-
Oliver was an extremely dashing,
-
handsome, charming and largely unstable male
-
that I completely lost my heart to.
-
(Laughter)
-
He was a Burmese mountain dog,
-
and my ex-husband and I adopted him,
-
and about six months in,
-
we realized that he was a mess.
-
He had such paralyzing separation anxiety
-
that we couldn't leave him alone.
-
Once, he jumped out of our third floor apartment.
-
He ate fabric. He ate things, recyclables.
-
He hunted flies that didn't exist.
-
He suffered from hallucinations.
-
He was diagnosed with a canine compulsive disorder
-
and that's really just the tip of the iceberg.
-
But like with humans,
-
sometimes it's six months in
-
before you realize that
-
the person that you love has some issues.
-
(Laughter)
-
And most of us do not take the person we're dating
-
back to the bar where we met them
-
or give them back to the friend that introduced us,
-
or sign them back up on Match.com.
-
(Laughter)
-
We love them anyway,
-
and we stick to it,
-
and that is what I did with my dog.
-
And I was a — I'd studied biology.
-
I have a Ph.D. in history of science
-
from MIT,
-
and had you asked me 10 years ago
-
if a dog I loved, or just dogs generally,
-
had emotions, I would have said yes,
-
but I'm not sure that I would have told you
-
that they can also wind up with an anxiety disorder,
-
a Prozac prescription and a therapist.
-
But then, I fell in love, and I realized that they can,
-
and actually trying to help my own dog
-
overcome his panic and his anxiety,
-
it just changed my life.
-
It cracked open my world.
-
And I spent the last seven years, actually,
-
looking into this topic of
mental illness in other animals.
-
Can they be mentally ill like people,
-
and if so, what does it mean about us?
-
And what I discovered is that I do believe
-
they can suffer from mental illness,
-
and actually looking and trying
to identify mental illness in them
-
often helps us be better friends to them
-
and also can help us better understand ourselves.
-
So let's talk about diagnosis for a minute.
-
Many of us think that we can't know
-
what another animal is thinking,
-
and that is true,
-
but any of you in relationships —
-
at least this is my case —
-
just because you ask someone that you're with
-
or your parent or your child how they feel
-
doesn't mean that they can tell you.
-
They may not have words to explain
-
what it is that they're feeling,
-
and they may not know.
-
It's actually a pretty recent phenomenon
-
that we feel that we have to talk to someone
-
to understand their emotional distress.
-
Before the early 20th century,
-
physicians often diagnosed emotional distress
-
in their patients just by observation.
-
It also turns out that thinking about
-
mental illness in other animals
-
isn't actually that much of a stretch.
-
Most mental disorders in the United States
-
are fear and anxiety disorders,
-
and when you think about it, fear and anxiety
-
are actually really extremely
helpful animal emotions.
-
Usually we feel fear and anxiety
in situations that are dangerous,
-
and once we feel them,
-
we then are motivated to move away
-
from whatever is dangerous.
-
The problem is when we begin to feel fear
and anxiety in situations that don't call for it.
-
Mood disorders, too, may actually just be
-
the unfortunate downside of being a feeling animal,
-
and obsessive compulsive disorders also
-
are often manifestations of
a really healthy animal thing
-
which is keeping yourself clean and groomed.
-
This tips into the territory of mental illness
-
when you do things like
-
compulsively over-wash your hands or paws,
-
or you develop a ritual that's so extreme
-
that you can't sit down to a bowl of food
-
unless you engage in that ritual.
-
So for humans, we have the
"Diagnostic and Statistical Manual,"
-
which is basically an atlas
-
of the currently agreed-upon mental disorders.
-
In other animals, we have YouTube.
-
(Laughter)
-
This is just one search I did for "OCD dog"
-
but I encourage all of you
-
to look at "OCD cat."
-
You will be shocked by what you see.
-
I'm going to show you just a couple examples.
-
This is an example of shadow-chasing.
-
I know, and it's funny and in some ways it's cute.
-
The issue, though, is that dogs
can develop compulsions like this
-
that they then engage in all day.
-
So they won't go for a walk,
-
they won't hang out with their friends,
-
they won't eat.
-
They'll develop fixations
-
like chasing their tails compulsively.
-
Here's an example of a cat named Gizmo.
-
He looks like he's on a stakeout
-
but he does this for many, many, many hours a day.
