What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund

00:00:00.360 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.320 | where we discuss science

00:00:03.760 | and science-based tools for everyday life.

00:00:05.960 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.160 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.400 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.160 | My guest today is Dr. Carolina Westland.

00:00:17.760 | Dr. Carolina Westland is an animal ethologist

00:00:20.380 | and expert in animal behavior.

00:00:22.400 | Dr. Westland and I discussed the relationship

00:00:24.440 | between humans and domesticated animals,

00:00:27.040 | with a focus on the evidence-based protocols

00:00:29.320 | for optimizing the mental and physical health of our pets.

00:00:32.680 | Dr. Westland explains the best way

00:00:34.360 | to interact with our animals.

00:00:36.040 | Now, we may assume that the way we pet our animals

00:00:38.080 | and exercise them and feed them makes them truly happy.

00:00:41.280 | But as she points out,

00:00:42.120 | many of the things that people assume turn out to be false

00:00:44.800 | when it comes to our pets and their fundamental drives.

00:00:47.860 | She teaches us the very basic

00:00:49.480 | but powerful things that we can do to satisfy those drives,

00:00:52.720 | both for the animal's sake, of course,

00:00:54.320 | and to better our relationship with them.

00:00:56.740 | We also discuss the unique neurological

00:00:58.640 | and physiological requirements of different dog breeds.

00:01:01.440 | That's a fascinating conversation that stems

00:01:03.400 | from their lineage from wolves.

00:01:05.160 | And we'll tell you whether or not your particular breed,

00:01:07.240 | even if it's a mutt, should be exercised in a particular way,

00:01:10.600 | whether or not it needs additional forms of stimulation

00:01:12.800 | that you're not currently giving it, and so on.

00:01:14.960 | And because we both realize there are also cat owners

00:01:17.560 | out there too, we discuss the often misunderstood

00:01:20.400 | communication signals and social needs of cats.

00:01:23.520 | As you may know, there is a tremendous amount of debate

00:01:26.040 | out there about the best training and practices

00:01:28.680 | for taking care of our dogs and other animals.

00:01:30.960 | And so much of that is grounded in speculation

00:01:33.520 | and training outcomes, which of course are important.

00:01:36.280 | The conversation today with Dr. Westland approaches animal

00:01:38.720 | health and welfare through the lens of ethology

00:01:41.080 | and the species that our pets evolved from

00:01:43.280 | to provide actionable protocols that are grounded in science

00:01:46.400 | and that you can implement right away to improve your pet's wellbeing.

00:01:49.800 | So if you're a pet owner, this episode is going to be of immense value to you.

00:01:53.760 | If you're not a pet owner, you'll still learn a ton about animal biology

00:01:57.080 | and psychology, including yours.

00:01:59.440 | Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast

00:02:02.040 | is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

00:02:04.800 | It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost

00:02:07.560 | to consumer information about science and science related tools

00:02:10.720 | to the general public.

00:02:12.040 | In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors.

00:02:15.640 | And now for my discussion with Dr. Carolina Westland.

00:02:19.040 | Dr. Carolina Westland, welcome.

00:02:21.840 | Thank you.

00:02:22.880 | I'm super excited for this conversation.

00:02:24.720 | Yeah, me too.

00:02:25.600 | And barely contained myself.

00:02:27.800 | I think we have so much to learn from animals.

00:02:30.480 | And I think we have so much to learn from our relationship to animals.

00:02:34.280 | I also believe that we have all sorts of ideas about what animals experience,

00:02:38.600 | what they think about us, the relationship that we think we have with them.

00:02:42.760 | Oh, yeah.

00:02:44.000 | Today, you're going to set the record straight.

00:02:47.360 | To start off, could you just briefly list off some of the species of animals

00:02:51.920 | that your students have worked with and studied?

00:02:54.920 | Most of my students are like guardians of animals.

00:02:58.520 | So they're like dog owners or horse trainers, or there might be veterinarians.

00:03:03.040 | Some of them work in a zoo as a zookeeper or animal trainer and so on.

00:03:09.440 | So my students are really diverse and their knowledge levels is also really diverse

00:03:16.040 | from the sort of person who has their first dog at the age of 40 to somebody who's been

00:03:22.640 | training animals for 30 years.

00:03:24.640 | I grew up around a few horse people.

00:03:27.160 | My first girlfriend had a horse and it was remarkable to me to see and to get some just external

00:03:38.280 | understanding of the relationship between human and animal through observing that.

00:03:43.160 | I think of all the relationships between animals and humans, the horse-human relationship seems

00:03:49.760 | to be the one where there's the most amount of physical contact, right?

00:03:53.760 | You learn to ride a horse.

00:03:56.360 | You learn to read the horse's intentions.

00:04:01.360 | It learns to read yours through these subtle, you know, squeezing of the legs or you're kicking

00:04:05.880 | or not kicking hard, but you know, like just like a nudge of the heel, just a slight tug on the reins.

00:04:13.360 | It's really remarkable.

00:04:14.360 | Um, what does the horse experience the world as we, I've heard before that, you know, that they

00:04:22.720 | sort of have these orbs of, of awareness around them and that they're paying attention to things

00:04:27.520 | on the horizon, that they're, um, clearly paying attention to things very up close to their body.

00:04:32.080 | But if you were to put us into the mind of a horse, uh, as best you can, how does the horse experience

00:04:39.120 | the world as a wild horse and with a rider on its back, trying to steer it in a particular

00:04:45.600 | direction at a particular speed?

00:04:47.120 | As an ethologist, I, I tend to take a step back and look at sort of, um, the, the species

00:04:53.200 | in general and horses are prey animals, they are also herd animals, and I think that, um, we,

00:05:02.960 | as humans, we tend to not really understand how different animal species can be from ourselves

00:05:11.840 | in how they perceive the world and what's important to them. Uh, so horses being prey animals means

00:05:17.520 | that they're usually quite vigilant. So they're paying a lot of attention to the world. And they

00:05:21.360 | have this, the vision, their visual field is really big, so they can sort of see what's happening

00:05:26.160 | back there. The issue I have with how we raise and keep horses today as an ethologist and sort

00:05:32.880 | of looking at how animals live their lives in the wild is that we keep them in a way that sort of

00:05:38.960 | challenges them in several aspects of that. So we tend to separate them quite early from their mum,

00:05:44.720 | even though in the wild they would stay for a very long time. So I think some of the concerns that I

00:05:51.120 | have as an ethologist with how we raise horses is the, the, the early weaning that we sometimes see

00:05:56.240 | and also single housing for a species that's, um, an aggregating species. And also that they,

00:06:04.480 | uh, in the wild they will forage up to 16 hours a day. And when we bring them into captivity,

00:06:11.040 | we typically feed them in the way that promotes very quick eating, you know, for just a fraction of that

00:06:18.880 | time. And that can then lead to problem behavior. So, so for me, I think the horses are probably one of

00:06:25.840 | the captive animal species where for many individual horses, the type of life that we're offering is

00:06:34.560 | really not that great. Interesting. Dogs I know are very, uh, smell oriented. They experience the world,

00:06:44.800 | um, perhaps largely, um, perhaps largely, but certainly, uh, quite a bit through their noses.

00:06:49.920 | Um, they can sense odor instead of distance and certainly up close, they like to get their nose

00:06:57.120 | right into things and, and, and sniff, get deep sniffs. Um, and they're always collecting information with their noses.

00:07:03.600 | There's a huge range of dog breeds. And I think any discussion about dogs requires that we, uh,

00:07:11.200 | first kind of separate out some of the major differences, um, at least in terms of the purebred

00:07:16.080 | versions of them. When I see a mastiff versus a chihuahua, uh, versus a, like a scent hound,

00:07:26.000 | I'm looking at to me, what appear to be very different animals. Is it true that certain

00:07:30.480 | dogs rely on their sense of smell far more than others? And if so, um, do the ones that rely on

00:07:36.000 | their, on their nose, uh, just not pay attention to what they're looking at unless you insist? I mean,

00:07:41.600 | that the other version of this question is how should we interact with dogs differently depending

00:07:47.120 | on what breed of dog they are? Yeah. So I think I can't really answer the first part of that

00:07:52.000 | question. I don't know the extent to which, uh, different dog breeds, uh, their, their sensory

00:07:58.800 | capabilities, how, how much that differs between different dog breeds. However, um, how to interact

00:08:05.920 | with different dog breeds. I think that's really a really interesting question because, so during the

00:08:12.480 | process of domestication and, and in just the last couple of hundred years, really, we started selecting

00:08:20.160 | for different capabilities in the different dog, um, dogs that, that we needed for different tasks,

00:08:28.080 | essentially. So if we look at a wolf hunting sequence, what they'll do is they'll do an orient

00:08:35.040 | response where they, they sniff and they, they're sort of looking for a, uh, prey and then they will

00:08:42.000 | do some eyeing and stalking behavior. So they'll focus and they'll do stalking and then they'll do

00:08:46.960 | chasing and then they'll do a grab bite, a killing bite, then they'll dissect and then they'll eat the

00:08:54.160 | prey. So we have this whole predatory sequence that we see in wolves. And what happened during the process

00:08:59.760 | of domestication was that we sort of selected for certain aspects of that sequence in different

00:09:05.600 | breeds. So we'll have the, the sniffers, the hounds that are really great. And I, I guess maybe that

00:09:12.640 | answers your first question. I think that probably all dog breeds enjoy sniffing. It's one of the big

00:09:19.040 | things that people are exploring a lot now is, is nose work. But anyway, back to, to the, this process of

00:09:26.000 | domestication that, and then we had the, um, uh, the, the pointers who are, who sort of, we have

00:09:34.800 | really, uh, uh, selected for that behavior, you know, that in, in, in a, in a litter of puppies,

00:09:42.000 | we would select the one that was the most prone to do that behavior. And so over generations, we really,

00:09:48.880 | um, sculpted that, that, uh, niche, so to speak. So a, a pointer will typically not proceed to the,

00:09:58.160 | to the next behavior of the predatory sequence. And then we have like the border collies who might do

00:10:03.600 | some chasing, uh, or some, some, um, eyeing and stalking and a little bit of chase, but ideally no

00:10:09.840 | grabbing. And we have the pure chasers, the greyhounds for instance. And then we have the, the grabbers, the, uh,

00:10:17.200 | the retrievers. And then we have the killers, uh, um, the terriers.

00:10:22.240 | People, I, I'm assuming we're anticipating you to say the pit bulls or the Dobermans, but, uh,

00:10:28.800 | anyone that's owned a terrier will know that they are great, uh, ratting dogs.

00:10:33.840 | They were bred to, to, uh, exterminate, uh, small, like rodents and stuff.

00:10:38.800 | Yeah. Anyone who's seen a Westie, those cute little, uh, West Highland terriers, the little white ones,

00:10:43.520 | they're real cute. If, if one of those hears or senses a rodent in the wall, I've seen one stalk one for

00:10:50.400 | several days that will move along. We used to call it rat TV. Yeah. The, um, Westie will sense where,

00:10:58.080 | when and where the rodent is there with an absolute fixation. And if there's any way to get into that

00:11:03.040 | wall and kill that rodent, it's coming out with that rodent in its mouth. Yeah. It's remarkable. Yeah.

00:11:07.600 | The amount of dedication is just striking and it's all about killing that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so we,

00:11:13.600 | we systematically intentionally bred for that like a couple of hundred years ago. And then

00:11:20.240 | we have the, the ones that don't show much of the predatory sequence at all that simply mostly just

00:11:26.480 | eat, uh, which are, are the, um, what do you call them? Uh, the ones that, that, um, help, uh, livestock

00:11:33.680 | guardians. They, they still like the sniffing. So they tend to retain the sniffing part and then

00:11:41.360 | specific breeds will have one or perhaps a few of the behaviors from the, from the hunting sequence. Um,

00:11:51.520 | so I think if we want to offer, uh, dogs a good, um, a good life, we should understand where they are on

00:12:02.800 | that scale. And also that the working dogs come sort of with this evolutionary backpack, their genetic

00:12:10.800 | backpack will, will, uh, encourage them to really want to do that work. And then we have the, also the,

00:12:19.280 | the sort of, um, I think they're sometimes referred to as toy breeds, the ones that, the lap dogs who are not

00:12:25.040 | that interested in, in any of that, that working dog, uh, behavior. So I think it's, we need to, uh,

00:12:36.000 | with regards to the different breeds, we need to really understand what purpose they were bred for.

00:12:42.080 | I think. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Our Place. Our Place

00:12:47.680 | makes my favorite pots, pans, and other cookware. Surprisingly, toxic compounds such as PFASs or

00:12:53.360 | forever chemicals are still found in 80% of nonstick pans, as well as utensils, appliances,

00:12:58.960 | and countless other kitchen products. As I've discussed before in this podcast, these PFASs or

00:13:04.000 | forever chemicals like Teflon have been linked to major health issues such as hormone disruption,

00:13:08.800 | gut microbiome disruption, fertility issues, and many other health problems. So it's really

00:13:13.760 | important to try and avoid them. This is why I'm a huge fan of Our Place. Our Place products are made

00:13:18.720 | with the highest quality materials and are all completely PFAS and toxin-free. I especially love

00:13:24.080 | their Titanium Always Pan Pro. It's the first nonstick pan made with zero chemicals and zero coating.

00:13:30.320 | Instead, it uses pure titanium. This means it has no harmful forever chemicals and does not degrade

00:13:35.840 | or lose its nonstick effect over time. It's also beautiful to look at. I cook eggs in my Titanium

00:13:40.800 | Always Pan Pro almost every morning. The design allows for the eggs to cook perfectly without

00:13:45.840 | sticking to the pan. I also cook burgers and steaks in it and it puts a really nice sear on the meat.

00:13:51.040 | But again, nothing sticks to it so it's really easy to clean and it's even dishwasher safe.

00:13:55.120 | I love it and I basically use it constantly. Our Place now has a full line of Titanium Pro cookware

00:14:00.560 | that uses its first of its kind titanium nonstick technology. So if you're looking for non-toxic

00:14:05.520 | long-lasting pots and pans, go to fromourplace.com/huberman and use the code Huberman at checkout.

00:14:12.480 | Right now, Our Place is having their biggest sale of the season. You can get up to 30% off

00:14:17.200 | all products now through May 12th, 2025. With a 100-day risk-free trial, free shipping and free returns,

00:14:24.240 | you can try Our Place with zero risk and see why more than 1 million people have made the switch

00:14:28.800 | to Our Place kitchenware. Again, that's fromourplace.com/huberman to get up to 30% off.

