to produce the same outcomes in a huge variety of species. This was absolutely fundamental to our understanding of animal behaviour. Even a flat worm will dash away from light to hide in the dark, because to be in the light is to be visible, and that is dangerous. Because fear is a driving force in anything with a backbone and a lot of things without a backbone, it is quite silly not to draw on what we know of fear in other animals when examining fear in dogs. Thus, by comparing and contrasting inherent fear in a wild hare and inherent lack of fear in a domestic rabbit, we learn both what drives fear in wild animals (new and strange things), and how domestication has modified fear (severe reduction).

Assuming this is so with dogs and wild canids is unscientific and risky, and I never said we should apply these lessons directly to dogs, but, it does give us a strong basis on which to build our understanding of why dogs fear and how it differs from shy wild canids, especially considering our canine pals still share a lot of those basic instincts with their wild counterparts. They still have a fear period and they still worry about new and strange things, both are just toned down. I think it's risky and stupid to disregard anything we learn about fear in other animals just because they're not dogs. It's a powerful emotion, linked as it is to survival.

Fear in flighty prey animals has come up a few times in this thread because often flighty prey animals are more fearful than domestic dogs. We find new ways to deal with that fearful tendency, and we learn to deal with it with sensitivity to avoid inciting more fear. When it comes to dogs, we have all that experience with fear to draw on, and we can often apply techniques we have learnt with far more flighty animals. It's like lifting weights. When you always lift heavy weights, lifting light weights is very easy. Flighty prey animals are like the heavy weights of fear, whereas domestic dogs are lightweights. When it comes to the lightweights, all that practice with heavyweights has put you more in "the zone" than you thought possible and the problem seems simple and easy in comparison. You're already accostomed to displaying sensitivity, thinking through the fear process, identifying the trigger, and deciding on a suitable treatment.

ORIGINAL: Chuffy

Unless anyone has a wolf in their home to compare to their pet dogs and draw conclusions from the comparison as corvus has then I think corvus is taking a very good line with that post.  I also think that the statement "fear is a basic and  universal emotion" is relevant here.

Does that also mean, unless you actually work with aggressive dogs, you shouldn't draw conclusions as to how they can and should be handled? While I have resonable fear, I don't live life with unreasonable fear. Thank God!

  corvus

To tired to read your post, lol, but I think we may have cleared somethings up on our own.
Peace.

Unless anyone has a wolf in their home to compare to their pet dogs and draw conclusions from the comparison

 
There was a member I haven't seen in a while here who used to just about that very thing. She has dogs and has been caretaker of of various wild animals including two gray wolves. And she noted comparable similarities and no one care to listen. Primarily because it didn't agree with the modern theory of total operant conditioning.

ORIGINAL: ron2

Unless anyone has a wolf in their home to compare to their pet dogs and draw conclusions from the comparison

There was a member I haven't seen in a while here who used to just about that very thing. She has dogs and has been caretaker of of various wild animals including two gray wolves. And she noted comparable similarities and no one care to listen. Primarily because it didn't agree with the modern theory of total operant conditioning.

 
That's a shame.  I would have.  It would have been very interesting.  That's a rare opportunity for what could be some valuable insight. 
 

ORIGINAL: Awsomedog

ORIGINAL: Chuffy

Unless anyone has a wolf in their home to compare to their pet dogs and draw conclusions from the comparison as corvus has then I think corvus is taking a very good line with that post.  I also think that the statement "fear is a basic and  universal emotion" is relevant here.

Does that also mean, unless you actually work with aggressive dogs, you shouldn't draw conclusions as to how they can and should be handled? While I have resonable fear, I don't live life with unreasonable fear. Thank God!

 
Corvus wanted to use a direct eye witness comparison of a wild animal to a domestic one.  As this person does not have a wolf in their home (and apparently the one person who did is no longer here) they used the rabbit/hare comparison.  Not to compare dogs to rabbits, but to directly compare the behaviour of a wild animal to a tame one and the conclusions drawn were pretty relevant as far as I can see.
 
I'm not sure I'm getting what your comment on aggression has to do with what you quoted from me.  In answer to your question, no that is not my view - but it does appear to be yours!

ORIGINAL: corvus


No, we're contrasting our "knowledge" of dogs with our experience with other animals. Fear is universal and fundamental to survival. You were the one who said wild animals didn't have unreasonable fears; I'm providing evidence to the contrary.

