Exploring the minds of predators
Reed Noss2017, Biological Conservation
Gay Bradshaw is a renaissance woman, with a bachelor's degree in linguistics (Chinese), a master's degree in geophysics, and two Ph.D. degrees: one in ecology and another in psychology. She is therefore well equipped to unite multiple fields into a new synthesis. Her first book, Elephants on the Edge: What Animals Teach Us About Humanity, was the first work to document Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in non-human animals. It won numerous awards, was featured in a cover article in the New York Times Magazine, and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. In her latest book, Carnivore Minds, Bradshaw synthesizes ethology, psychology, neuroscience, natural history, ecology, and evolutionary biology to build a convincing case that many animals have complex cognitive abilities, behaviors, and social systems not fundamentally different from what we find in humans. Hence, they are worthy of equivalent moral consideration. Her beautiful writing makes this case powerfully. The animals Bradshaw focuses on in this book are carnivores. I initially supposed this meant members of the mammalian order Carnivora. A grizzly bear, an omnivorous member of this order, is featured on the front cover. The animals Bradshaw discusses, however, include not only bears, pumas, and coyotes, but also sharks, orcas, sperm whales, crocodilians, and rattlesnakes, among others. What all these species have in common, besides eating other animals, Bradshaw argues, is that they are targets of human persecution. This harassment disrupts their social systems and mental health, causing aberrant and maladaptive behavior. The focus of the book would have been clearer if she had used the term "predator" rather than "carnivore," though Bradshaw argues (not quite convincingly) that "predator" also includes herbivores. But this is a minor quibble. What does this book offer to conservation scientists? Most important, this work clearly demonstrates that the conventional attention of conservationists to habitat quantity and quality and population dynamics is not nearly enough to save intelligent wild animals. We must also, Bradshaw insists, "take action to prevent psychosocial trauma." Among the human actions that cause this trauma are hunting, trapping, poisoning, other persecution, habitat alteration, captivity, and translocations. Although probably most conservationists oppose hunting of predators, except under unusual circumstances, Bradshaw sometimes extends her harsh criticism of killing predators to a generic condemnation of hunting, which will irritate some readers. Although I would personally prefer to see herbivore populations controlled by native predators, many cases exist in which superabundant herbivore populations occur in human-dominated landscapes where large native predators could not survive. Human hunting or trapping is often needed to control these herbivores, which can cause great damage to vegetation, flora, and animals that depend on intact herbaceous or shrub-level vegetation. This should have been acknowledged in this book. The feral hogs that overrun the conservation areas of Florida remind me daily of the need for increased hunting and trapping. A recurring theme in Carnivore Minds is that the stress imposed by human persecution disrupts animal social systems and causes a breakdown of normal behavioral patterns and an increase in murders of conspecifics and attacks on humans. These behaviors are all linked by Bradshaw to PTSD. Bradshaw makes a strong case that orcas, for instance, have a strong social taboo against killing each other or killing humans. As the story of Tilikum, the orca who killed his trainer at Sea World-Orlando (after two previous fatal attacks) illustrates, the psychological stress of capture, separation from family members, and a long period of demeaning captivity, can turn these intelligent animals into psychopaths. Parallels to human behavior are made throughout the book, which might raise some eyebrows, but Bradshaw cites primatologist Frans deWaal in rejecting "anthropodenial" and herpetologist Gordon Burghardt in calling for "critical anthropomorphism," whereby researchers recognize cross-species similarities, but are careful not to impose their experiences onto their subjects. The field of epigenetics is often invoked in this book to explain the interacting influences of nature and nurture on animal behavior. Carnivore Minds is full of fascinating, heartwarming stories about individual animals and their families and friends, as well as their natural histories. It includes compelling examples of close friendships between individual animals and the humans they've learned to trust, and of acts of interspecies kindness and compassion. It shows that animals as ostensibly primitive and "mindless as sharks" are not only intelligent, but in some cases are social and cooperative, with distinct individual personalities. Most of the stories, however, turn out to be sad tales of human insensitivity and brutality. It is not always easy reading. Given the subject matter, much of the information in this book is subjective, anecdotal, and speculative. The evidence linking predator attacks on humans to psychological trauma, for example, may not be quite as strong as Bradshaw presents. The predators might just be hungry! This is not a serious flaw of the book, however. Speculation is to be expected, even welcomed, in any new science, especially such an enormously broad, interdisciplinary science that Bradshaw has been in the forefront of creating. It might be that Bradshaw would object to her field being called a science, as she is harshly critical of much of conventional ethology and wildlife and evolutionary biology, among other traditional disciplines. A note at the beginning of the book by naturalist and bear enthusiast Charlie Russell states that most scientists do not tell the truth. This statement is insulting to scientists, and sounds like what we hear so often these days from anti-intellectual populists. Finding truth is the ultimate objective of science, and most scientists follow this mission rigorously and honestly. Surely Bradshaw wants scientists on her side. After the "naturalist's note" by Russell, the book begins with an interesting foreword by eminent neuropsychologist Allan Schore. This is followed