-
He just sits there and he will paw and paw and paw
-
at the screen.
-
This is another example of what's considered
-
a stereotypic behavior.
-
This is a sun bear at the
Oakland Zoo named Ting Ting.
-
And if you just sort of happened upon this scene,
-
you might think that Ting Ting
-
is just playing with a stick,
-
but Ting Ting does this all day,
-
and if you pay close attention
-
and if I showed you guys
the full half-hour of this clip,
-
you'd see that he does the exact same thing
-
in the exact same order, and he spins the stick
-
in the exact same way every time.
-
Other super common behaviors that you may see,
-
particularly in captive animals,
-
are pacing stereotypies or swaying stereotypies,
-
and actually, humans do this too,
-
and in us, we'll sway,
-
we'll move from side to side.
-
Many of us do this, and sometimes
-
it's an effort to soothe ourselves,
-
and I think in other animals
that is often the case too.
-
But it's not just stereotypic behaviors
-
that other animals engage in.
-
This is Gigi. She's a gorilla that lives
-
at the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston.
-
She actually has a Harvard psychiatrist,
-
and she's been treated for a mood disorder
-
among other things.
-
Many animals develop mood disorders.
-
Lots of creatures —
-
this horse is just one example —
-
develop self-destructive behaviors.
-
They'll gnaw on things
-
or do other things that may also soothe them,
-
even if they're self-destructive,
-
which could be considered similar
-
to the ways that some humans cut themselves.
-
Plucking.
-
Turns out, if you have fur or feathers or skin,
-
you can pluck yourself compulsively,
-
and some parrots actually have been studied
-
to better understand trichotillomania,
or compulsive plucking in humans,
-
something that affects
-
20 million Americans right now.
-
Lab rats pluck themselves too.
-
In them, it's called barbering.
-
Canine veterans of conflicts of Iraq and Afghanistan
-
are coming back with what's
considered canine PTSD,
-
and they're having a hard time reentering civilian life
-
when they come back from deployments.
-
They can be too scared to
approach men with beards
-
or to hop into cars.
-
I want to be careful and be clear, though.
-
I do not think that canine PTSD
-
is the same as human PTSD.
-
But I also do not think that my PTSD
-
is like your PTSD,
-
or that my anxiety or that my sadness is like yours.
-
We are all different.
-
We also all have very different susceptibilities.
-
So two dogs, raised in the same household,
-
exposed to the very same things,
-
one may develop, say, a
debilitating fear of motorcycles,
-
or a phobia of the beep of the microwave,
-
and another one is going to be just fine.
-
So one thing that people ask me pretty frequently:
-
Is this just an instance of humans
-
driving other animals crazy?
-
Or, is animal mental illness just
a result of mistreatment or abuse?
-
And it turns out we're actually
-
so much more complicated than that.
-
So one great thing that has happened to me
-
is recently I published a book on this,
-
and every day now that I open my email
-
or when I go to a reading
-
or even when I go to a cocktail party,
-
people tell me their stories
-
of the animals that they have met.
-
And recently, I did a reading in California,
-
and a woman raised her hand
after the talk and she said,
-
"Dr. Braitman, I think my cat has PTSD."
-
And I said, "Well, why? Tell me a little bit about it."
-
So, Ping is her cat. She was a rescue,
-
and she used to live with an elderly man,
-
and one day the man was vacuuming
-
and he suffered a heart attack, and he died.
-
A week later, Ping was discovered in the apartment
-
alongside the body of her owner,
-
and the vacuum had been running the entire time.
-
For many months, up to I think
two years after that incident,
-
she was so scared she couldn't be in
the house when anyone was cleaning.
-
She was quite literally a scaredy cat.
-
She would hide in the closet.
-
She was un-self-confident and shaky,
-
but with the loving support of her family,
-
a lot of a time, and their patience,
-
now, three years later,
-
she's actually a happy, confident cat.
-
Another story of trauma and
recovery that I came across
-
was actually a few years ago.
-
I was in Thailand to do some research.
-
I met a monkey named Boonlua,
-
and when Boonlua was a baby,
-
he was attacked by a pack of dogs,
-
and they ripped off both of his legs and one arm,
-
and Boonlua dragged himself to a monastery,
-
where the monks took him in.
-
They called in a veterinarian,
who treated his wounds.