00:14:35.280 | Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers

00:14:40.000 | with cooling, heating and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the

00:14:44.800 | critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each and every night. Now, one of

00:14:49.280 | the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping

00:14:53.280 | environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature

00:14:58.640 | actually has to drop about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized,

00:15:03.600 | your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees. Eight Sleep automatically

00:15:08.560 | regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your unique needs. Now,

00:15:12.960 | I find that extremely useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night,

00:15:17.760 | even colder in the middle of the night and warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most

00:15:22.400 | slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep. And I know that because Eight Sleep has a great sleep

00:15:26.480 | tracker that tells me how well I've slept and the types of sleep that I'm getting throughout the

00:15:30.640 | night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for four years now, and it has completely

00:15:35.360 | transformed and improved the quality of my sleep. Their latest model, the Pod 4 Ultra, also has snoring

00:15:41.120 | detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees in order to improve your airflow and stop you

00:15:46.000 | from snoring. If you decide to try Eight Sleep, you have 30 days to try it at home and you can return it if you don't

00:15:51.200 | like it. No questions asked, but I'm sure that you'll love it. Go to eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to

00:15:57.040 | $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and the UAE.

00:16:04.240 | Again, that's eightsleep.com slash Huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra.

00:16:09.920 | That's a beautiful and, to me, completely novel description of the breakdown of different breeds,

00:16:16.160 | not according to the dosing of wolf versus mastiff genes, which is what some of the more reductionist

00:16:24.080 | research papers on this really do. They have these charts. We'll provide a link to one that was published

00:16:29.920 | in Science Magazine about 10 years back that had this sort of dosing of mastiff genes versus

00:16:35.600 | wolf genes. And what you just described beautifully breaks down what one observes if you go to a dog park

00:16:45.440 | or the beach. My bulldog mastiff, Costello, he was a mudded bulldog. So I always say,

00:16:51.280 | you know, no underbite. So it wasn't this, it was this, right? So a proper bulldog before they inbred

00:16:59.040 | them so much that they have the underbite and the short snout, the brachycephalic, the breathing issues.

00:17:03.760 | But he neither stalked nor chased, nor was he interested in killing anything. He didn't

00:17:13.120 | have that sense to try and harm, but he certainly liked to consume. So he was at the end of that

00:17:19.600 | behavioral description. And what were they bred for?

00:17:23.600 | So I'll try and not take up too much time on this one, because I want to learn from you. The original

00:17:29.520 | bulldog line was a cross between a mastiff, something like a mastiff, a strong, large,

00:17:37.280 | high pain tolerance, and a pug, short snout. And the gene cross there, and obviously the dog geneticists

00:17:46.320 | weren't thinking about specific genes, they were thinking about traits, was the short snout was

00:17:50.640 | great for what's called bull baiting, because that short snout provides the kind of lever that when they

00:17:55.920 | bite down onto the nose of a bull, which is what they were used for. It was a cruel practice. Very

00:18:02.160 | hard to shake them loose. The bull could shake them and they're not going to shake loose. Just think

00:18:05.200 | about trying to pick something up with long tongs, right? The physics of this versus a clamp,

00:18:09.520 | right? Like a C clamp.

00:18:10.480 | Yeah.

00:18:10.800 | The mutation that takes the pain receptors out of the face, or reduces them,

00:18:16.160 | is close by another gene that is involved in generating the tensile nature of the skin. So this

00:18:24.400 | is why they have the jowls, the folds. And you can, I don't suggest anyone do this, but Costello,

00:18:30.080 | I'll just give an example. Sometimes, unfortunately, would like get a fish hook through his jowl when

00:18:34.400 | he was playing at the ocean or something. And he'd come up to me bleeding, smiling, you know,

00:18:39.520 | basically you have to take this thing out.

00:18:41.360 | So his pain tolerance was quite high.

00:18:43.200 | Pain tolerance was very high in the front of the animal, in the face, and toward the rear of the

00:18:48.160 | animal, you touch his back toe. And it's, you know, so they have a gradient of pain receptors that runs

00:18:52.640 | high density in the back, low density to the front. So they were bred for bull baiting.

00:18:56.400 | Yeah.

00:18:56.880 | And the original line has been bred out. It's people who care about the bulldog breed,

00:19:03.280 | and bringing some more humane breeding practices to the bulldog, because it's a pretty brutal breed now,

00:19:09.360 | have tried to reestablish the original line, which again, were elbows back, no strong underbite,

00:19:17.600 | as opposed to what you see now. So that's the sort of brief history on the bulldog. They have to be born

00:19:22.960 | by cesarean, because big shoulders, small hips. Anyway, the interesting thing about the bulldog, I always

00:19:30.240 | said, and this will take us back to behavior, was the contract that I felt I had with my bulldog was one of

00:19:39.840 | he would protect me to the death. You do notice that anytime they hear a noise or anything, they're

00:19:44.640 | hypervigilant. But if there's no impending threat, total relaxation. The most efficient use of energy of

00:19:52.880 | any species. So basically it was, I'll die for you, Andrew, but unless your life is in danger, I'm not

00:19:59.520 | going to do anything. So maybe we could talk about temperament in dogs, and how they experience

00:20:06.240 | their emotional life. I don't know if we can make general statements about this, but you've spent a

00:20:12.160 | lot of your time thinking about the emotional life of animals. What does a dog need in order to feel

00:20:20.240 | calm and safe? Great question. Yeah. So in order to feel calm and safe,

00:20:29.760 | I think we, perhaps we should go to the core effect space, which I think is one of the three

00:20:39.280 | emotional models that I find very, very useful in understanding and providing like a good environment

00:20:48.960 | for animals so that they can thrive really. So the core effect space is one way of depicting or

00:20:54.960 | conceptualizing emotions where we have like valence on the x-axis. So how pleasant or unpleasant

00:21:00.880 | something is, and we have arousal on the y-axis. So what you're asking is how can we

00:21:06.640 | make animals, and I'm not just, not just dogs, but any species, how can we put them in quadrant two of

00:21:14.640 | that core effect space, essentially. So low arousal and pleasant. So where they're relaxed and they're

00:21:21.840 | feeling safe and they're sort of engaging socially with others and being sort of at ease, if you will.

00:21:29.360 | So how do we get there? And I think that some of the things to consider is then the absence

00:21:35.600 | of negative emotions. So if, again, if we're in the core effect space in the quadrant four,

00:21:42.720 | with the high arousal unpleasant states, we'll find things like fear, aggression. So helping reduce that

00:21:51.920 | will sort of automatically help animals move to the right in the matrix. And in the lower quadrant three,

00:22:01.120 | with the unpleasant low arousal state, where animals tend to end up with their sort of

00:22:06.160 | bored or depressed, is engaging them, providing an environment that's stimulating that they can

00:22:16.080 | sort of do interesting things in to help them move into the right side of the core effect space.

00:22:23.920 | And also to the top in that quadrant one is the high arousal pleasant state. But that would be like

00:22:32.480 | seeking or foraging behavior, exploration, play, sex. But as to your question, how do we get into

00:22:41.440 | quadrant two with feeling safe and sort of that warm, fuzzy feeling?

00:22:49.840 | So some of the things to do might be to, if the animal enjoys it coming from you, and they often

00:22:56.400 | have to know you in order to really appreciate it, is like tactile stimulation, so petting, essentially.

00:23:03.120 | Something that might interfere is that we primates, we humans are primates and we're huggers. We tend to

00:23:09.600 | sort of go like this when we want to interact with an animal that we really like. And to many animals,

00:23:15.200 | this is restraint and really scary. And so

00:23:20.160 | the type of body contact with that we offer to animals that we should consider whether they really

00:23:27.600 | enjoy it or not, whether they tolerate it or enjoy it. And one way of doing that is to offer a consent

00:23:34.080 | test. So you might, you might offer your hand and scratch a little bit, ideally in a place that the

00:23:39.840 | animal really enjoys. So most dogs don't enjoy having a hand on top of their head, but rather,

00:23:44.720 | perhaps here, or the upper chest sort of, yeah. So you might do that for a few seconds and then

00:23:50.800 | you remove your hand to see, does the animal enjoy this? And will they then re-initiate that contact

00:23:56.560 | or not? Or will they move away? And I have, I have this issue with my cat now that he is not very,

00:24:03.600 | he doesn't sort of enjoy petting as much as I do petting him. So I have to be really mindful

00:24:11.440 | that I, I really offer him the chance to say, no, thanks.

00:24:13.920 | So we might consider just touching the animal as a, you calling it a consent test, like as a,

00:24:20.240 | as a test. And then if they move toward you, then what is the pattern of, of tactile stimulation that's,

00:24:28.000 | that dogs like? I've been reading up on this a little bit and somebody ran an experiment that I think

00:24:34.640 | is kind of interesting describing the differences between rates of petting. And it basically,

00:24:39.280 | the conclusion was that essentially they claim that all dogs are averse to very rapid touch and,

00:24:47.120 | but that people tend to pat quickly, pet quickly. And they, they showed a beautiful example of

00:24:53.120 | just, just if one just deliberately strokes the animal very slowly, the animal's eyelids just

00:25:00.080 | start to hood. And you basically just, um, diffuse the tension very quickly, which I think is

00:25:06.640 | interesting that, you know, as humans, we think, oh, we want to pat the dog on its head. And for some

00:25:10.320 | reason we associate patting with fast patting or petting as a, as a quick process, you're going to

00:25:16.160 | scratch and pet this animal where it very well could be that all the dogs out there are just

00:25:20.640 | dying for some really nice, slow strokes. Yeah. And I also think that that nice, slow stroke,

00:25:26.560 | if you're sort of in a calm emotional state yourself, then we might tap into another interesting, uh,

00:25:33.440 | emotion theory, which is the polyvagal theory and this concept of co-regulation. So if you're really

00:25:39.440 | calm and relaxed, then you're sort of sending out these cues, these, um, uh, subtle cues that other

00:25:50.000 | individuals are reading and picking up on. And it seems that we do that with vis-a-vis also

00:25:56.000 | our dogs and, uh, certainly also horses, it seems so that just being calm and relaxed yourself can really

00:26:05.440 | help relax the dog. And what you say about the fast petting or patting really makes sense to me.

00:26:12.400 | I know there's one study in horses that show that, that if you pat a horse, many horses find that

00:26:18.000 | aversive. So in other words, it's something that they'll work to avoid. And yet that is often how we

00:26:23.920 | try to reward them when they do something that we want. They do enjoy wither scratching. So back at the

00:26:31.920 | nape of the, um, the mane, if you scratch them there, they'll typically enjoy that. But I would say that,

00:26:38.400 | that, um, different animals, different individuals will have these individual preferences and just

00:26:46.640 | trying to see what they like. And perhaps also if you, if you offering your hands like this,

00:26:52.400 | they might even scoot around to show you which body part they want scratched once they learn this,

00:26:56.960 | this, this, the, the rules of that communication. I feel like dogs want the part of their body scratched

00:27:03.440 | that, uh, they can't access on their own. Yes. Like I'm yet to meet a dog that doesn't like being

00:27:10.160 | scratched on its rump. Bump scratching is a big thing for many animals. Yeah. Yeah. Like just like,

00:27:15.760 | like the top side of their back leg. Yeah. Right. Like right there. Yeah. It's got to feel so good. Yeah.

00:27:20.960 | Because they can't get to that. Um, as well as underneath their rear leg, right? Like just kind

00:27:28.560 | of in the crook of the rear leg, um, with that, that soft skin there, right? That, um, but you know,

00:27:36.880 | having interacted with dogs that were more skittish versus more calm, um, I totally agree that different

00:27:44.720 | animals, regardless of breed, um, just have a completely different relationship to, to touch.

00:27:50.960 | Yeah. And, and how quickly they want to interact. I've heard, and I don't know if it's true that for

00:27:56.160 | dogs, space is a big thing. Um, I don't know if this is true. I'm sure, uh, someone will, um,

00:28:03.520 | refute this, but the idea that, you know, if your dog runs up to you when you walk in or to,

00:28:08.560 | you know, dog runs up to you and it's a new dog, you're just meeting and they touch you or they jump up on

00:28:12.880 | your shin that it's a, that it's their attempt to dominate you. Like this is my space. I'm controlling

00:28:18.640 | you that because you wouldn't necessarily walk up to a dog that you just met and just get right in

00:28:23.440 | their space without kind of them approaching you as well. What are your thoughts on this whole dominant

00:28:28.560 | submission thing on the basis of touch and space? That's like Pandora's box there, right there.

00:28:33.200 | Great. I don't have any, uh, you know, stake in this. I just would like to learn and I would like

00:28:37.440 | people to learn so that they can have better interactions with, with and for animals.

00:28:41.760 | Sure. Yeah. So first of all, I think that, that actually, we often do walk up to strange

00:28:47.360 | dogs that we never met before. We're like, hi, can I pet him? And then we start patting on,

00:28:51.360 | on top of the animal's head. Guilty. Guilty.

00:28:53.200 | So I think that we do do that. And then this whole discussion about dominance is really interesting

00:28:59.040 | because as an ethologist, how we define dominance is completely different from how

00:29:05.440 | most people define it. And I actually, I looked into the encyclopedia to see how is dominance defined

00:29:13.760 | there. And I find that there's two, like two lines of that definition. So one is the ethological

00:29:18.400 | definition of dominance and one is the sociological definition of dominance. And I think that what we're

00:29:24.160 | doing often is that we're misusing, we're, we're using the sociological definition

00:29:28.960 | on animals, um, in a way that's, I think, unfortunate because the ethological definition

00:29:38.000 | is about priority of access to resources. Here's a resource. Here's like five individuals coming

00:29:45.760 | up to it. There's just one there. The dominant individual will have priority of access to that

00:29:50.240 | resource. The others simply have to wait or look elsewhere. Uh, and this reduces the risk of sort of

00:29:56.720 | confrontation and aggression and all the costs associated with that. So it's, it's just, it's

00:30:01.120 | normal that animals who hang out together, who are like in a stable social group will organize or,

00:30:08.000 | or have some sort of, uh, dominance hierarchy within them that, that allows this to take place,

00:30:14.320 | to reduce the risk, the risk of aggression. Uh, it tends to become exacerbated in captivity

00:30:20.240 | compared to, uh, in, in wild contexts, because then the animals can disperse and there's like,

00:30:28.240 | there's a resource over there that they can go and get instead. But when we house them,

00:30:32.800 | uh, and we're offering, uh, specifically, we're offering like, here's, you have two cats or three

00:30:40.000 | cats and now here, here's the food. You're, you're putting the animals in conflict because cats are

00:30:45.680 | solitary hunters. So they actually do prefer, if you have several cats, you should feed them

00:30:51.920 | in a sort of separate locations to reduce that sort of heightened arousal that goes with that type of

00:30:58.800 | feeling. Okay. There's dominance among dogs or among dogs and other non-human animals. I'm thinking in

00:31:05.040 | terms of the relationship between human and dog, um, and touch and space. You know, I've heard that,

00:31:11.440 | um, the dog touches you. It thinks it owns you. I've heard that if you move into a space,

00:31:17.360 | um, that the dog is and it backs away, then it's, uh, you know, it thinks of you as dominant. Um,

00:31:23.680 | I've also heard that if the dog moves into your space very quickly, that it sees itself as kind

00:31:28.480 | of the leader in this relationship. There are a lot of theories out there about this. And I'm realizing

00:31:33.600 | that all these theories about animals, um, must be very contentious because, um, they lack

00:31:39.840 | lack the language to tell us what we want to know. And so we're, we're always sort of guessing when

00:31:45.680 | we're doing ethology. I would not label any of those situations that you described as a dominance

00:31:50.240 | interaction, actually. I would rather, if the dog backs away when you confront them, I would sort of

00:31:55.440 | rather label that as perhaps a fearful reaction, uh, not submissive as in giving you priority of access

00:32:02.880 | to a resource. Typically feral dogs in the wild will form linear dominance hierarchies with regards

00:32:10.320 | to the access to resources. And that, that might shift depending on what the resource is. So it's not

00:32:17.040 | like it's, it's written in stone or anything. So it's, it's like fluid and variable, but there's still

00:32:23.360 | typically some sort of like, uh, hierarchy when it comes to the priority of access to resources.

