Second Nature Quotes

“Science likes to measure things, to test hypotheses and collect data. Until quite recently science wasn’t testing hypotheses about animal feelings. From the time Charles Darwin wrote his last book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) to about the time Neil Armstrong left footprints on the moon nearly a century later (1969), prevailing scientific dogma denied animals their hearts and minds. A nonhuman animal was viewed as merely a responder to external stimuli. The idea that a walrus made decisions, or that a parakeet felt emotions, was considered unscientific.”
― Jonathan Balcombe, Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals

“Animals are as intelligent as they need to be. If a particular mental ability—such as learning to recognize other individuals, or to identify predators—is important to survival and reproduction, then it will be favored evolutionarily. But nature doesn’t waste energy building brains just because it can. All else being equal, an organism with a smaller brain should have a survival advantage over one with a larger brain, because the “brainier” one must consume more energy to sustain its gray matter.”
― Jonathan Balcombe, Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals

“As individuals, animals are wonderfully complex and sensitive. As members of social groups, they are more interesting still. How animals interact with one another is the inevitable product of a planet populated by numerous life forms, each seeking a fruitful living. When an organism is responsible only to him or herself, there is no need for rules or restraints. As part of a social network, it’s a different story. As highly social creatures, we soon learn the value of conducting ourselves in ways that keep things running smoothly for us, and for others. Other social species abide by rules and regulations.”
― Jonathan Balcombe, Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals

“It is well known that animals respond poorly to living conditions that do not stimulate them mentally or physically. Rats, mice, monkeys, and other mammals confined for long periods in laboratory cages where they have little or no opportunity to engage in such natural behaviors as foraging, hiding, nest-building, or choosing social partners develop neurotic behaviors. Termed “stereotypies,” these behaviors involve repetitive, functionless actions sometimes performed for hours on end. Rodents, for example, will dig for hours at the corners of their cages, gnaw at the bars, or perform repeated somersaults. These “behavioral stereotypies” are estimated to afflict about half of the 100 million mice currently used in laboratory tests and experiments in the United States.16 Monkeys chronically confined to the boredom, stress, and social isolation of laboratory cages perform a wide range of abnormal, disturbing behaviors such as eating or smearing their own excrement, pulling or plucking their hair, slapping themselves, and self-biting that can cause serious, even fatal injury. Severely psychotic human patients display similar behaviors. If you’ve seen the repetitive pacing of caged big cats (and many other smaller animals) at the zoo, you’ve witnessed behavioral stereotypies.”
― Jonathan Balcombe, Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals

“Humbling as it may be, for all our vaunted brain power, humans emerge as nothing special in the sensory sweepstakes. Our senses of vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch are middling, at best.”
― Jonathan Balcombe, Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals

“The problem in our relationship with animals is that our treatment of them hasn’t evolved to keep up with our knowledge.”
― Jonathan Balcombe, Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals