Title of presentation:
Fear, Wild Things, and Coexisting with Predators
Speaker:
Dr. Joanna Lambert
Date:
October 7, 2020
Description:
Project Coyote Science Advisory Board member Dr. Joanna Lambert takes a fascinating look at the human-carnivore interface.
From Joanna: “Humans have shared landscapes with wild predators throughout our 200,000-year evolutionary history. The relationships we’ve had with these predators over the millennia have been shaped by both fear and learned behavior. Yet, as we continue to urbanize our planet so too have we lost knowledge of how to coexist with other species — resulting in fear of the unknown. In this webinar, I contextualize human-animal interactions within a broad framework of fear and highlight the importance of learning in both humans and predators. I will address these topics at multiple scales, including the physiological, neurological, and evolutionary underpinnings of fear and how it gets played out today around the world in different contexts of human-wildlife conflict. This will involve discussion of work by a wide breadth of scholars, from neuroscientists and psychologists to paleontologists and ecologists. I will also discuss current research that I, my students, and my colleagues are undertaking on learning and habituation in predators like coyotes and red foxes as they boldly enter human-dominated landscapes, overcoming fear in their pursuit of new habitat.”
Webinar replay:
Questions & Answers from Webinar:
Q: How do we handle the fact that these ingrained traditions of trapping and hunting have not caught up with the realities of how wildlife is struggling to survive?
A: Yes, there is a lot of historical and cultural inertia behind human attitudes towards wildlife. However, I remain hopeful because there have been important sociocultural shifts that have policy implications – you only have to look at non-profits like Project Coyote to see examples. Because of Camilla Fox and her dedication to change and coexistence, Wildlife Killing Contests are being banned across the United States! Also, in my career I have witnessed a revolution of understanding of animal cognition and emotional intelligence that has transformed many people’s attitudes towards animals and how we treat them.
I also want to reiterate something that I mentioned live…and that is that “hunter” is not a uniform category of people and their attitudes towards animals. I have many colleagues and friends who are hunters and are highly ethical, understand animal behavior and natural history, kill humanely, and only kill what they need – meaning they eat what they catch. This is a very different approach to hunting than, say, trophy hunting.
Q: Is this embedded fear also responsible for amygdala hijack syndrome, which can result in a reaction to present stimuli that is out of proportion to the event itself?
A: Absolutely! Yes, because of how deep neural pathways can be if they are encoded via amygdala/hippocampus learning, if a person is presented with a stimulus that is similar to the original fearful stimulus, a fight-flight-freeze response can kick in. Essentially your sympathetic nervous system prepares the body for action. A good way to overcome amygdala hijacking is to convince the body that everything is okay. Deep breathing, slowing down, or meditation are great ways to do this as they engage your frontal lobe (the thinking brain) and also activate the parasympathetic nervous system which lets the body know that the danger has passed.
Q: Do you consider the “Trophic Cascade” effect of returning wolves to be “settled science?” Is this effect possible in more human-dominated landscapes?
A: [Answered live—please refer to the video above.]
Q: How is co-existence going with wolves in the West? Progress? Are human hunters more accepting than say 20 years ago [concerning] wolves and coyotes and apex carnivores?
A: Human attitudes towards wolves in the western states are complicated and not uniform. As I discussed in the presentation, some of this variance is attributable to the length of time people have lived with wolves. So, there is some indication that in communities where wolves (and other large-bodied predators, e.g., grizzly) have been around longer (either from recolonization or reintroduction) attitudes are geared more towards coexistence. Attitudes in areas – e.g., eastern Washington, eastern Oregon – where wolves have only very recently colonized can be quite negative. However, it is important to keep in mind that even within communities there is variance. As I mentioned, not all hunters or ranchers are hostile towards wolves. Many hunters think that having apex predators in a landscape is a good thing, and many ranchers throughout different regions of the west have integrated a number of coexistence tools (e.g., guard dogs, range riding, hazing, different herding practices) so that they can share the landscape with predators
Q: Are you or your researchers working directly on coexistence efforts in Wyoming?