00:32:30.960 | Then we have another social role, which is the role as a leader. And when I, as an ethologist say

00:32:38.640 | leader, I mean the one that leads that, that sort of work walks first in line from one location to

00:32:48.480 | another. I like to take the example of, of elephants that they, when they migrate, it's typically one of

00:32:53.280 | the old females, the old females, the matriarch who leads the way she's the leader. So she'll help

00:32:59.360 | them find, she knows where to go essentially. Um, and there's other social roles as well. There

00:33:05.600 | might be the controller who is the animal who tends to initiate, um, a change in activity. So we see this

00:33:14.240 | in cows, for instance, that all the cows are standing up and they're, they're grazing. And then one cow,

00:33:20.640 | the controller lies down and everybody else lies down also and they start ruminating.

00:33:26.720 | They will often synchronize their behavior, but they'll follow. It's not that one individual

00:33:32.960 | is sort of imposing on the others, but rather they do that. And the others follow suit.

00:33:38.240 | Interesting. Um, I have heard this, that, uh, when you walk your dog, that your dog should be next to

00:33:44.960 | you or behind you. Uh, very few dog owners actually walk with their dog behind them. Just, I live in an area

00:33:51.680 | that is, you know, uh, frequented by dogs and, and, and, uh, and owners. Um,

00:33:57.760 | um, it's interesting to kind of interpret that as a question, which is if the dog walks in front,

00:34:05.520 | does it mean that it somehow is the leader? I mean, are humans just completely wrong about all this stuff?

00:34:11.120 | I think so. Yeah. I think that we, we carry a lot of, and actually I, we haven't mentioned this,

00:34:17.280 | I think, but I, I have very little practical experience about dogs with dogs. I haven't lived

00:34:21.600 | with dogs. I haven't trained dogs, but many of my students train dogs and I help them. So,

00:34:26.960 | so, uh, but, but that also means that I don't carry any of these sort of assumptions that you're,

00:34:32.560 | you're supposed to have your dog behind you or beside you that if you don't, and so, uh,

00:34:38.000 | which means that I can, I can look at that type of statement and go, really?

00:34:41.440 | Yeah. Uh, because I think that, that there's a lot of learning occurring, of course, that we teach

00:34:49.600 | the dog that if you stay at my side or behind me, then, you know, there won't be any unpleasantness,

00:34:55.040 | but if you pull ahead, I'm going to yank you back. So there'll be an unpleasant, um, uh,

00:35:01.520 | consequence to the pulling behavior, which will then influence the animal's choice in staying next

00:35:07.280 | to you. But I think we very often, what we label as dominance can very often be just,

00:35:12.640 | if we just remove that label and we look at the animal's behavior, we can, we can explain it in other

00:35:18.960 | terms. And again, I would not use, uh, for me, dominance as an ethologist has to do the prior,

00:35:25.360 | with the priority of access to resources.

00:35:27.440 | So along the lines of priority of access to resources, when I got my puppy, I was taught

00:35:34.560 | in the dog training course that I took with him, uh, that I should eat and then he should eat.

00:35:41.680 | Um, or that we could eat alongside one another different food. Although I confess, I often fed

00:35:49.840 | him steak. Um, if it was appropriate food for a bulldog, I fed it to him. Uh, it, as opposed to

00:35:57.360 | letting him eat before me because of this access to resources thing, is there any truth to that?

00:36:01.920 | This is taught in a lot of, uh, dog slash owner training because a lot of dog training is actually

00:36:06.240 | owner, owner training. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. I, I mean, you have to set up the situation to work for

00:36:13.200 | you and the animal, but again, I would not frame that in terms of, of, uh, dominance. Dogs, uh, form

00:36:21.120 | relationships with us, but as far as I know, from the ethological perspective, we have no role in a

00:36:28.480 | dominance hierarchy among dogs. They know that we are different and they will respond. They will learn

00:36:34.320 | to expect that if in this context that will happen in that context, that will happen. And so we can

00:36:40.640 | often reframe that, uh, from in a different learning system than dominance. That's a novel perspective

00:36:47.840 | because I think that so much of what's out there in terms of dog slash owner training is really about,

00:36:53.360 | um, not so much dominance, but really trying to establish a relationship where

00:36:58.160 | it's clear that you're the caretaker to quote unquote, make them feel safe. Um, so that their

00:37:03.440 | job is very clear. So they don't feel the anxiety of needing to perform roles that perhaps are yours.

00:37:08.720 | There's a lot like what you hear when you hear about parent child training basically. Um, so

00:37:14.320 | maybe given that the sort of pattern of, of your answers over the last couple of questions, I,

00:37:21.200 | I should ask the question, um, which is a really straightforward one, which is how do you think about

00:37:26.720 | animals? Like, like, what is your view of animals when you, when you think about them? I know you're

00:37:31.520 | interested in their welfare and improving their wellbeing and, um, conditions, but how do you like,

00:37:36.720 | when you see, uh, an animal, um, most people say, okay, well, that's a dog, that's a horse, that's a

00:37:42.000 | parrot. Um, can I interact with it? Maybe I don't want to, or maybe I have a phobia, who knows,

00:37:47.280 | but how do you think about animals? Like what's driving this inquiry in terms of their,

00:37:51.280 | their, their emotional and their cognitive life? First of all, I think that we humans are also

00:37:57.360 | an animal species and that we, we, I, we, we tend to sort of put ourselves on a pedestal and thinking

00:38:05.680 | that we, we are one and then animals are like this, this, the other, as if it were homogeneous,

00:38:14.160 | which is, it really isn't. So, so each animal species have their own adaptation. We have our own

00:38:20.480 | adaptations and each animal, all the other animal species that we surround ourselves with do as well.

00:38:27.360 | So, um, I don't know if that really answers your question, but, uh, I tend to, so the work I do is

00:38:35.520 | to sort of try to help animals live better lives with humans. And that very often starts with

00:38:43.040 | understanding how that animal species would live in the wild and the type of, of life that they have,

00:38:49.680 | whether they're a predator, whether they're a prey animal species, uh, how they process the world,

00:38:56.160 | the type of information that they take in. Um, so for instance, we might see a dog who's wagging

00:39:03.440 | this tail and we might think that it's only happy dogs that wag their tails, but actually

00:39:08.240 | tail wagging is seen in many different contexts. Uh, and we might think of it as a visual communication

00:39:16.160 | thing, but actually it could be that they're dispersing scent, that the tail wag will sort of,

00:39:23.680 | that scent will waft over to you so you can, uh, take in information about my current emotional

00:39:28.720 | state. They definitely have scent glands back there. Oh yeah. Yeah. Interesting. So can we

00:39:33.120 | interpret dog wags of different types? Is there, is there a way to do that? So one very interesting

00:39:38.480 | thing is that the dog wagging with a predominant left wag, left for the dog, left for the dog. So

00:39:45.520 | he's wagging on the left hand side of his body tends to be associated with negative emotional

00:39:50.240 | states. And on the right tends to be associated with positive emotional states. Uh, and, and the

00:39:56.400 | same cats tend to look at the world from the, the left when in a negative emotional state and from the

00:40:04.960 | right when in a positive emotional state. So looking from the left, meaning the left eye slightly forward,

00:40:11.120 | Yeah. Um, the head tilted, so the right eye. So taking in that information with this eye.

00:40:14.880 | So, okay. If you're scary.

00:40:16.160 | Some people are just listening. They're not watching, so they can't see this. So what, um,

00:40:20.240 | what Carolina is describing is if the, the head is turned slightly to the side, so the left eye is

00:40:25.200 | forward. Yeah. That's a, um,

00:40:27.040 | So they're looking at the stimulus with their left eye, if that stimulus is fear inducing.

00:40:32.080 | Interesting. And, and the opposite to the right hand side, if it's, um, more attractive to them.

00:40:38.000 | Yeah. So this is lateralized.

00:40:39.680 | Interesting. And then the tail wag, you said a dog wagging on the left hand side,

00:40:43.920 | more negative right hand side and more positive. What about a full sweeps?

00:40:48.320 | Yeah. Full sweeps. And I, I don't know the details here, but certainly the type of tail wag,

00:40:54.800 | whether it's sort of very low and fast or whether it's high and, and sort of stiff will communicate

00:41:01.440 | different emotional states. Do you think that over time we learn these signals without realizing

00:41:07.760 | that we learn these signals? Yes, absolutely.

00:41:09.360 | Because we associate it with our dog being in a particular circumstance or behaving in a certain

00:41:13.760 | way. So studies have shown that, that we humans are actually, um, we learn to read dogs by exposure,

00:41:20.240 | even passive exposure, just living in an environment. And apparently it's, it's, if we live in a culture

00:41:25.680 | where dogs live close with humans, we get better in reading dogs and then in cultures where dogs don't

00:41:33.200 | interact that much with humans. Um, so there's that. And there's also this, the issue that we are typically

00:41:40.400 | better at reading gross body language than we are at reading facial expressions. Apparently one of the

00:41:48.320 | the reasons being that dogs move different facial muscles when they make emotional facial expressions,

00:41:57.520 | they move different muscles than what humans do.

00:42:01.840 | What can you tell us about the facial expressions of dogs?

00:42:04.880 | Well, there's been some studies in the last couple of years that I've looked at

00:42:09.440 | which muscles are moving when, in, in which contexts. So, uh, so they'll, they'll expose the dog to

00:42:18.000 | different types of stimuli and they'll look at, they'll film the dog and look at what, what muscles are

00:42:22.640 | twitching where, where is, where is the face moving in response to these stimuli. So those types of studies

00:42:28.880 | have found that, that, you know, when you, when a dog is exposed to, let's say,

00:42:34.400 | thunder or firework sounds, they will show a certain facial configuration. When, uh, their owner returns

00:42:42.480 | home after not being seen for several hours, they will show a different facial configuration and so

00:42:47.440 | on. So it, it seems that they do show facial expressions. It's just that some of those facial

00:42:52.560 | expressions are, it's not the same muscles that we show in the corresponding emotional state. So that would,

00:42:59.600 | I think bias us to misreading dogs, facial expressions, uh, from that perspective. But then

00:43:07.360 | again, if we live with dogs, we start, we, we won't observe just the facial expression. We will observe

00:43:14.080 | the entire dog. And we're often better off reading their body language than we are reading their facial

00:43:19.920 | expression. Even though I think that studies also show that the face is where we look first.

00:43:25.280 | Which behaviors in dogs, uh, are maintained from interactions with other dogs, uh, when they

00:43:35.760 | interact with humans? For instance, um, if, uh, one is gonna like take a dog out on a walk and it's

00:43:43.280 | familiar with the sound of the leash coming off the, the hook or something like that, it's not uncommon

00:43:48.320 | for a dog to go into that long, full, um, you know, front leg stretch that people call down dog,

00:43:54.080 | you know, in yoga. So, um, and some people will say that's a kind of remnant of the puppy play,

00:44:00.000 | um, kind of stance. Again, people say this stuff. People are often self-appointed dog experts. This is

00:44:08.080 | kind of interesting. Like, and the, and I've learned this from researching it online that, that the various

00:44:12.480 | camps of, of quote unquote, dog experts disagree vehemently with each other. I mean, they write to me

00:44:19.120 | saying, you know, they're evil. This person is cruel that, you know, they, they blame each other

00:44:23.920 | of animal cruelty for different training, um, different training tools. We'll talk about that

00:44:28.800 | a little bit later, but, um, dogs will do this, uh, down dog type, uh, movement, whatever it means

00:44:35.760 | with other dogs and they'll do it with humans. Do you think it means the same thing in those two

00:44:40.640 | different contexts? Most probably does. That's play bow that you're describing is what's referred

00:44:46.640 | to as a meta signal for play. So it's typically shown in a play context and I haven't seen it

00:44:53.760 | described, but then again, I'm not a dog owner, uh, but I haven't seen it described in, in the context of,

00:44:59.120 | let's go for a walk. But certainly in the play context, um, as far as I know, dogs play a bit

00:45:05.840 | differently with humans than they do with other dogs, but they do enjoy playing with humans.

00:45:11.040 | Uh, and, and sometimes I think we humans have a hard time knowing whether what we're seeing is play

00:45:20.960 | or aggression because there will be elements from the aggressive repertoire within a play bow.

00:45:26.000 | But typically what we can do then is look for what's referred to as MARS, M-A-R-S. So M being

00:45:32.640 | the meta signals. So those play bows or in other species, it will be other behaviors that are sort

00:45:37.840 | of indicating that I want to play. Uh, I know chimpanzees have like 30 or 50 different meta signals

00:45:45.440 | for play. Um, M-A-A is for activity shift. So we'll see different behaviors. They might be chasing,

00:45:53.600 | they might be pouncing, they might be wrestling, biting each other. Uh, but you'll see these activity

00:46:01.120 | shifts and it's not in the same order as it would be if they were truly fighting. Uh, M-A-R-R is for role

00:46:09.600 | reversals. So you'll see that the, the dog, uh, the dogs, if they're of different sizes or different,

00:46:16.400 | um, sort of stamina or how big they are or how competent fighters they are, would be that they'll

00:46:23.520 | take turns winning and losing. Yeah. I've seen that. Yeah. Because it's not fun playing if you lose

00:46:28.720 | all the time. So in order to keep playing, the bigger dog needs to lose sometimes. So they,

00:46:34.000 | they need to, in order to, to keep this interaction going, uh, that's the way to do that.