-
Eventually, Boonlua wound up
-
at an elephant facility,
-
and the keepers really decided
to take him under their wing,
-
and they figured out what he liked,
-
which, it turned out, was mint Mentos
-
and Rhinoceros beetles and eggs.
-
But they worried, because he
was social, that he was lonely,
-
and they didn't want to put
him in with another monkey,
-
because they thought with just one arm,
-
he wouldn't be able to defend himself or even play.
-
And so they gave him a rabbit,
-
and Boonlua was immediately a different monkey.
-
He was extremely happy to be with this rabbit.
-
They groomed each other,
they become close friends,
-
and then the rabbit had bunnies,
-
and Boonlua was even happier than he was before,
-
and it had in a way given him
-
a reason to wake up in the morning,
-
and in fact it gave him such a reason to wake up
-
that he decided not to sleep.
-
He became extremely protective of these bunnies,
-
and he stopped sleeping,
-
and he would sort of nod off
-
while trying to take care of them.
-
In fact, he was so protective and so affectionate
-
with these babies that the sanctuary
-
eventually had to take them away from him
-
because he was so protective, he was worried
-
that their mother might hurt them.
-
So after they were taken away, the sanctuary staff
-
worried that he would fall into a depression,
-
and so to avoid that,
-
they gave him another rabbit friend.
-
(Laughter)
-
My official opinion is that
he does not look depressed.
-
(Laughter)
-
So one thing that I would really like people to feel
-
is that you really should feel empowered
-
to make some assumptions
-
about the creatures that you know well.
-
So when it comes to your dog
-
or your cat or maybe your one-armed monkey
-
that you happen to know,
-
if you think that they are traumatized or depressed,
-
you're probably right.
-
This is extremely anthropomorphic,
-
or the assignation of human characteristics
-
onto non-human animals or things.
-
I don't think, though, that that's a problem.
-
I don't think that we can not anthropomorphize.
-
It's not as if you can take your
human brain out of your head
-
and put it in a jar and then use it
-
to think about another animal thinking.
-
We will always be one animal wondering
-
about the emotional experience of another animal.
-
So then the choice becomes, how
do you anthropomorphize well?
-
Or do you anthropomorphize poorly?
-
And anthropomorphizing poorly
-
is all too common.
-
(Laughter)
-
It may include dressing your corgis
up and throwing them a wedding,
-
or getting too close to exotic wildlife because
-
you believe that you had a spiritual connection.
-
There's all manner of things.
-
Anthropomorphizing well, however, I believe is based
-
on accepting our animal
similarities with other species
-
and using them to make assumptions
-
that are informed about other
animals' minds and experiences,
-
and there's actually an entire industry
-
that is in some ways based
on anthropomorphizing well,
-
and that is the psychopharmaceutical industry.
-
One in five Americans is currently
taking a psychopharmaceutical drug,
-
from the antidepressants
and antianxiety medications
-
to the antipsychotics.
-
It turns out that we owe this
-
entire psychopharmaceutical arsenal
-
to other animals.
-
These drugs were tested in non-human animals first,
-
and not just for toxicity but for behavioral effects.
-
The very popular antipsychotic Thorazine
-
first relaxed rats before it relaxed people.
-
The antianxiety medication Librium
-
was given to cats selected for
their meanness in the 1950s
-
and made them into peaceable felines.
-
And even antidepressants
were first tested in rabbits.
-
Today, however, we are not just giving these drugs
-
to other animals as test subjects,
-
but they're giving them these drugs as patients,
-
both in ethical and much less ethical ways.
-
SeaWorld gives mother orcas
antianxiety medications
-
when their calves are taken away.
-
Many zoo gorillas have been given antipsychotics
-
and antianxiety medications.
-
But dogs like my own Oliver
-
are given antidepressants and
some antianxiety medications
-
to keep them from jumping out of buildings
-
or jumping into traffic.
-
Just recently, actually, a study came out in "Science"
-
that showed that even crawdads
-
responded to antianxiety medication.
-
It made them braver, less skittish,
-
and more likely to explore their environment.
-
It's hard to know how many
animals are on these drugs,
-
but I can tell you that the
animal pharmaceutical industry
-
is immense and growing,
-
from seven billion dollars in 2011
-
to a projected 9.25 billion by the year 2015.
-
Some animals are on these drugs indefinitely.
