You might think the reason I chose this title was to grab your attention but the truth is that several experiments* have been conducted on animals with the purpose of discovering how the brain works and how the results can be used to improve humans life – proving once more that animals are a lot more than just Man’s best friend.
Many animals have similar systems to the ones we have, and by applying the results of some of the experiments to human beings have uncovered several methods of improving human life.
The monkeys that learned fear:
Monkeys that don’t fear snakes were introduced to some snakes while being forced to listen to loud, scary noises. Some monkeys learned to fear snakes as a result of this experiment but what’s more astonishing is that when monkeys that didn’t fear snakes were allowed to see the fear response of monkeys that fear snakes they learned how to fear snakes too!!!
Conclusion: We learn to fear things when we associate them with another event, for example a child might fear darkness after associating it with the noisy sound that happened when his mother slammed the door of a dark room.
Moreover, if a child watched an adult reacting with fear to a certain situation the child will develop fear too!!
The frog that died in the boiling water:
When a group of frogs were thrown in boiling water they jumped out of the pot very quickly and managed to survive. However, when the same frogs were put into cold water that was slowly heated, all of them perished when the water came to a boil, because they didn’t have time to react
Conclusion: We can feel sudden changes but when the change happens over time we don’t feel it until it is too late. People don’t develop bad habits over night nor do they experience severe behavior changes in a short period of time but everything happens bit by bit.
The Rats that failed to swim:
A researcher brought some wild rats, ones that are known to be able to swim for 80 hours continuously, then frightened them by making them believe that they were stuck before throwing them in water.
Many of the wild rats died after a few minutes of swimming! The rats didn’t drown due to lack of ability but at some point they just gave up swimming and died!!
When the rats felt in control they were able to swim for many hours but as soon as they felt that they were not in control they lost hope and drowned.
Conclusion: When we feel in control we can reach our maximum potential, while if we feel out of control we give up trying even if we have the required skills.
The dogs that learned to be helpless:
Few dogs were placed in room that has a switch that can either turn on electric current and shock the dogs or turn it off. When the dogs were first shocked they kept jumping around until one dog pushed the switch and discovered that the electric current stopped.
Later on whenever the electric shock was turned on the dogs rushed to turn it off using the switch. These dogs were split into two groups where the first group remained in the same room while the second one was placed in a similar one that had a faulty switch.
When the second group was shocked the dogs tried to push the switch but nothing happened. The second group of dogs were returned to the first room then were shocked again but this time they never tried to push the switch!!!
The dogs learned to become helpless as a result of feeling helpless after pushing the faulty switch!!
Conclusion: No one is born helpless but we learn how to become helpless when we face certain situations that we fail to deal with. Always try to do something about your problems because if you didn’t act you might develop learned helplessness!!
*this article is not in any way an endorsement of animal testing
Farouk Radwan is a Guest Blogger for PickTheBrain and the founder of 2KnowMyself.com – The ultimate source for self understanding 9,000,000 Million visits and counting…
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These experiments that were tested on animals were kind of twisted and cruel; but they do teach us that when we are faced with some type of problem, we shouldn’t just do anything about it. We need to learn a different method to solve the problem or the results can be very unfortunate.
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by pickthebrain: What Animals Can Teach Us About Reaching Our Goals: http://tinyurl.com/yhsk2zn…
Great article, Farouk. Humans are more like “animals” than some of us like to admit.
According to the Chinese calendar, I am a rat–a trivial fact that lacked logic until I read your article. I have detected similar, rat-like behavior traits in myself, especially obvious during long or hard runs. When I feel I won’t meet my goal for the training session it becomes a physical and mental battle, an argument that poses pros and strong cons. But when I’m confident that I will succeed, my pace quickens and I am able to enjoy the process.
It’s a powerful insight. I’m not sure if I should thank you or bite you!
The first thing that we should learn from animals is that they don’t cause pain or death to others unnecessarily.
I my opinion that is a so much higher goal.
Lots of other animals cause pain and suffering for no other reason the to amuse themselves. Cats will torture and kill pretty much anything they can get their paws on, even if they have no intention of eating it, and many other primates will too. Some birds even fly around like cartoonish 50’s street gangs attacking and intimidating any other birds they happen to come across. It’s nice to think of other animals as being kindly benevolent friends, but the truth is that their just as fucked up as we are.
I question the animal ethics in this article. I feel there are other ways we could have learned about human behavior
*sigh
Nice and different post. Very good use of psychological experiments and nicely laid out.
@Olives
Animal ethics were crossed but animal ethics are crossed everyday when we line them up to be slaughtered for food.
Hi. I must admit that when I read the post, many animals came to my mind.The first thing I thought was , Tenacity= ants, bees Patience=tortoises,snails and I didn’t need an experiment…
@ Hulbert
yes i agree they were a little bit cruel, the problem is that humans were found to do the same mistakes animals did !!
@Fawn
thanks a lot dear, thanks would be enough , please dont bite me hahahaha
@Craig
thanks a lot carig for your words:)
@ Olives
hmm, so you are against eating animals or against killing them that way?
@ Patricia
that’s because you are very intelligent
@ Just me
that’s a good one for sure
hi
nature is a great teacher, when I look at my dogs I am surprised sometimes how quickly they overcome their habits. like the habit of fear. they look at each other, and learn. one of my dogs was scared of walking on one fragment of the ground because she felt the void underneath. but the other dog wasn’t. when they walked together, and the male dog stepped on the platform with the void below she repeated it after him in no time.it was great to see it
Good observations martyna
it was found that the human neural system is very similar to animals and that’s why humans can do the same mistakes too
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would be thankful if you can include a link to http://www.2knowmyself.com in the translated page you just posted
thanks for the putting the article in a different language
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Thanks.
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