00:46:39.200 | And the last one, S is self-handicap. So the larger dog will, will self-handicap themselves.

00:46:45.200 | You might see it, them doing a tug of war and the large, large dog is just standing there and holding

00:46:50.160 | the thing. And the small dog is like pulling and really trying to get the thing. And the big dog

00:46:54.880 | is just standing there doing nothing. But then if a human takes over the toy and starts pulling,

00:46:59.600 | then the big dog will engage and start showing more of his strength and, and, uh, escalate that

00:47:05.280 | behavior. That's a beautiful thing when you see animals adjusting their level of a kind of vigor

00:47:10.160 | in play so that the play can continue. It's very sweet. I mean, it, it speaks to a bigger question,

00:47:15.920 | which is, uh, do dogs have empathy? Oh, I think so. Absolutely.

00:47:20.720 | I can't say I've, I've seen any studies on it, but, but just, uh, yeah.

00:47:26.160 | Yeah. I mean, I think, I think so many, uh, dog owners are familiar with when, uh, we're grieving,

00:47:31.840 | um, a dog will often come closer as opposed to moving further away. Um, I mean, I've seen some

00:47:39.520 | incredible moments, you know, we interpret these things, right? We anthropomorphize, but I had someone

00:47:45.440 | in my home years ago who was, was grieving a, a, a death in her family and, uh, Costello came and,

00:47:51.360 | and, you know, put a paw on her knee. And it's hard to not interpret that, um, as a, a meaningful

00:47:57.440 | moment of empathy and who knows what he was experiencing. Uh, maybe he was experiencing

00:48:02.080 | distress for all I know, but, but it, the, the more pleasant interpretation is that he wanted to extend

00:48:08.080 | comfort. I think it makes sense from the evolutionary perspective that social animals who live in a

00:48:13.360 | cohesive social group, uh, are good at reading each other's, uh, emotional state and also, uh,

00:48:23.200 | good at sort of trying to buffer negative emotions if, if it's possible to do that. And so I, I would

00:48:33.520 | expect it with the, any of the sort of more cognitively advanced species, I would expect

00:48:38.960 | some type of empathy. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a

00:48:45.520 | vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also contains adaptogens. I started taking AG1 way back in 2012,

00:48:51.920 | long before I even knew what a podcast was. I started taking it and I still take it every single day

00:48:57.280 | because it ensures that I meet my quota for daily vitamins and minerals, and it helps make sure that I get

00:49:02.240 | enough prebiotics and probiotics to support my gut health. Over the past 10 years, gut health has

00:49:07.440 | emerged as something that we realize is important, not only for the health of our digestion, but also

00:49:12.000 | for our immune system and for the production of neurotransmitters and neuromodulators, things like

00:49:16.880 | dopamine and serotonin. In other words, gut health is critical for proper brain function. Now, of course,

00:49:22.560 | I strive to eat healthy whole foods from unprocessed sources for the majority of my nutritional intake,

00:49:27.200 | but there are a number of things in AG1, including specific micronutrients that are hard or

00:49:31.440 | impossible to get from whole foods. So by taking AG1 daily, I get the vitamins and minerals that I need,

00:49:37.120 | along with the probiotics and prebiotics for gut health, and in turn, brain and immune system health,

00:49:42.240 | and the adaptogens and critical micronutrients that are essential for all organs and tissues of the body.

00:49:47.760 | So anytime somebody asks me if they were to only take one supplement, what that supplement should be,

00:49:52.400 | I always say AG1, because AG1 supports so many different systems in the brain and body

00:49:57.280 | that relate to our mental health, physical health, and performance. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to

00:50:02.800 | drinkag1.com/huberman. For this month only, April 2025, AG1 is giving away a free one-month supply of

00:50:10.400 | omega-3 fish oil, along with a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2. As I've highlighted before in this podcast,

00:50:16.640 | omega-3 fish oil and vitamin D3 plus K2 have been shown to help with everything from mood and brain health,

00:50:22.240 | to heart health and healthy hormone production, and much more. Again, that's drinkag1.com/huberman

00:50:29.120 | to get the free one-month supply of omega-3 fish oil, plus a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2 with your

00:50:34.720 | subscription. Today's episode is also brought to us by Juve. Juve makes medical-grade red light

00:50:40.720 | therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast,

00:50:45.520 | it is the incredible impact that light can have on our biology. Now, in addition to sunlight,

00:50:50.320 | red light and near-infrared light sources have been shown to have positive effects on improving

00:50:55.040 | numerous aspects of cellar and organ health, including faster muscle recovery, improved skin

00:51:00.000 | health and wound healing, improvements in acne, reduced pain and inflammation, even mitochondrial

00:51:05.440 | function, and improving vision itself. What sets Juve lights apart and why they're my preferred red

00:51:10.320 | light therapy device is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning specific wavelengths of red

00:51:15.680 | light and near-infrared light in combination to trigger the optimal cellar adaptations. Personally,

00:51:21.440 | I use the Juve whole body panel about three to four times a week, and I use the Juve handheld light both

00:51:26.720 | at home and when I travel. If you'd like to try Juve, you can go to Juve spelled J-O-O-V-V.com/huberman.

00:51:34.480 | Juve is offering an exclusive discount to all Huberman Lab listeners with up to $400 off Juve products. Again,

00:51:41.040 | that's Juve spelled J-O-O-V-V.com/huberman to get up to $400 off I've always been

00:51:48.480 | delighted and curious about the fact that if two animals of the same species both receive food or a

00:51:59.600 | treat, it seems, I don't know, but it seems that they are paying attention to how much treat the other is

00:52:08.320 | getting. And as a sibling, I have an older sister who I get along very well with and always have,

00:52:13.760 | but when we were kids, I'll never forget like if there was a treat like a milkshake or something,

00:52:21.600 | she would point out that she had slightly more than I did. If there was a slice of cake or something,

00:52:28.880 | it was as much as we would look at the slice of cake being served to us, we were looking to see how much

00:52:33.440 | the other one got. And this was a reflexive thing. And we're not competitive in any dimension,

00:52:39.920 | really. We've always respected each other's strengths and weaknesses in a way that's very

00:52:45.840 | complimentary. But when it comes to treats, humans and dogs pay a lot of attention to who's getting what.

00:52:55.440 | Fairness, yeah. There was this experiment done on capuchin monkeys by Frans Duval and his team.

00:53:02.640 | And apparently they did it and they published a paper on it and, you know, nobody read it. And then

00:53:08.960 | like a decade later, in preparation for a presentation, they redid some of the experiment and filmed it. And he

00:53:18.720 | shared that on the presentation. I don't know if you've seen it, but essentially it's two capuchin

00:53:24.160 | monkeys and they're next to one another so they can each see what the other is getting. And they're asked

00:53:30.160 | to do a task, like the researcher hands them a rock and they hand it back to the researcher and then they

00:53:36.960 | they get a reinforcer. So a treat as payment for that behaviour. And so the first monkey

00:53:44.240 | gets a piece of cucumber and he's happy. He eats that cucumber. And then the researcher turns towards

00:53:52.640 | the second monkey and requests the same behaviour, gets the same behaviour and feeds that animal a grape.

00:54:01.280 | And capuchins are not too enthusiastic about cucumbers, but they really love grapes. So when she then turns

00:54:10.720 | back to the first monkey again and repeats the behaviour and again feeds that one a cucumber that he was happy to

00:54:18.240 | eat like 30 seconds ago, he actually throws a tantrum and throws it back at the researcher, sort of going, I saw that you

00:54:25.840 | fed the other guy a grape. And the audience is laughing. So it's like I think we all recognise that situation that we

00:54:33.760 | we take affront to somebody else getting paid better for the same quality of work.

00:54:40.560 | Yeah, I'm always interested in these studies that every few years something, I didn't know that one,

00:54:45.280 | so thank you for sharing that, where there's something about resource allocation that's revealed.

00:54:50.720 | And then for every one of those, there will be a study that shows, for instance, I'm not going to get

00:54:56.560 | the details right here, but that crows will teach each other ways to open boxes so that another one can

00:55:05.840 | get food, even if they don't have access to that food. Just it seems like an act of altruism. So we'll see

00:55:12.000 | fairness, we'll see altruism. Oh, yes.

00:55:14.960 | A very different picture than this whole notion of dominance hierarchies in every

00:55:19.280 | member of a species is just trying to get the most that they possibly can, even at the expense of

00:55:24.240 | others. It's beautiful in a way, and we again have to be careful not to anthropomorphise, to not assume

00:55:30.800 | that members of a species are doing this because they're benevolent. That's a nice, I like that

00:55:35.600 | interpretation. But maybe as you pointed out before, that having a happy group makes for

00:55:42.240 | more happiness for oneself.

00:55:44.880 | Absolutely. I think if the group is doing well, then everybody's better off. So we used to think

00:55:51.840 | that there was just sort of individual selection, but there is a certain amount of group selection

00:55:56.640 | also. The individual selection is stronger, but certainly if there's a group that collaborates better,

00:56:01.600 | that will do better than the group that isn't collaborating as well. And it's interesting,

00:56:07.040 | you've mentioned a few times now, the risk of anthropomorphism. And I think that if we look at

00:56:13.360 | that as a sort of a continuum from anthropomorphism, which we might then define as, you know, thinking

00:56:20.880 | that animals are just the same as humans, it's only just that they have some fur, so they're a bit

00:56:25.360 | different, but more or less the same. And on the other side is what we might refer to as anthropo-denial.

00:56:32.880 | That was a term coined also by Franz Duval, the one with the Capuchin experiment,

00:56:37.600 | where we don't recognise that, in fact, there are commonalities between humans and other animal species.

00:56:48.320 | And I think that we, in our sort of fear of anthropomorphism, we have fallen into anthropo-denial.

00:56:57.040 | And I think that the answer is probably somewhere in the middle, that we do share lots of commonalities

00:57:02.400 | with animals. I think that, for instance, even though our perception of the world might be really

00:57:07.520 | different, how we process that information and the types of emotional and mood responses or changes

00:57:16.400 | in mood that we get in response to the environment are very much the same, although it will be different

00:57:22.800 | stimuli that different animal species pay attention to that are more or less relevant to them, depending

00:57:31.280 | on which species it is. But I think that we've so avoided this topic of anthropomorphism, we've been

00:57:39.600 | so afraid of it that we've fallen into the other trap, which is sort of denying that they have anything to

00:57:45.280 | do with us. Let's talk about a species that can be divisive: cats. My sister has cats and I

00:57:56.880 | don't mind them. I can't say I gravitate toward them, but I don't dislike them. You do own a cat and you're

00:58:04.720 | an animal ethologist. Tell us about cats from the perspective of an animal ethologist. When you look

00:58:12.720 | at a cat, what are you looking for to tell you something about whether or not it's a friendly cat?

00:58:20.640 | I mean, obviously if it's hair standing up on its back and it's arching and it's hissing, that's obvious.

00:58:26.800 | But what are you looking at in the context of the way that cats evolved and their species in general?

00:58:33.760 | So the common house cat that we have today as a pet evolved as a solitary hunter,

00:58:44.800 | but that aggregates in social groups, loose social groups. So they sort of hang out together,

00:58:52.480 | but it's not this really cohesive group. And they hunt on their own, so they'll eat on their own also.

00:59:02.640 | And me as an ethologist, what I tend to do when I look at an animal species is I look at three things.

00:59:07.120 | I look at their social environment. So typically with cats I would then say that if they are raised well,

00:59:17.440 | so they've had the opportunity of spending enough time with mum, typically it should be up to 14 weeks,

00:59:23.680 | which I think that we see that in Sweden nowadays. I don't know how it is here in the US, but that seems

00:59:28.960 | to be long enough for the animal to actually learn how to be a cat so that they don't get too

00:59:36.640 | emotionally disturbed by the separation once we wean them and sort of put them in a new environment.

00:59:44.720 | So just looking at the social bit is one thing that I do, the first thing that I do. The second thing

00:59:50.560 | that I do is I look at how do they get food? So again, cats are solitary hunters. So I would

00:59:56.480 | look into ways of, and they, as opposed to dogs, cats typically retain the whole hunting sequence.

01:00:04.160 | Sometimes the killing bite isn't quite there, but certainly the grab bite and the fact that some cats

01:00:12.320 | will, if it's an outdoor cat that they might bring their prey back home is to me, it's simply,

01:00:19.760 | it's not that they want to gift you with their kill, but rather that they feel safe.

01:00:26.720 | So they're simply bringing their prey to a place where they feel safe.

01:00:34.160 | So it's not a gift. We can put that one to rest.

01:00:36.400 | I wouldn't say, I would not call that a gift now.

01:00:39.200 | I had a girlfriend in graduate school and her cat would catch these very large mice and put them

01:00:46.400 | in our shoes at night. It was dreadful.

01:00:50.240 | Would the cat put them in the shoes or would the mice hide in the shoes?

01:00:56.000 | Well, they were dead when we found them. So I'm assuming that the cat would put them in the shoes.

01:01:01.760 | The cat also loved to retrieve tin foil balls, little tin foil balls. I've never seen a cat retrieve.

01:01:09.280 | Yeah.

01:01:09.680 | Yeah.

01:01:09.680 | At first I didn't, I wasn't too enthusiastic about the cat and then I developed a really close

01:01:14.000 | relationship with it, at least from my side, I thought it was a close relationship.

01:01:19.360 | And he would catch mice, put them in our shoes at night while we slept. It was pretty unpleasant. You

01:01:25.440 | had to check your shoes in the morning. So those weren't gifts.

01:01:28.160 | I would not assume that they were gifts. No, no. From what I know, cats will sort of bring back what they

01:01:35.840 | catch to a place where they feel safe. And then they often lose interest if it's not moving anymore.

01:01:44.080 | So, so, and if, obviously if, if your cat or that cat killed the mice, they had, that cat had progressed

01:01:52.320 | to the actual killing bite. Many cats don't do that. They only have the crab bites. So they'll,

01:01:56.560 | they'll just let the, the little rhodod go to run off.

01:02:00.320 | I've seen that. Well, they'll play with them, right?

01:02:01.840 | Yeah. So, so they'll let it go. And if the mouse is still, they can actually just sort of escape

01:02:09.040 | attention because the animal, the cat might grow bored and walk away.