-
Others, like one bonobo who lives in Milwaukee
-
at the zoo there was on them
-
until he started to save his Paxil prescription
-
and then distribute it among the other bonobos.
-
(Laughter) (Applause)
-
More than psychopharmaceuticals, though,
-
there are many, many, many other
-
therapeutic interventions that help other creatures.
-
And here is a place where I think actually
-
that veterinary medicine can teach something
-
to human medicine,
-
which is, if you take your dog, who is, say,
-
compulsively chasing his tail,
-
into the veterinary behaviorist,
-
their first action isn't to reach
for the prescription pad;
-
it's to ask you about your dog's life.
-
They want to know how often your dog gets outside.
-
They want to know how much
exercise your dog is getting.
-
They want to know how much social time
-
with other dogs and other humans.
-
They want to talk to you
about what sorts of therapies,
-
largely behavior therapies,
-
you've tried with that animal.
-
Those are the things that
often tend to help the most,
-
especially when combined with
psychopharmaceuticals.
-
The thing, though, I believe, that helps the most,
-
particularly with social animals,
-
is time with other social animals.
-
In many ways, I feel like I became a service animal
-
to my own dog,
-
and I have seen parrots do it for people
-
and people do it for parrots
-
and dogs do it for elephants
-
and elephants do it for other elephants.
-
I don't know about you;
-
I get a lot of Internet forwards
-
of unlikely animal friendships.
-
I also think it's a huge part of Facebook,
-
the monkey that adopts the cat
-
or the great dane who adopted the orphaned fawn,
-
or the cow that makes friends with the pig,
-
and had you asked me eight,
nine years ago, about these,
-
I would have told you that they
were hopelessly sentimental
-
and maybe too anthropomorphic in the wrong way
-
and maybe even staged, and what I can tell you now
-
is that there is actually something to this.
-
This is legit. In fact, some interesting studies
-
have pointed to oxytocin levels,
-
which are a kind of bonding hormone
-
that we release when we're having sex or nursing
-
or around someone that we care for extremely,
-
oxytocin levels raising in both humans and dogs
-
who care about each other
-
or who enjoy each other's company,
-
and beyond that, other studies show that oxytocin
-
raised even in other pairs of animals,
-
so, say, in goats and dogs who were
friends and played with each other,
-
their levels spiked afterwards.
-
I have a friend who really showed me that
-
mental health is in fact a two-way street.
-
His name is Lonnie Hodge,
and he's a veteran of Vietnam.
-
When he returned, he started working
-
with survivors of genocide and a lot of people
-
who had gone through war trauma.
-
And he had PTSD and also a fear of heights,
-
because in Vietnam, he had been
-
rappelling backwards out of helicopters
-
over the skids,
-
and he was givena service dog
named Gander, a labradoodle,
-
to help him with PTSD and his fear of heights.
-
This is them actually on the first day that they met,
-
which is amazing, and since then,
-
they've spent a lot of time together
-
visiting with other veterans
suffering from similar issues.
-
But what's so interesting to me about
Lonnie and Gander's relationship
-
is about a few months in,
-
Gander actually developed a fear of heights,
-
probably because he was
watching Lonnie so closely.
-
What's pretty great about this, though,
is that he's still a fantastic service dog,
-
because now, when they're both at a great height,
-
Lonnie is so concerned with Gander's well-being
-
that he forgets to be scared of the heights himself.
-
Since I've spent so much time with these stories,
-
digging into archives,
-
I literally spent years doing this research,
-
and it's changed me.
-
I no longer look at animals at the species level.
-
I look at them as individuals,
-
and I think about them as creatures
-
with their own individual weather systems
-
guiding their behavior and informing
-
how they respond to the world.
-
And I really believe that this has made me
-
a more curious and a more empathetic person,
-
both to the animals that share my bed
-
and occasionally wind up on my plate,
-
but also to the people that I know
-
who are suffering from anxiety
-
and from phobias and all manner of other things,
-
and I really do believe that
-
even though you can't know exactly
-
what's going on in the mind of a pig
-
or your pug or your partner,
-
that that shouldn't stop you
from empathizing with them.
-
The best thing that we could do for our loved ones
-
is, perhaps, to anthropomorphize them.
-
Charles Darwin's father once told him
-
that everybody could lose their mind at some point.
-
Thankfully, we can often find them again,
-
but only with each other's help.
-
Thank you.
-
(Applause)