A: My students and I are working in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, where we are researching coyote biology in landscapes with wolves. However, this research is addressing questions of how coyotes are coping with different landscapes (human-dominated, not human-dominated) – it is not so much about human attitudes towards coexistence. The work we are doing on coexistence has mostly been centered in Colorado. There are, however, many excellent programs that are hosted by non-profits such as Project Coyote and the Defenders of Wildlife which focus on ranching with wildlife and coexistence in landscapes with predators.
Q: Where would the fear of predators and our homing reptilian brains relate to the fear of disease (such as rabies or others) over the fear of the predator as the “big bad wolf” that is seeking to eat us?
A: A person’s fear of disease can be shaped both by ancient limbic responses as well as what that person has experienced or learned. For example, if a person has never seen a rabid animal, a fear of rabies might be just an abstract one – i.e., knowledge they learned from a book that is processed by the neocortex (especially frontal lobe). However, if a person has encountered a rabid animal personally, the fear response can be just as limbic as the fear they would have if they encountered a grizzly bear. I know this from experience. I have encountered several rabid animals – e.g., a rabid skunk once chased me up a trail and I have had a rabid raccoon attack my car while I was in it – you can bet that I had limbic system response to these interactions. I have also had encounters with grizzly bears, and for sure my fight-flight-freeze response was activated – massive adrenaline pumping through my body. However, in all of these interactions (and other scary encounters with animals), because I have had experience around wildlife, I knew what to do. Other areas of my brain — beyond the amygdala) – kicked in and my “thinking brain” got me out of trouble.
Q: Just a comment, didn’t native Americans consider say bears as “brother Bear”– and were they not conservative toward bear populations, though they did (I’m guessing) hunt bears from time to time? SO — the idea that there is a generic fear of large predators in humans, may not include say, native Americans– or other people who lived WITH, for example, bears? thanks!
A: Good question. In an earlier version of my presentation, I had a number of slides on First Nations and indigenous people but did not have enough time to cover these concepts. I was focusing on what happened when European settlers encountered predators upon their arrival in North America. Because they had extirpated most predators in western Europe, knowledge of how to live with them was also lost. Any human who encounters a grizzly will have an initial fear response (it is basic biology – an ancient part of the brain that we share with all vertebrates). However, native American populations – who have been on the North American continent for well over 10,000 years – did not lose knowledge of how to exist alongside wolves, bear, and other predators and thus have had a different relationship with wildlife as well as different attitudes, geared much more towards coexistence. Predators were not driven to extinction or local extirpation until white settlers from Europe arrived.
Q: Two things that will negatively impact the natural role/balance are – the human population growing so fast/large and human destruction of the natural world.
A: Yes, increasing human populations and destructive exploitation of habitat and wildlife has wreaked havoc upon Earth. However, I remain hopeful that knowledge and enlightenment will ultimately prevail. I believe firmly that we have to remain optimistic because pessimism can be paralyzing and in-capacitating and we have too much work to do! I tell my students that it is easy to be pessimistic; remaining optimistic in our world, with so many challenges, is much more difficult. Each morning when I wake up I meditate on optimism.
Q: Great presentation, thanks Joanna! The info on the hippocampus seems linked to both our treatment of other species and other human beings (for instance how police react to their fear). Seems like the concept of emotional literacy training could be helpful here (as with many things).
A: Thank you! Yes, I have been thinking a lot about this. Providing information about living with predators is so very important. But, ultimately, I think that understanding the emotional underpinnings of our attitudes towards wildlife is critical too. People often don’t change their behavior based on data or facts – they change their behavior because they have had an emotional reaction, whether fear or joy or compassion.
Q: Can we have another subsequent session, given the quantity of invaluable info being offered here?
A: Yes! I would be more than happy to do another session – a live Q&A ☺
For the wild,