01:02:13.360 | But the moment they start moving again, then they're sort of restarting that whole

01:02:17.840 | predatory sequence again. But back to your question about how to interact with cats or whether,

01:02:25.440 | how to read them. So that would be the third thing that I'm looking at is how do

01:02:29.120 | the animal species in front of me, how do they respond to perceived threat? And I'm saying perceived

01:02:36.960 | threat here because sometimes we are well-intended. We're like, hi. And we want to,

01:02:42.480 | we want to hug them because we're primates. And they really don't like that. So, so they will respond

01:02:49.120 | to us as if we were a predator. And I think that, again, comes down very much to the types of interaction,

01:02:57.120 | social interactions, the type of learning that the, the animal has had when they're really young. So for

01:03:03.360 | instance, there's a study showing that if you handle young kittens between the ages of like two and eight

01:03:10.160 | weeks for at least an hour a day, and, and when I say handle, I just mean that sort of interact with

01:03:17.600 | them and, and play and have them sort of on your lap and so on, they will become very social as adults.

01:03:24.000 | So they will be the type of cat that will jump up into your lap and fall asleep purring. If you interact

01:03:30.640 | with that young kitten less than like 15 minutes a day, they won't be fearful of humans, but they'll

01:03:37.840 | be more like walking up to you and saying hi, and then walking away.

01:03:41.680 | So, so I think that early life experiences can really shape the type of temperament,

01:03:51.360 | if you will, or how sort of vigorously animals respond to changes in the environment.

01:03:57.360 | What is this behavior of bumping, uh, where the cat bumps its head against you or your arm? Uh,

01:04:05.120 | is it to, um, spread smell? Yeah, I would say that is scent marking. Yeah.

01:04:09.840 | So, and when they're scent marking you, why are they scent marking?

01:04:13.920 | I would think that it's, it's like something you do in your group, you do mutual scent marking,

01:04:20.720 | which means that everybody in the group smells more or less the same. So it's a, it's a way of sort of

01:04:25.680 | greeting and incorporating the others in the group. So there'll be a lot of scent exchange within,

01:04:32.640 | uh, this type of species living in the group. That would be my guess as to why they do that.

01:04:38.880 | So is scent marking about territory as well? Like if a cat, you know, scent marks in corners and-

01:04:44.960 | Oh yeah. They, but that's a different, that's typically not the, because they have like multiple

01:04:51.040 | scent glands in the face that are, and, and one of them is used to scent mark sort of the inner territory.

01:04:58.720 | And this is where they feel really safe. And then they usually have this urine scent marking,

01:05:03.760 | which is in the out sort of, um, the outskirts of the territory. And you, you might see this if you,

01:05:09.520 | if for instance, you have an indoor cat and they start peeing and you bring out a piece of paper

01:05:16.560 | and a layout of your, um, your house or apartment and you start sort of putting a little ring to where

01:05:24.880 | you find the, the pee, that will give you a lot of information because if, if it's a territorial thing,

01:05:31.200 | it will typically be at the edges of sort of at the windows or doors. If it's a, an elimination problem

01:05:38.160 | that the cat has sort of maybe perhaps, uh, it hurts when he pees. So then he learns to associate pain

01:05:45.600 | with going in the box. And so the box starts representing painful experiences. So he will

01:05:52.000 | start going outside of the box, but that type of behavior will be seen in that context instead.

01:05:57.120 | Interesting. Um, so if your cat is urinating inside, you know, have a, an experiment to run.

01:06:03.680 | The use of a litter box is a pretty interesting one to me. It's not what I spent a lot of time

01:06:09.440 | thinking about, but if you sort of step back and you say, okay, here's this animal that we've

01:06:13.120 | domesticated and it readily learns how to cover its waste. Um, which is very different than a dog,

01:06:20.720 | which can be trained to with withhold until you go out on a walk. That's basically the two different

01:06:27.680 | strategies there. Um, and I don't know what it is if you own a monkey, um, or something else, but

01:06:34.880 | what is it about the covering of waste behavior? Is that something in cats, is that a natural behavior

01:06:42.080 | they do in the wild? And if they roam, why do they bother? Is it, um, and then sort of tack to this,

01:06:50.560 | is that with dogs, oftentimes after they eliminate waste, they'll step away from it and kick dirt in

01:06:57.200 | the general direction. And I've heard it interpreted two ways. One is that they're trying to spread scent

01:07:01.920 | and the other is that they're trying to cover waste. So again, uh, this is why I was interested in

01:07:06.720 | talking to an animal ethologist as opposed to a pet, uh, behavioral trainer, right? I'm also interested

01:07:12.560 | in that, but, but I think we have to again, acknowledge that much of the interpretation that we have about

01:07:18.800 | animals behavior is just human interpretation. So certainly. So what is this, uh, covering of waste?

01:07:24.000 | Do we know what it's for in the wild in cats? The covering of waste, um, is a way to sort of reduce

01:07:31.360 | the risk of infection. I would assume that they also don't eliminate close to where they eat. So if we have

01:07:39.200 | a house, a cat in our house, we shouldn't have the litter box next to the food, which I wish I had known

01:07:44.720 | where I had my first cat 20 years ago, cause she had that very set up with the food right next to

01:07:50.880 | the litter box. And I would also assume that the behavior of dogs, when they sort of kick at their

01:07:56.480 | poop typically, right? Not, uh, pee, uh, that it's a way of spreading scent. Uh, because if it were

01:08:04.800 | covering scent, the behavior would look very different, I think, but I haven't seen any sort of

01:08:10.960 | any scientific study on that topic. Okay. So cat owners take note, separate the food from the

01:08:16.000 | litter box by, by some distance. I was always, um, somewhat surprised, uh, although less so over time,

01:08:24.880 | uh, uh, how much determination and effort my bulldog would put into peeing on things on walks.

01:08:33.120 | Yeah. I feel like it was one of his great joys in life. There I go again, anthropomorphizing, but,

01:08:38.240 | but to smell something and then pee there, um, he seemed to have an endless supply of urine for this.

01:08:46.640 | Um, it was really remarkable. Yeah. You know, as, as a scientist and someone who loves dogs and

01:08:52.320 | loved him, you know, more than words, I just was like, this is amazing. Like he loves this behavior.

01:08:58.320 | Yeah. And he's also reading the pee mail from the other dogs that are in the neighborhood. So the

01:09:03.280 | urine tells a lot of information to the other animal. It tells what, what gender, what, you know,

01:09:07.760 | reproductive state, perhaps also something about the animal's emotional state or mental state.

01:09:13.200 | So I wouldn't hesitate to say that, that, that was one of the joys of life for, for dogs that they,

01:09:19.200 | that's after all, that's how they communicate. So it's, and they spend a lot of time doing it and

01:09:24.400 | they're willing to work to get access to that, uh, opportunity. So I've absolutely, I would,

01:09:29.120 | I would think that it gives them positive emotional experiences doing that.

01:09:34.000 | So there's some innate drive in, in dogs, it seems to, um, read the emotional and hormonal states of

01:09:42.400 | other dogs that have been, been there to me. It, it felt like their form of social media.

01:09:47.200 | Yeah. Like I'm going to post here. What are other people posting here? What's going on?

01:09:51.680 | Yeah. Um, I mean, clearly there's some brain real estate devoted to this behavior. I'm not,

01:09:57.600 | I'm not, I'm not being facetious. I mean, I look, I look at Alec, you know, you get a human brain,

01:10:02.080 | 40% of that real estate is for vision.

01:10:05.440 | Another 40% it's mixed in there with other stuff is for motor behavior. We have neural real estate

01:10:14.080 | for smelling and certainly for touch. But even if you're a massage therapist or you're a, or you do,

01:10:20.080 | you know, touch based work, you're, uh, even if you're a braille reader, um, the amount of neural

01:10:26.320 | real estate for these other things is, is vastly larger, except for the blind person where the visual

01:10:32.560 | stuff is taken over by the tactile stuff and auditory. So amount of real estate correlates.

01:10:37.600 | Um, so when I see a behavior that's like, this is what, this is one of the main things dogs do.

01:10:43.200 | Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty striking. Yeah. So dogs descended from, they were domesticated

01:10:48.080 | from wolves correctly. Did that happen at independent locations around the earth?

01:10:52.400 | I don't really know the answer to that question, but it seems that they domesticated themselves,

01:10:57.440 | that it was sort of wolves that started hanging out next to human habitation and that it was sort of

01:11:04.800 | the, the, the least fearful and the sort of most, uh, explorative wolves that dared do this. So,

01:11:13.200 | so it was, it was, it wasn't that we caught wolves and said, aha, I'm going to breed you now,

01:11:18.720 | but it was rather that that was, it was like a symbiotic relationship that developed over time.

01:11:25.040 | Interesting. I don't know of any other species that does that, except maybe, uh, like certain

01:11:30.400 | fish or dolphins that follow fishing boats so they can get some of the catch. But that's different

01:11:34.960 | because, you know, I see these Instagram videos of like an otter jumping on a kayak and there's some

01:11:40.960 | interaction, uh, that's regular, you know, that the person goes out on their kayak, they interact with

01:11:46.640 | this otter. So animals will do this, but usually there's some sort of, uh, food. It just sounds like

01:11:51.760 | food payoff is, is, and safety is really the key. Does that mean that animals at, at a very basic level

01:11:58.320 | are looking to optimize food intake and safety? And what does that tell us about zoos? I personally have a,

01:12:05.680 | uh, pretty strong, um, visceral reaction to zoos that, um, have large carnivores. Uh, I realized we

01:12:15.280 | could have a discussion about elephants too, but I feel like large carnivores housed in zoos creates

01:12:20.400 | some issues for me. I won't go into what this is, but, but I'm also here that zoos have, um,

01:12:26.240 | positive, uh, breeding programs, uh, endangered species protection programs. Uh, what's your take

01:12:33.440 | on zoos? When we talk about zoos, it's perhaps good to talk about the evolution of zoos because

01:12:38.480 | back in the day, like 150 years ago, it used to be more or less a menagerie that, you know,

01:12:44.160 | here's a lion and here's an elephant and here's a zebra. And they were on in little,

01:12:48.800 | small cages and the only thing that you did was see the animal really. Zoos today tend to

01:12:56.480 | have the purpose of doing a lot of conservation work. So there's, there's, um, what's referred

01:13:03.760 | to as in situ conservation, where you work to preserve wild habitats and creating national parks,

01:13:10.480 | et cetera, and sort of giving the opportunities for, for reintroduction of species and so on. And

01:13:16.880 | there's ex situ conservation, which is then housing those, uh, animal species that are, are threatened

01:13:22.960 | with extinction in an environment. And ideally that environment should then be good enough to promote,

01:13:30.960 | uh, um, species typical behavior and so on. So I'm, I'm, I mean, I'm conflicted.

01:13:39.600 | I think that, that many zoos are sort of doing a lot of, um, a lot of good in, in, in this effort

01:13:46.320 | and also educating the public. And many, I think that many people who go to zoos that might awaken

01:13:53.120 | in them an interest in animals, which I think is a good thing that we, that we care about animals,

01:14:01.280 | but also that sometimes the, the, um, the housing is, isn't optimal. And certainly some

01:14:08.720 | species are a lot more difficult to keep in captivity compared to others. So polar bears

01:14:14.560 | are, are really difficult to keep because they're, they're, they're ranging, um, carnivores.

01:14:20.480 | They walk miles and miles and miles, and it's really difficult to, to provide those species specific

01:14:27.440 | opportunities in captivity compared to other, uh, uh, carnivores who have more of a, a different type of

01:14:36.400 | approach to, to predation. One of the things that really turned me on to, uh, just how, um, more

01:14:45.040 | sophisticated, um, cat species are than I ever assumed was, um, something that happened when I

01:14:52.000 | was a postdoc at, also at Stanford. Uh, I was a member of the San Francisco zoo. The San Francisco

01:14:57.680 | zoo is an outdoor zoo by comparison to most other zoos I've been to. And I haven't been to that many,

01:15:02.960 | but it's a pretty, uh, nice landscape. Um, there's an outdoor lemur, uh, I call it an exhibit, but you

01:15:11.280 | know, in, uh, indoor, outdoor lemur thing, that's really amazing. There's some giraffes, all this.

01:15:16.560 | Well, um, around the time I was in, when I was a postdoc, I was briefly tell this story. I was at the

01:15:23.840 | movies in San Francisco and I, I stepped out to get something to drink. And the kid behind the counter

01:15:29.280 | said that a tiger escaped from the San Francisco zoo and is killing people. And I thought,

01:15:34.080 | what? Like, that's crazy. It turns out that was only partially true. What had happened is there was

01:15:39.520 | a tiger there, Tatiana, who, um, they used to have these moats around the tiger enclosure and it was

01:15:47.360 | very close to Christmas. People can look this up and get the details. And there were a couple of kids

01:15:51.040 | who were throwing either pine cones or, or throwing something at the tigers. Okay.

01:15:58.080 | The zoo was near shutting down. Tatiana either ran up or jumped the moat. I don't know how she did it.

01:16:06.000 | Um, got out and moved through the crowd. This is the, to me, the interesting part, moved through the

01:16:13.840 | crowd, completely ignoring most of the people that were around centered in on and killed one of the kids.

01:16:21.120 | Then moved to the second kid, worked him pretty well. The authorities showed up, killed Tatiana.

01:16:30.560 | This opened up a whole discussion in the zoo community, um, raised a lot of, uh, kind of

01:16:39.280 | complicated questions about enclosures, et cetera. The enclosures there, by the way, now are very

01:16:44.000 | different. They have these high glass, uh, as well. And of course, the ending was sad for everybody. Um,

01:16:50.320 | I took a break from my membership there. I reactivated it a few years later. They know, I don't, that tiger,

01:16:56.240 | you know, obviously is gone, but, um, I, I still am conflicted about, um, about this whole picture. What's

01:17:02.720 | interesting to me is the intentionality of the tiger. So this was not a bloodthirsty tiger that just

01:17:08.880 | wanted to kill humans or eat humans. It was those two humans that pissed her off and those two humans

01:17:15.840 | were gonna pay and they paid. The family sued the zoo and then the, then it was a whole thing. I don't

01:17:22.720 | know how it ended up with the law, with the lawsuit, but it was a whole thing. So people can look this up

01:17:26.800 | online. Um, when you hear that, that a tiger did that as opposed to just going into a frenzy the way

01:17:36.640 | humans sometimes go into a frenzy, attacking whoever and as many people as possible.

01:17:41.200 | What do you think? What, what, what does it tell us about tigers and their, um, consciousness?

01:17:46.480 | I think we often don't give animals enough credit. Uh, to me, it's not surprising that, that she,

01:17:56.640 | she experienced something really unpleasant that she came to associate with two individuals

01:18:04.800 | and that generated a negative emotional state and aggressive behavior that she then carried out,

01:18:13.600 | directed towards those two people. Does it surprise you how directed it was?

01:18:18.320 | No. As opposed to just, I mean, there were plenty of people around that were an easier,

01:18:22.080 | um, you know, easier kill. I would think that a fearful animal might lash out at anyone,

01:18:30.240 | one, but an animal that is angry tends to be more premeditated in a way.

01:18:37.200 | Yeah. Calculated. Calculated in a way.

