The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: How Risk Taking Transforms Us, Body and Mind

by John Coates

This freeze response was subsequently passed on to mammals, in which it proved useful as a way of feigning death when a threat loomed. Something like the freeze response is also activated in mammals living or feeding in water, such as seals, in order to slow heart rate and metabolism and conserve oxygen when diving to great depths. The vagal freezing response lingers to this day in most mammals, and can show up under circumstances of extreme danger. When escape from a predator is deemed impossible, a mammal can call on this ancient reaction, and its physiological systems will more or less shut down. Movement ceases, breathing slows, heart rate drops, sensitivity to pain decreases—pathetically, the animal may provoke cardiac arrest and die from its own reaction to threat rather than from the predator itself.