Which would be fine if I actaully believed those *theories*, how ever to some degree that's all they are, *theories*. Ones conclusion of the information can differ from that of another, it happens all the time.

As a partially trained behavioural ecologist (haven't got my PhD yet), it's been drilled into me to find the cause of animal behaviour by imagining how it has evolved and how it benefits an animal to behave that way. Evolution often works the same way to produce the same outcomes in a huge variety of species. This was absolutely fundamental to our understanding of animal behaviour. Even a flat worm will dash away from light to hide in the dark, because to be in the light is to be visible, and that is dangerous.

So that is a known *fact* or *theory*? Pehaps the flat worm simply doesn't like light, or maybe just forgot it's sun lotion. Or did it tell someone it was afraid of the light.

Because fear is a driving force in anything with a backbone and a lot of things without a backbone, it is quite silly not to draw on what we know of fear in other animals when examining fear in dogs.

But that can only be done to a point. One cannot say thay my fear, or the way I think or feel about my fear, is just like that of a dog.

Thus, by comparing and contrasting inherent fear in a wild hare and inherent lack of fear in a domestic rabbit, we learn both what drives fear in wild animals (new and strange things), and how domestication has modified fear (severe reduction).

Again, ones conclusion to to that info might differ from anothers. Eye of the beholder.

Assuming this is so with dogs and wild canids is unscientific and risky, and I never said we should apply these lessons directly to dogs, but, it does give us a strong basis on which to build our understanding of why dogs fear and how it differs from shy wild canids, especially considering our canine pals still share a lot of those basic instincts with their wild counterparts. They still have a fear period and they still worry about new and strange things, both are just toned down. I think it's risky and stupid to disregard anything we learn about fear in other animals just because they're not dogs. It's a powerful emotion, linked as it is to survival.

It can also be risky drawing and going by possible wrong conclusions. And let me just point something out here. While humans may sit around a "worry" (dwell), it's never been proven, thats canines do that.

Fear in flighty prey animals has come up a few times in this thread because often flighty prey animals are more fearful than domestic dogs.

How can you say that as a fact. how do you measure the fear of a "flighty prey animal" to that of a unstable extremely fearful dog?

We find new ways to deal with that fearful tendency, and we learn to deal with it with sensitivity to avoid inciting more fear. When it comes to dogs, we have all that experience with fear to draw on, and we can often apply techniques we have learnt with far more flighty animals. It's like lifting weights. When you always lift heavy weights, lifting light weights is very easy. Flighty prey animals are like the heavy weights of fear, whereas domestic dogs are lightweights. When it comes to the lightweights, all that practice with heavyweights has put you more in "the zone" than you thought possible and the problem seems simple and easy in comparison. You're already accostomed to displaying sensitivity, thinking through the fear process, identifying the trigger, and deciding on a suitable treatment.

I think I know what your saying here, lol but not sure.

And by the way, to all that read this, I'm not saying all studies are wrong and I'm right. I'm saying studies can be and *have* been flawed. That's a fact.

So that is a known *fact* or *theory*? Pehaps the flat worm simply doesn't like light, or maybe just forgot it's sun lotion. Or did it tell someone it was afraid of the light.

 
Come on. Gravity is also a *theory* if you want to get absurd about it. If you're going to reduce the argument to that level it's pointless to continue this discussion. This is where I'll make my exit.

ORIGINAL: jones


Come on. Gravity is also a *theory* if you want to get absurd about it. If you're going to reduce the argument to that level it's pointless to continue this discussion. This is where I'll make my exit.

You think "gravity" is a theory??? What am I supposed to even say to that?

[blockquote]quote:

Thus, by comparing and contrasting inherent fear in a wild hare and inherent lack of fear in a domestic rabbit, we learn both what drives fear in wild animals (new and strange things), and how domestication has modified fear (severe reduction).[/blockquote]


Again, ones conclusion to to that info might differ from anothers. Eye of the beholder.