01:18:39.200 | Yeah. So I would expect that if, if you had scared the tiger, she might show defensive aggression,

01:18:45.600 | which is just lashing out at whoever is closest. Uh-huh.

01:18:48.720 | But this was offense, offensive aggression. And so that is, that is premeditated.

01:18:54.000 | I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function. Last year, I became a

01:19:00.160 | Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function

01:19:04.960 | provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health. This

01:19:11.120 | snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient

01:19:16.000 | levels, and much more. They've also recently added tests for toxins, such as BPA exposure from harmful

01:19:21.520 | plastics and tests for PFASs or forever chemicals. Function not only provides testing of over 100

01:19:27.440 | biomarkers key to your physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights

01:19:33.040 | from top doctors who are expert in the relevant areas. For example, in one of my first tests with Function,

01:19:38.720 | I learned that I had elevated levels of mercury in my blood. Function not only helped me detect that,

01:19:43.840 | but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna

01:19:48.240 | consumption. I've been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and

01:19:53.040 | supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and

01:19:57.440 | detoxification. And I should say, by taking a second Function test, that approach worked. Comprehensive

01:20:02.880 | blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health

01:20:07.760 | that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very

01:20:12.160 | expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by Function's simplicity

01:20:17.040 | and at the level of cost. It is very affordable. As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific

01:20:22.320 | advisory board and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function,

01:20:27.200 | you can go to functionhealth.com/huberman. Function currently has a waitlist of over 250,000 people,

01:20:33.280 | but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners. Again,

01:20:37.680 | that's functionhealth.com/huberman to get early access to function.

01:20:42.160 | Can we talk a little bit about the, um, the prey and stalking and capture and killing sequence?

01:20:50.560 | Mm-hmm.

01:20:51.360 | One of the things that, um, I'm always been fascinated by is when a, let's just use a cat as an example,

01:20:58.720 | could be large cat, could be small cat, is in its stalking mode that it essentially gets one ballistic

01:21:06.080 | strike opportunity before the, the, before the chase is on or, or the animal gets away or it gets caught,

01:21:11.600 | right? Yeah.

01:21:12.400 | And we, we'll see the, um, we had a cat when I was a kid, um, that would like stalk and,

01:21:21.600 | you know, so obviously that creep up. And then right before it would leap at the prey,

01:21:26.880 | it would, it would start shattering its teeth. Um, I'm assuming that was behavioral suppression

01:21:34.240 | or something leaking through what, what's going on when, when a animal does that very deliberate

01:21:38.880 | stalking, that calculation, um, and the like teeth chatters or, or like twitching is starting to occur.

01:21:45.040 | What is that?

01:21:45.760 | My guess would be perhaps some sort of, sort of displacement behavior,

01:21:49.840 | that there's motivation to move on in the sequence of behaviors to the next behavior,

01:21:55.120 | but it's not quite time yet. And so that sort of activation then gets an outlet through that

01:22:01.120 | behavior. But I really don't know. I don't know. I haven't seen this discussed.

01:22:03.840 | So it's almost like a, like a hydraulic pressure or something.

01:22:06.560 | Maybe.

01:22:06.960 | Yeah.

01:22:07.600 | Interesting. Interesting. Um, we've talked about dogs. We've talked about cats.

01:22:14.000 | Let's talk about birds. Okay.

01:22:16.240 | I had parrots when I was a kid, they were domestically bred, little gray cheek dwarf parrots.

01:22:22.080 | It didn't turn out poorly. It didn't turn out great. They were, um, I didn't clip their wings

01:22:27.520 | because I couldn't bring myself to, and they flew around my room a lot and

01:22:31.200 | shit around the room a lot and threw a lot of food on the ground a lot. And eventually made sense to

01:22:37.200 | give them to somebody who had a, an aviary. Um, parrots are smart. Yeah.

01:22:42.960 | Yeah. What are parrots thinking about?

01:22:45.200 | I think what, what all animals are thinking about, where their next meal is going to come from,

01:22:50.000 | uh, social interactions and whether there's any threat anywhere.

01:22:53.680 | Is that really their, like 90% of their conscious life?

01:22:56.960 | I would say, I would say that, um, uh, if the animal doesn't feel safe, then it's very hard to

01:23:05.360 | engage the animal in any type of sort of, if you, if an animal is fearful and you try to feed them,

01:23:10.560 | they often won't take food for instance. So the sense of safety has a very high priority because if

01:23:16.960 | you don't feel safe, you could die essentially. So if you're in a situation where you don't feel safe,

01:23:20.800 | it's because that situation is potentially dangerous, there could be predators around,

01:23:24.800 | and then you must focus your attention on those predators because otherwise you're going to die.

01:23:30.320 | And that of course depends on the species. Some species are sort of aggregate in big

01:23:35.920 | flocks, if we're talking birds, and some are, um, pair bonding species. But the social

01:23:42.960 | environment is really important, both with regards to, uh, uh, you know, um, parenting behavior. So

01:23:50.720 | sexual behavior, parenting behavior, raising young and so on, all of that also has high priority because

01:23:56.240 | it's essentially about, um, furthering your genes into the next generation. Um, and then, uh, and then

01:24:03.440 | foraging behaviors, where am I going to get my next meal? We feed them on a plate. We're thinking like,

01:24:08.640 | we, we think that we're doing them a service, like here's, here's your food on the plate. You don't have

01:24:12.880 | to do anything, but they come equipped to actually show their food getting repertoire of behaviors.

01:24:20.640 | So typically if we don't allow them to show those behaviors, we might see some problem behaviors

01:24:25.760 | popping up instead because they will redirect that, that energy, that, um, intention into,

01:24:31.840 | I don't know, did you have any problems with the animals sort of, the birds, you know, ripping your

01:24:38.560 | carpet or, or, oh, they destroyed everything. I mean, they destroyed, I mean, that they took great

01:24:44.480 | pleasure in ripping everything. Books, books, covers, yeah. Like the foraging behavior directed

01:24:51.040 | towards the wrong thing. Yeah. Yeah. I don't recommend anyone own parrots, frankly. Uh, that

01:24:55.760 | was an experiment gone wrong. Uh, luckily they're, I think they're still alive. They live a very long

01:25:00.240 | time. Oh. And people can look up the Ecuadorian gray cheek, uh, dwarf parrots. They have this beautiful,

01:25:06.080 | um, orange under their wings. They have little gray cheeks and they, they were called pocket

01:25:11.040 | parrots. Uh, you know, the, the, the excitement for me at that, I was young, I was probably 11,

01:25:16.560 | was that I'd be able to like carry them around in my pocket. They didn't want to do that at all.

01:25:20.000 | Yeah. Um, anyway, um, it's interesting to think about this need for animals to express their

01:25:26.960 | natural repertoire of behaviors for dog owners. Um, I think that the common practice is to, you know,

01:25:33.600 | put out a bowl of food, uh, would we be better off bringing the food to a park and, and going to the

01:25:38.720 | park and then having them eat there? Um, or somehow incorporating the, the, the roaming and, and, um,

01:25:46.000 | prey seeking, uh, behavior. I mean, how would one incorporate that into a more, uh, pleasant experience

01:25:52.720 | for, for the dog? Because what you're saying makes total sense that they need to express these behaviors.

01:25:56.880 | They're not, if they're, if they can't, um, um, it's going to come out some other way and maybe

01:26:01.600 | the destructive to them or the environment. Yeah. Essentially, I think that for dog owners,

01:26:05.840 | that what we can do is we can try to promote the different aspects of the predatory sequence that,

01:26:12.400 | that particular dog in front of us enjoys doing. Uh, I, I mentioned nose work as being one of the

01:26:19.200 | things that, that many dogs really enjoy. And interestingly, and this is, this is just sort of

01:26:24.160 | of the early days of scientific studies on the effects of nose work, uh, are really promising

01:26:29.920 | that, that one of the effects of nose work seems to be. So if you, if you're not familiar with it,

01:26:34.480 | it's essentially that the animal has learned that he needs to find a specific scent in an area. And so

01:26:42.160 | he sniffs the area, he roams the area and he follows the scent and he'll, he'll stop and mark when he finds

01:26:47.120 | the scent and then he gets a reinforcer. So he gets rewarded for, for doing that. So that's,

01:26:51.520 | that's, that's essentially more or less a setup. And it seems that it helps regulate arousal so that animals

01:26:58.880 | who are sort of highly strong and almost, uh, um, have generalized anxiety get calmed down. And the ones

01:27:06.960 | that are sort of, uh, semi-depressed get, um, sort of, uh, more, um, more enthusiastic about life. And, and also,

01:27:17.520 | and, and, um, if we're back in core effect space, again, we have this shift to the right-hand side of

01:27:22.160 | the core effect space. So we have positive valence associated with that. Uh, and it seems really

01:27:27.760 | interesting, um, early days still, because this, this, um, dog sport is like just, I don't know, 15 years

01:27:35.280 | old or something. It's not very, not very old. So essentially what we can do is we can, um, every

01:27:42.080 | dog could do nose work. I think that would be an interesting sort of an outlet for that very first

01:27:48.160 | part of the behavior sequence. And then I know that some, some, um, um, trainers are working

01:27:54.480 | specifically to, to help dogs who chase wildlife, for instance. And it's about teaching the dog to

01:28:03.840 | stay in the first parts of the predatory sequence, to do the sniffing, the, the, uh, the pointing and the,

01:28:11.760 | um, the, um, the eyeing behavior and then getting reinforced for that so many times so that it

01:28:18.400 | becomes like a feedback loop that they, they see a, they see a deer running across the road and they

01:28:23.600 | go, mom, I saw a deer and they get reinforced for that. So, and other dogs like greyhounds that love

01:28:30.000 | chasing that you allow them to do that. And then, uh, other dogs that really allow sort of, uh, um,

01:28:37.600 | that really enjoy, uh, carrying things that you allow them to do that. And then give your poodle,

01:28:44.000 | uh, an old, um, something to rip apart, you know, and disembowel things.

01:28:51.120 | Yeah. Poodles like to, to, to kill and to, to, to, to the post kill ripping apart.

01:28:55.520 | Yeah. Rip them apart. Gosh, the, the name and the look of a poodle suggests a much,

01:28:59.760 | a much more docile animal. So they really like to rip bodies apart.

01:29:03.040 | Yeah. As far as I understand. Yes.

01:29:05.040 | And that makes sense. Um, given what I understand about the dosing of different genes.

01:29:08.800 | And then also I would, you know, rather than serving food on the plate, you might

01:29:12.960 | try scatter feeding. So just, uh, or, or feeding it in a way that the animal actually has to work for

01:29:18.800 | it. So do some behavior like, um, one of these snuffle mats, you hide the food in there. So they have to

01:29:24.000 | to actually spend some time looking for the food before consuming it. Because otherwise,

01:29:30.320 | if you serve it in a bowl, the animal, some animals simply, you know, they inhale it. It takes like

01:29:34.720 | 30 seconds and they're done. Costello ate like a seagull. Yeah. Yeah. Really. He wouldn't chew his food.

01:29:40.480 | Yeah. It's interesting. The, um, the, the dog food, uh, training, uh, animal health world sells

01:29:47.920 | lots of things where you can put food inside of an object where they have to really work hard at it.

01:29:51.920 | Yeah. I had mixed, uh, you know, sort of mixed results with that because I, I, I have heard that

01:29:58.240 | in addition to exercise and wanting your proximity that animals, dogs in particular, perhaps really

01:30:05.760 | need that cognitive work that they, they get bored and they really need the challenge of,

01:30:12.480 | of, of working their mind so much so that on rainy days, when you like, if weather's really bad and

01:30:18.000 | you can't go out that they need an immense amount of kind of like search and forage type behavior.

01:30:23.360 | So I would, I, I strive to do that. Um, and I know some people might hear this and just think,

01:30:28.800 | this is crazy. Like my dog just wants to curl up at my feet and it just wants to fetch the ball,

01:30:32.560 | but that's for fetching breeds. If I threw a ball to Costello, he would go to it and then just sit

01:30:38.640 | on top of it. He had no interest whatsoever in doing anything with that in terms of retrieving it.

01:30:43.760 | Yeah.

01:30:44.160 | But he would love to just love to tug. So just, you know, if I tied a, a rope to a tree, for instance,

01:30:50.480 | he would jump on, on there and hold on. And I could swing him by his body way to, you know,

01:30:55.200 | 90 pounds and he'd stay up there for 10 minutes. Yeah. Like the, the pleasure of chewing was clearly

01:31:01.120 | the strongest innate drive. So I think what I'm realizing is that understanding the sequence of

01:31:06.640 | natural behaviors, but also where in that sequence, a particular breed really leans to.

01:31:10.560 | Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So sometimes it can be hard to know where your dog is on that scale,

01:31:15.680 | especially if it's like a mixed breed of some type. And then you can often actually just look at

01:31:20.240 | at the confirmation of the dog. So those very lean, I'm thinking greyhound now, the, the lean dog with,

01:31:29.200 | with not much muscle and very pointy snout tends to be the chasers and the, the ones with more muscles,

01:31:37.760 | front muscles and, and bigger jaws tend to be the, the ones that rip things apart.

01:31:44.560 | Bulldogs, Rottweilers, Mastiffs. And some of the smaller ones, the pugs, the French bulldogs,

01:31:50.000 | I think people don't appreciate how that the breeding down because people now, you know,

01:31:55.120 | a lot of people have dogs who live in apartments, you know, smaller dogs, although there's this weird

01:31:59.520 | thing. Uh, you know, you talk to a vet of a family member who's a vet and you say, what's a great

01:32:04.480 | like apartment dog. And they'll say great Dane because they don't need a ton of space to roam,

01:32:08.880 | but as you have to walk them, but they don't need long walks compared to like a little terrier

01:32:13.280 | sometimes needs to just go, go, go, go, go. I mean, needs two hours or more of activity.

01:32:17.680 | Yeah. I think you need to pay a lot of attention to the type of life that you're going to offer,

01:32:21.680 | whether it's, you know, living in an apartment in a busy city or whether it's, uh, you know,

01:32:27.120 | you're on a farm somewhere that which, which breed of dog is going to adapt best to that lifestyle.

01:32:33.760 | Do you think dogs like cities?

