Humans are still Animals

Ok, so maybe we're dignified animals with greater reasoning capacity, memory, and general cognition.  But I think there's way too much of a tendency to put humans in a different category from animals like we're a whole separate branch on the evolutionary tree.  This tends to be more of a social problem based on religious beliefs, among other things.  Just look at the famous philosopher Rene Descartes.  He believed that animals were biological clockwork creatures with no thought processes or souls.

Do you believe puppies have souls?

But I recently read a fascinating article sent to me by my roommate, Emily Mixon.  Seriously, read it cause you'll learn some pretty amazing facts.  Like, did you know bighorn sheep in Canada will grind their teeth to the gums rubbing off hallucinogenic lichen from rocks?  It's some pretty crazy stuff.

But what really struck me was the bit about cutters.  For me, I remember a lot of people being cutters in middle school.  For those of you who don't know the lingo, it's a person who cut themselves not because they're suicidal but because it somehow helps them deal with stress and relax.   At the time, I thought it was completely crazy and probably just people looking for attention.  But there's actually evidence for this type of behavior in the rest of the animal kingdom.

In fact, some breeds of dogs are prone to similar behavior.  In the article, it describes this as grooming gone wrong because the animals will either lick or bite themselves compulsively until they bleed.  I wont go into the details because the article covers them pretty well but there's significant evidence that animals have had problems with such compulsive activities- from mammals to birds.  And thanks to my neuroscience knowledge, I understand an additional layer of this behavior.  Because what person would purposefully pull their hair out or cut themselves?

A bizarre but explainable phenomena.

Well grooming activities and their habitual nature lead to large doses of serotonin being released in the individual's brain.  So over grooming could almost be like a form of self-medication.  The repetition of the activity keeps serotonin (which is highly involved in regulating mood and depression) flowing.  Also, the end result of self-injury causes the body to release endorphins.  Just like a runner's high, this self-synthesized drug dulls pain and gives you that "spacey" feeling of zoning out.  So maybe animals do have some of the same problems we tend to see as uniquely human.

I know there are still plenty of differences between animals and humans.  Our brains are developed to differing degrees.  The body plans from species to species can have huge variance so we can assume one trait or idea will explain the entire animal kingdom.  But we also can't close ourselves off.  We all have a common denominator that can''t be ignored.  Why else would scientists use animal research?  Just a little food for thought.