 
Fear is an inherited trait.  If you take a wild wolf cub when it very young and raise it yourself, you might be able to tame it.  But if you allow it to breed, the offspring will still show the same inherrent shyness of humans and other wild traits inherited from it's ancestors.  It takes several generations of selectively breeding the least shy animals with the most desirable traits (dependance on people, playfulness etc) to make any difference to this inherrent instinctive fear.  Experiments have been done that show this time and again.  One of them, if I remember rightly, also showed that in this process of "domestication" cubs were born with ears that flopped rather than stood erect and pie bald markings began to be seen, which were not present in the truly wild version of the species.  I think it was a kind of fox or wolf that was being used, but can't remember precisely.  I would try to reference it and come back except......
 

  
[blockquote]quote:

As a partially trained behavioural ecologist (haven't got my PhD yet), it's been drilled into me to find the cause of animal behaviour by imagining how it has evolved and how it benefits an animal to behave that way. Evolution often works the same way to produce the same outcomes in a huge variety of species. This was absolutely fundamental to our understanding of animal behaviour. Even a flat worm will dash away from light to hide in the dark, because to be in the light is to be visible, and that is dangerous.[/blockquote]


So that is a known *fact* or *theory*? Pehaps the flat worm simply doesn't like light, or maybe just forgot it's sun lotion. Or did it tell someone it was afraid of the light.

 
It's a theory.  It's called the Theory of Evolution.  Flat worms who were not scared of the light and attempted to get away from it were eaten and those that were scared of the light and tried to get away from it survived to pass their genes on to the nest generation.  Jones is right this is getting silly.  I'm out too.

ORIGINAL: Chuffy
Fear is an inherited trait.  If you take a wild wolf cub when it very young and raise it yourself, you might be able to tame it.  But if you allow it to breed, the offspring will still show the same inherrent shyness of humans and other wild traits inherited from it's ancestors.  It takes several generations of selectively breeding the least shy animals with the most desirable traits (dependance on people, playfulness etc) to make any difference to this inherrent instinctive fear.  Experiments have been done that show this time and again.  One of them, if I remember rightly, also showed that in this process of "domestication" cubs were born with ears that flopped rather than stood erect and pie bald markings began to be seen, which were not present in the truly wild version of the species.  I think it was a kind of fox or wolf that was being used, but can't remember precisely.  I would try to reference it and come back except......

Still doesn't change the fact that there is reasonable and unreasonable fear.

It's a theory.  It's called the Theory of Evolution.

You said it, not me. "the Theory of Evolution". And could you remind me of how many *different theories and opinions exist on that subject.

Flat worms who were not scared of the light and attempted to get away from it were eaten and those that were scared of the light and tried to get away from it survived to pass their genes on to the nest generation.  Jones is right this is getting silly.  I'm out too.

So the Flat worms *actually noticed" the other ones being eaten, figured this out and pssaed it along in their genes? Again, fact, or theory. A theory, doesn't make it a fact.

ORIGINAL: DPU

ORIGINAL: espencer

DPU: I never thought about the chance of changing a technique if the dog is old, i dont know if the dog would react differently, why do you think an older dog would react in a different way?

Espencer, my thinking was that since there are so many gaps, givens, and assumptions in viewing the material that is made public about the CM ways, common sense should always be added.  I did not attempt to do the video demonostration on fear because I took into consideration risk (steps vs flat surface), source of fear, intensity of fear, breed knowledge, age, my relationship with the dog, etc.  I am a common Joe and I can see that these elements have to be taken into consideration in approaching any behavioral change.  I don't see how CM can omit these factors in his teachings and I bet he has not.  I think because Petro at 2 years old and has reached physical and mental maturity would have been a better candidate in those circumstances than Kane who has not reach physical and mental maturity.  I attempt to resolve/change situations based on my experience and knowledge.  The situations are always different because of randomness.  To leave a situation alone because of lack of experience or not being directly taught is not real life.  This would be a disservice to anyone's teachings and could even be considered a failure in the teachings.  CM has to have addressed these simple factors in his teachings.

 
Espencer, it may have been a oversight, buried with so many topics being discussed simultaneously.

ORIGINAL: DPU

Espencer, it may have been a oversight, buried with so many topics being discussed simultaneously.

 
What? Oh i stopped reading this and a couple other threads in the CM forum a loooong time ago, they make no sense anymore []

ORIGINAL: espencer

ORIGINAL: DPU

Espencer, it may have been a oversight, buried with so many topics being discussed simultaneously.

What? Oh i stopped reading this and a couple other threads in the CM forum a loooong time ago, they make no sense anymore []

LOL Yep, we went from dogs to Flat worms.  Time to move on.