01:32:35.680 | I think many dogs get very stressed in cities because of the constant bombardment of sensory

01:32:43.840 | information. So there's noise, there's dogs. So if you're out walking on the street, there's

01:32:48.960 | constantly meeting strangers. And for many animal species, meeting strangers, A, doesn't happen very

01:32:56.160 | often. And B, causes, um, uh, an increase in arousal because it, it could be, you know,

01:33:03.200 | a friend or foe. It could be some, someone that you want to fight with. It could be someone you

01:33:07.040 | want to have sex with. You need to assess the situation. And I think that, that dogs are quite

01:33:13.280 | unique in that respect and that they have a high tolerance for strangers because many other animal

01:33:18.000 | species do not. And I think that we tend to forget that sometimes that we, we introduce animals to,

01:33:24.560 | two animals that they don't know. We expect them to get along and they don't. That, that type of

01:33:30.160 | introduction needs to be done really carefully. Typically we might start with, um, with, uh,

01:33:36.560 | just exchanging scents. So if you're, if you have one cat and want to get a second cat, for instance,

01:33:42.560 | they typically won't just accept the other the way that two dogs might do, for instance. So then you might

01:33:47.280 | have them in different rooms and you might rub one cat with one towel and rub one, the other

01:33:52.720 | cat with another towel and then exchange towels. And then you might want to gradually incorporate

01:33:59.680 | other sensory modalities too, so that they'll start hearing each other. And finally that they

01:34:03.680 | start seeing each other. And then at the end, the tactile, so the actual physical contact. And if you

01:34:08.880 | do it that way, you reduce the risk that they'll actually start fighting when you do the introduction.

01:34:13.280 | Because if you just put them together, they might just escalate to aggression right away. But if you

01:34:18.560 | do it gradually, they, that exchange of information will help them sort of figure out who the other is

01:34:26.480 | and reduce the risk of aggression. I think I've always been fascinated by, and there's a little

01:34:31.600 | bit of data starting to emerge on this as to what the mechanisms might be is self versus other species

01:34:38.640 | recognition. Most notably that dogs, unless it's a dominance behavior, don't try to mate with cats,

01:34:47.760 | for instance. They might hump, but that's a separate thing. They're actually separate circuits. My

01:34:51.920 | colleague David Anderson at Caltech did a really beautiful study. Can I just, the takeaway shows that

01:35:00.000 | there are separate circuits in the brain for mounting behavior for sex versus mounting behavior for

01:35:04.720 | dominance. Oh, interesting. And the mounting behavior for dominance circuits exist in males and females of

01:35:10.480 | a species where only the male mounts for purposes of reproduction. So this notion of mounting as a

01:35:16.160 | dominance behavior is a very real thing, even in mice. In any case, the setting mounting for

01:35:22.720 | dominance behavior aside, AKA humping, it's remarkable. Like a horse doesn't try and mate with a dog. Different

01:35:30.240 | species of animals seem to know self versus other. Yeah. They don't have to learn it from their mom. Yeah. Or

01:35:37.360 | dad. Yeah. Or us. It's innate. It's innate. Yeah. For most species, there's actually a few

01:35:43.520 | a few exceptions being, uh, uh, uh, what comes to mind is, um, uh, certain

01:35:50.080 | waterfowl birds where a female, and I can't say which species now, but some species of water

01:36:00.320 | bird. The female recognizes the male innately, but the male learns through sexual imprinting when

01:36:10.640 | they're young to sort of be attracted to females that resemble the female that reared them. And

01:36:17.920 | essentially this, this is because, um, in, in those species, the males are typically very

01:36:22.480 | ornamented and sort of really fabulous looking. And the females are, um, cryptic. They're like

01:36:28.320 | camouflaged. So they'll, they're like brown. So the males need to learn what mom looks like. And when they grow

01:36:37.440 | up, they'll start, um, courting, uh, females that look like mom. And so if you raise such a male with the wrong species,

01:36:45.920 | they'll start courting the wrong female. And of course she won't be interested because she,

01:36:50.640 | he doesn't look like the, her, her, her, her golden standard of what a male of that species is supposed to

01:36:58.320 | look like.

01:36:58.640 | It's so interesting as a kid who had aquaria, you can tell I've had a lot of different animals. Um,

01:37:04.320 | you know, I would never, I never successfully bred, um, fish in captivity. Um, uh, I tried to breed

01:37:13.440 | cuttlefish in captivity in my lab that didn't work, although I successfully raised them, but I got really

01:37:18.640 | into freshwater discus for a while and tried very hard to get a breeding tank going. It's very difficult.

01:37:25.440 | Um, but occasionally, you know, someone in the aquarium community that I was a part of would

01:37:31.280 | succeed in getting, you know, breeding between, uh, discus fish, but you never ever, ever see an

01:37:37.920 | instance of like a discus fish trying to, uh, fertilize the eggs of a, uh, uh, of a different

01:37:44.000 | species of fish. They just know.

01:37:45.680 | Yeah.

01:37:46.080 | And it's gotta be for them odorant, uh, or presumably mixed sensory. Um, it's, it's really

01:37:52.200 | a striking aspect of even in speed, but I have friends who study flies. So if they study, um,

01:37:57.620 | Drosophila, uh, of one particular type, the, the, the one type of fruit fly will not try to

01:38:03.920 | mate with another type of fruit fly and they look very similar to you and me. So there's, there's

01:38:09.000 | something really powerful there.

01:38:11.180 | that sort of, um, there's inbreeding avoidance is, is, is sort of, uh, uh, a mechanism that

01:38:17.220 | prevents many animal species from, from mating with someone who's too genetically similar to

01:38:22.480 | yourself since we get this inbreeding depression, but there's also sort of don't, don't waste your

01:38:29.160 | time mating with someone that's like, you can't even produce offspring. However, one, one other

01:38:34.820 | exception that came to mind was ungulates. Sometimes, uh, and I have this memory of the

01:38:41.160 | being, I was in Africa about back in 1995, um, at the Chimfunji wildlife orphanage, um, walking

01:38:51.340 | chimps into the forest to, to sort of rehabilitate them. And, and then they had a young duiker

01:38:56.800 | there, which is a very small, like, yay high, um, antelope kind of thing who had been orphaned

01:39:06.920 | and raised, bottle raised and sexually imprinted on humans.

01:39:11.420 | Wow.

01:39:12.420 | So he came up and started, you know, humping me, more or less thinking that I was his, uh, his

01:39:19.100 | kind. So that type of sexual imprinting is when, when predominantly, I think males learn, they

01:39:25.740 | imprint sexually on the type of individual that raised them. So that's the type of individual

01:39:31.100 | that they will then later also try to court. I think Conrad Lawrence had also in his, one

01:39:37.120 | of his books, he described some sort of corvid species who he also raised from young and who

01:39:44.160 | started courting his, uh, like, uh, secretary or someone. And the interesting story there was

01:39:54.060 | the courting behavior in this bird is, is, um, uh, vomiting, uh, you know, leaving like

01:40:01.940 | a present and offering food in any open surface. So, or orifice. So he would try, he would try

01:40:10.980 | to sort of get her to open her mouth. And when she didn't, he would go and, and, and leave

01:40:15.160 | the present in her ear instead.

01:40:16.820 | Disgusting. People can offset their disgust by, uh, we'll provide a link to the now very

01:40:22.760 | famous picture of Con, of Conrad Lorenz who won the Nobel prize, I believe, um, for, uh,

01:40:29.260 | his discoveries of, about imprinting where the geese would imprint on him. It's him swimming

01:40:33.600 | in a lake with the, with the trail of, of baby geese behind him, the goslings behind him.

01:40:38.060 | So that's, that's the other type of imprinting you're talking about. That's filial imprinting.

01:40:41.600 | So there are two types. There's the sexual imprinting where you learn who to make with and

01:40:45.580 | there's the filial imprinting where you sort of learn who to feel safe with and they start

01:40:50.940 | following that individual.

01:40:52.060 | Which is what dogs do with us.

01:40:54.960 | Actually, I would say that dogs don't imprint on humans. They grow attachment bonds to humans.

01:41:03.720 | What's the difference?

01:41:04.620 | So imprinting is typically a very fast process. It occurs within, you know, minutes or hours.

01:41:10.540 | Attachment takes longer and involves more senses. So imprinting tends to be, I think, visual.

01:41:15.520 | If I'm not mistaken, perhaps olfactory in some species. Uh, and attachment has, has

01:41:21.880 | previously mostly been studied in humans. So this bond that grows between, uh, caregiver and

01:41:28.700 | offspring. Um, what's interesting also is that, that attachment bond, um, will grow in different

01:41:37.320 | ways depending on how the caregiver responds to the young one's, um, needs, um, needs essentially. So you can

01:41:46.620 | have, um, a secure attachment bond where the caregiver is very, uh, reliably responds to the needs of the, of the young

01:41:56.740 | one. So that if they find themselves alone, they can, they can self-regulate better. So they can,

01:42:05.340 | their nervous system can more easily calm down again, uh, after a stressor than if they are

01:42:13.540 | insecurely attached. And so it seems that dogs form rather than imprinting on humans, they form a type

01:42:20.540 | of attachment bond and they can also be securely or insecurely attached to their persons.

01:42:27.700 | That's going to open up a whole set of ideas for people because this whole notion of secure

01:42:31.900 | and secure and, um, and then the D babies in the classic Bowlby experiments that we've talked about

01:42:36.540 | before on this podcast where, um, this kind of disorganized, um, responses is something that is

01:42:43.240 | thrown around a lot nowadays in a dating culture, relationship, pop psychology culture, like our

01:42:48.660 | people, is he or she securely attached? Is he or she avoidant? Is he or she anxious attached?

01:42:54.200 | Guess what folks? It's also in your pets. So now you can start to get into that. In those classic

01:42:59.760 | experiments of Bowlby, just to summarize very briefly, um, mother and it was typically mother,

01:43:05.940 | although other caretakers now have been tested, but mother and child are separated.

01:43:09.380 | There's a, uh, a predictable, understandable and healthy anxiety response that occurs.

01:43:14.860 | If the conditions are right, the kid eventually comes to play and relax a bit. If the conditions

01:43:21.800 | aren't right, they don't, that's all healthy. But the real test is on reunion with mom.

01:43:27.640 | Yeah. And also how they respond to a stranger.

01:43:29.900 | Right. The strange situation test. Right. Do they feel comforted and how do they approach mom

01:43:35.560 | when mom comes back? Is it eager to see and relax? Is it uncertain? Is it, uh, avoidant? That's what

01:43:42.560 | the, this test is about. Yeah. Yeah. Or clingy also. Yeah. So the same types of experiments have

01:43:49.380 | been done on dogs and it's been found that certain dogs are, are sort of insecurely attached. They'll be

01:43:55.160 | clingy, uh, or, or avoidant and, uh, or some are securely attached. So they'll be sort of more

01:44:02.260 | explorative, uh, they'll recover quicker, uh, from the separation. So this is great. So if people,

01:44:09.340 | uh, drop off their dog at the dog sitter when they travel and then come back, the reunion tells you a

01:44:14.820 | lot about how that dog feels. Yeah. Sadly, I think that, that, uh, and, and I'm not sure that I have any

01:44:21.740 | back up in any scientific studies here, but I suspect at least that probably early weaning

01:44:30.560 | predisposed dogs to insecure attachment. In this country, the typical, um, idea is that puppies can

01:44:38.440 | be separated from their mother at about eight weeks. Uh, do you feel that's too early? Yeah. As an

01:44:44.880 | mythologist sort of looking, looking at how the species live in the wild, what type of social

01:44:50.880 | interactions they have and how can we best provide an environment to sort of promote natural behavior.

01:44:56.440 | Uh, for me, eight weeks is way too early. So we have some studies from the, I don't know,

01:45:03.960 | sixties or something, uh, where I think two researchers called Scott and Fuller did some separation

01:45:10.800 | studies, but that, that was with dogs aged like three, four, five, six weeks. And they found that

01:45:17.000 | that type of early separation was really detrimental. Sure. Uh, but I, as far as I know, there's been very

01:45:23.580 | few studies done, done beyond eight weeks. And of course, many people would then say that, okay, well,

01:45:29.380 | we have to do all the, all that socialization stuff where the animal learns to sort of accept

01:45:36.120 | life with humans that would then have to occur at the breeders rather than in the new, uh, in the new

01:45:44.160 | environment. But actually I'm not so sure because it seems that if you have secure attachment,

01:45:50.600 | you're better able to self-regulate after, you know, being, being exposed to something that will

01:46:00.340 | so, so some, you have an event happening, you get anxious and, and sort of, uh, fearful and that

01:46:08.540 | then your nervous system is able to calm down again. And so I think that if we are, if we simply allow

01:46:17.360 | dogs to have secure attachment, then perhaps the need for this, sometimes this, um, the socialization

01:46:26.160 | procedures are very elaborate. There's like a list of a hundred things that the dog needs to be exposed

01:46:32.860 | to, you know, men with beards and children, uh, uh, age 12 and, and, uh, people with, uh, shoes, you know,

01:46:40.060 | certain types of shoes and, and, um, um, you know, the vacuum cleaner and so on and so on. There's a whole

01:46:46.600 | list of things that you need to expose an animal to. And I, I would think that if the animal is securely

01:46:53.260 | attached so that they have learned self-regulation, being exposed to those things will not be such a

01:46:59.800 | big deal. But I don't think that we have the research to back up that assertion quite yet.

01:47:04.040 | I love this notion because, um, we can't prepare humans, including ourselves or animals for every

01:47:11.880 | circumstance, but we can, um, train up neural circuits. I'm a neurobiologist after all. And so I,

01:47:20.900 | I like to think of this more as, as opposed to preparing for events, you prepare for processes.

01:47:25.680 | So, uh, you know, much has been said on this podcast and others about like deliberate cold

01:47:31.100 | exposure, you know, why take a cold shower? It's, it's not about the specific benefits of the cold

01:47:35.140 | shower. It's, it teaches you how to navigate having high adrenaline in your body, which is

01:47:39.080 | the universal generic response to stress. So, um, you can export self-regulation from one situation to

01:47:46.880 | the other. Um, what you're describing is a much more, um, important life stage example than deliberate

01:47:54.340 | cold exposure. It's about, as you said, being able to navigate, uh, attachments that are there,

01:48:01.300 | then gone, then there again. This is one of my major concerns. We don't want to, um, go off on a,

01:48:06.700 | on a tangent too far here, but since humans are animals, as you pointed out about, um, texting,

01:48:12.240 | you know, it oftentimes texting can be a wonderful tool. It also can be a way that people, um, don't

01:48:18.500 | learn to ever deal with their, to self-regulate. Yeah. Uh, you see this as the plane lands or the

01:48:23.400 | planes taking off people, you know, frantically, uh, texting, which can be about, Hey, my plane just

01:48:28.940 | arrived. It can also be about an inability to just kind of deal with the, uh, the real life

01:48:33.400 | uncertainty that you're not in charge up there, the pilots and the weather conditions are. So in any

01:48:38.600 | case, I have a probably controversial question, but we've opened up some Pandora's boxes. So why not?

01:48:48.420 | Um, I opted to neuter my dog. Uh, I did that when he was about six months old. I did that

01:48:57.540 | honestly reluctantly. People say, well, you know, men with their dogs and they don't want to neuter

01:49:03.200 | their dogs and it's for these, you know, whatever Y chromosome related reasons or something. Perhaps

01:49:07.660 | it is. Um, but really the reason I was reluctant was a, I thought I might want to breed Costello at

01:49:15.200 | some point. The other is I spent two years of my life, uh, studying and researching and, um,

01:49:21.700 | eventually publishing, uh, papers on the effects of, uh, early androgens on, I had a minor role in

01:49:27.680 | that study, but, um, effects of early androgens on brain development. And you don't have to spend

01:49:32.520 | long in, in that field of hormones and development to know that hormones, testosterone and estrogen

01:49:37.640 | have a powerful, powerful organizing effect on the brain of males and females.

01:49:43.580 | So that also occurs during adolescence.

01:49:47.400 | Right. And then there's the surge of, of hormone that comes. So right. There, it happens in utero

01:49:52.000 | and then, and then those are the organizing effects. And then there are the activating

01:49:56.800 | effects as you're pointing out of hormones that then during puberty, the ovaries in females or the

01:50:01.420 | testes in males produce hormones that then act on this kind of template that was laid down.

01:50:06.380 | And so I knew that whatever testosterone, estrogen, et cetera, Costello had seen in utero,

01:50:11.840 | he'd seen. And that by removing his testicles, let's be honest, what neutering is, all the men are

01:50:18.240 | cringing and the women are like, okay, got it. Um, but if I said remove ovaries, they might have

01:50:23.000 | the different response. So by removing his, his testes that he would not experience the, um,

01:50:30.700 | activating effects of hormones. Okay. Uh, to make a long story short, um, it seemed he had a great

01:50:37.160 | life. He was a wonderful dog. When he got to be about nine years old, he had a lot of joint aching

01:50:41.940 | and pain. He had some extensive nail growth that was really, really fast. Some things were,

01:50:46.700 | were odd. Um, I opted to do, um, an experiment. Um, and I started injecting him with 50 milligrams of

01:50:55.780 | testosterone per week. The response was incredible. His vigor returned his joint pain, at least in terms

01:51:05.240 | of his willingness to go down the stairs quickly, to stand up quickly. Incredible. He, um, got two more

01:51:12.260 | years of what I thought was a great life. I hope it was. Um, and what's interesting is that when I talked

01:51:19.360 | about this publicly on a few other podcasts, I injected my bulldog with testosterone after neutering him.

01:51:25.280 | I thought I was going to get a tsunami of criticism from the veterinary community. Okay. Instead,

01:51:31.500 | I received hundreds of emails saying, thank you. We actually actively discourage people from neutering

01:51:39.080 | their animals unless they're in a circumstance where that dog can get out and mate because we don't need

01:51:44.080 | more strays. And there are a number of health, positive health benefits to keeping hormones intact.

01:51:51.280 | Yeah. And I'm going to start doing what you did with some of my, my, uh, with some of my patient

01:51:57.380 | dogs. Yeah. Not one vet, mind you have no training as a vet. Not one vet said, hey, you were out of

01:52:03.080 | line doing that. You shouldn't have been doing that. And I'll tell you, if I get another dog and it's a

01:52:07.120 | male dog, I'll be very careful to not let him out. And I'll be very careful with the training. So he's

01:52:11.400 | not excessively aggressive, but, um, I'm not going to neuter him. And I know this is going to activate

01:52:17.500 | some people, but I'd love your thoughts on neutering in male and female dogs in particular. Um, given

01:52:25.680 | everything that you and I know about hormones and what we just talked about. Yeah. You're touching on

01:52:29.300 | several different things that I think are interesting. One, that it's a very much a cultural phenomenon

01:52:33.060 | that in Norway, I know that you're not allowed to neuter dogs unless for medical reasons. Really?

01:52:39.920 | Yeah. And in Western Australia, you're not allowed not to neuter dogs unless for medical reason or if

01:52:47.560 | you want to breed them. So it's, it's like very cultural whether neutering is something that you

01:52:52.900 | do or not in, in, in any given location. That's one. The second thing is that you said that

01:53:00.600 | neutering is about removing test, uh, testicles. Actually there's, there's other procedures that

01:53:06.100 | can be done, which is, is essentially, uh, just snipping the connection. So not removing testicles

01:53:13.000 | so that they continue producing, uh, all the stuff that they produce, but they, um, uh, they can't,

01:53:23.140 | uh, produce, reproduce sexually. Yeah. Why don't we just give them vasectomies? Why don't I? Yeah.

01:53:27.300 | So the second thing is, and for, for females, the corresponding procedure would then be to,

01:53:31.480 | to sort of whatever it is. Tie the tubes. Yeah. Tie the tubes. Whatever it is. Yeah. And there's also

01:53:37.700 | a third option, which is, um, chemical castration. That's, that's reversible, that you can try to see

01:53:45.100 | what behavioral effects you get from a change of, uh, hormonal status. There's also this interesting

01:53:54.440 | thing that the, the, the, the knowledge of the effects of castration or, or neutering has really

01:54:01.400 | changed a lot in the last 20 years or so. It used to be in the 1990s that, that it used to be recommended

01:54:09.100 | because, uh, you know, they wouldn't reproduce and there'd be less, uh, humping and, and, and some,

01:54:15.600 | uh, so it was sort of promoted with regards to certain behavioral changes. Later studies have

01:54:24.200 | shown, and there's like more than 20 in the last 20 years or so, have shown that quite consistently that

01:54:29.940 | some of the effects of neutering might be particularly in males, apparently. And it depends on the age at

01:54:36.620 | which this is done also. And it has to do with this, the activation process, of course,

01:54:41.940 | is that you see an increase in fear, uh, an increase in, in reactivity, aggressive behavior. You might see

01:54:50.640 | an increase in, um, uh, noise, uh, sensitivity and so on. So it seems that as you were touching on,

01:55:01.900 | the change in hormonal status not only has this physiology, the physical effects on the body,

01:55:07.640 | but also behavioral effects. Now there's also an increase in the risk of certain cancers or certain,

01:55:14.760 | you know, physical, um, problems and a decrease in others. So I would, I would suggest that once you

01:55:24.800 | do get your other, your next dog, that you discuss with a veterinarian the best option for that particular

01:55:31.320 | breed and that particular individual, because it's, it's going to be very breed specific,

01:55:35.460 | is gender specific. And it's also the age at which these procedures are done.

01:55:39.040 | Okay. So to me, it's very interesting that in Norway, dogs are not allowed to be fixed except

01:55:45.420 | for medical reasons in Australia. They have to be at least in Western Australia. Um, so this idea of

01:55:52.740 | keeping dogs intact, so to speak, um, is not such a heretical one. Um, but I think in the United States,

01:56:00.140 | a lot of this is still getting worked out. And I think that the statistics say that the number of

01:56:05.120 | people with pets in the home now in the United States is, is like almost every home.

01:56:09.580 | Yeah. I think it's a 40% of Americans own a dog. And I think in Norway, it's like 15. So,

01:56:17.060 | and I think probably this ties in a lot to why the cultures have emerged so differently because

01:56:24.400 | there's a lot less sort of backyard breeding and so on and, and feral populations in Scandinavia of dogs.

01:56:32.940 | So we don't have this huge problem with overpopulation, um, uh, that you'll see in some other countries.

01:56:40.580 | So, and I think that, that here, a lot of the, the neutering is done to control the population, uh,

01:56:48.820 | predominantly as a way to sort of try to reduce the number of animals, uh, sort of go into shelters

01:56:55.540 | and so on.

01:56:56.400 | Certainly there are a lot of dogs in shelters now during the pandemic, people were adopting them

01:57:00.580 | like crazy. So it was actually hard to get dogs and cats during that time. I don't know what the

01:57:05.060 | state of things is now. Someone can put that in the comments. I really have one last category of

01:57:11.420 | questions, but it's a, it's one that you've sort of touched on from various sides throughout today's

01:57:17.640 | conversation. And that relates to humans as animals. You know, I don't think one can be an animal

01:57:24.480 | ethologist or a neurobiologist for that matter, um, who, you know, reads papers and does studies and,

01:57:31.700 | uh, on other animals, um, without at some point stepping back and making this realization, like

01:57:37.720 | we're, we're old world primates.

01:57:39.280 | We're the best at technical technology development, you know, among all of the, the species. I mean,

01:57:46.420 | I don't think that's too much of a leap. Um, we're certainly not as good at natural camouflage,

01:57:52.960 | um, catching and killing things with our hands. We need tools to do this. So we have our strengths.

01:57:58.620 | We have our limitations with respect to the other species. Is there anything in your training as an

01:58:04.040 | animal ethologist that, um, that, you know, causes you to reflect on human beings as, you know,

01:58:11.240 | particularly, I don't know, spectacular and particularly deficient in some way, like, or

01:58:17.240 | any, just any kind of musings about the human species, because that's a species we haven't talked

01:58:22.020 | about today. But I think a lot of what you're describing in terms of the breakdown of these

01:58:25.620 | sequence of behaviors, what, what makes us feel safe? Um, you know, one can't help but wonder,

01:58:31.100 | like what, what are some aspects of ourselves that perhaps if we thought about a little bit

01:58:36.560 | more deeply, we could really benefit from. One thing that leaps to mind is the extent to which

01:58:43.140 | cultural learning occurs in humans. For other animal species, they, they learn from, uh, you know,

01:58:50.980 | trial and error. If I do this, that happens. First that happens, then that other thing happens.

01:58:56.980 | So classical conditioning and, and operant conditioning, uh, tie into sort of forming

01:59:03.000 | the animal's behavior. They also have social learning. They watch someone else and look at

01:59:07.060 | what they do. You know, in this situation, I'm feeling a bit concert, uh, disconcerted watching

01:59:12.480 | you to see how you react. Oh, you don't seem to be that upset. Okay. I guess I don't have to

01:59:16.880 | be that either. Or you're interacting with that thing in that way. I'll guess I'll do the same.

01:59:22.900 | But it's like, the influence is from the, the animals that are closest to you and from your own

01:59:29.880 | personal experience. Uh, and we sort of stand on the shoulders of giants, we humans, because we can,

01:59:37.400 | we can read people's thoughts that are thousands of years old, literally. And so I think that's one of

01:59:45.660 | the biggest differences I think in our learning is that we used to be called man, the tool maker,

01:59:51.740 | as if tool making would be the, the thing that set us apart from, from other animals. Until Jane Goodall

01:59:59.660 | reported that she'd seen chimpanzees making tools, uh, to, you know, the termite fishing behavior that she saw

02:00:07.760 | where they would break off a twig and, and take all the leaves off and then sharpen it. And so that they could

02:00:12.960 | insert it into, into a termite mound and the termites would climb onto it and they could carefully extract

02:00:18.880 | it and eat the termites. So they made these tools. Uh, so, um, yeah, that would be, I guess, my reflect,

02:00:28.580 | my first spontaneous reflection to your question. That's a great one. Um, frankly, this idea that,

02:00:36.380 | you know, in addition to our ability to build sophisticated tools that our ability to, um,

02:00:42.220 | stamp down knowledge. And I mean, knowledge is always shifting. So some of the things that we've

02:00:46.560 | been discussing today and that I've seen said with great conviction might be proven completely false,

02:00:51.960 | you know, a year from now. So that's, that's, I think the interesting thing about science is that

02:00:56.140 | we're always having to question our assumptions. All right. I appreciate you reminding us of that,

02:01:02.820 | that this is all a dynamic process. You know, it's, we, we can only do so much with this, uh,

02:01:07.440 | piece of meat in our skulls in terms of trying to decipher the world around us. But I do think that

02:01:12.580 | this, this idea of, um, this insight that we're unique in our ability to learn from things long ago,

02:01:19.740 | as stamped down things now that people could potentially learn from, um, not just in the present,

02:01:26.120 | but in the future is incredible. And, um, in many ways appropriate for where we're at now,

02:01:31.760 | which is, um, you sitting here educating us about the different species. And I, I want to, um,

02:01:37.540 | I really want to extend my gratitude for the, the work that you do is very unique. People by now will

02:01:43.360 | realize that you're, you're the animal ethologist, but you pay attention to real world experiments run

02:01:49.240 | in a diverse range of settings. Um, and it's clear that you have great care for the, all the species

02:01:55.520 | on the planet and how they interact. And you've also offered us some wonderful tools of how to

02:01:59.860 | improve the lives of our, our cats, our dogs, and to really hopefully make people, um, somewhat of

02:02:06.020 | ethologists of themselves and of their interactions with animals. I think that's, for me, one of the

02:02:10.620 | biggest takeaways today is to, to really people listening to this and watching this should really

02:02:15.720 | reflect, um, not just on, does the dog like to be pet here or there, but you know, how is it that,

02:02:21.540 | um, a certain behavior is showing up in an animal? What does that reflect it because of its natural

02:02:26.900 | lineage and, and our own and, and to really think about those relationships and trying to improve

02:02:31.720 | them. So you've given us tremendous knowledge for its own sake, practical knowledge. And again,

02:02:37.260 | there's just so much care woven into everything you do that you've shared. So thank you for traveling

02:02:42.620 | such a long way to, to share with us. Thank you for having me. It's been a great discussion. I

02:02:47.160 | think. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr.

02:02:51.620 | Carolina Westland to learn more about her work and to find links to the various resources discussed

02:02:56.540 | during today's episode. Please see the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying

02:03:01.060 | this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.

02:03:05.900 | In addition, please follow the podcast by clicking the follow button on both Spotify and Apple and on

02:03:11.420 | both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review and you can now leave us comments

02:03:16.140 | at both Spotify and Apple. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout

02:03:20.760 | today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments

02:03:26.040 | about the podcasts or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman lab podcast,

02:03:30.500 | please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that

02:03:35.460 | haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols: An Operating

02:03:40.740 | Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years and that's

02:03:44.900 | based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep,

02:03:50.900 | to exercise, to stress control protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific

02:03:58.740 | substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com.

02:04:04.740 | There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is

02:04:10.660 | called Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body. And if you're not already following me on social

02:04:16.180 | media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, Threads, Facebook,

02:04:22.100 | and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools,

02:04:26.660 | some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the

02:04:31.140 | information on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, it's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

02:04:36.500 | And if you haven't already subscribed to our Neural Network newsletter, the Neural Network

02:04:40.180 | newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as what we call

02:04:45.060 | protocols in the form of one to three page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep,

02:04:50.500 | how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure. We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers

02:04:55.540 | cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost.

02:05:00.580 | You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to

02:05:04.820 | newsletter and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with

02:05:09.460 | anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Carolina Westland.

02:05:14.420 | And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund

Chapters