How animals can teach us the difference between instinct and intellect
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[Music]
animals
are fascinating their simplicity
their capabilities and their instincts
are admirable
and i believe that we as humans
have a lot to learn from them take a
horse
for example it senses danger and it
leaves
naturally of course because horses are
prey animals and they don’t want to be
eaten
but on the flip side a mountain lion
senses a horse is nearby and it runs
toward its prey it doesn’t think about
the horse
its newborn foal or how much the bite
will hurt
it simply thinks of the horse
as its next meal one thing for certain
about animals
is that they simply follow evidence
we as humans however over analyze
situations
we complicate things and oftentimes
we confuse ourselves my life
has revolved around animals from growing
up on a farm
to becoming an entrepreneur and
developing therapeutic products for
animals
i and my well-being has been intricately
tied to the welfare of my four-legged
friends
but like most strong relationships true
understanding and admiration has come
from both pain and suffering
it was march of 2011. i was studying
biology
on a pre-med track my third year of
undergrad
when i had a horse riding accident that
left me temporarily paralyzed
with a triple fracture in my c2
vertebrae
i was put into a halo traction device on
a morphine drip without real clarity of
what the future held
but i was told i would never ride again
and i may never walk again and my road
to recovery was treacherous
very scary at times and long
but here i stand in heels i might add
to tell you the story
there have been so many twists and turns
for me since the accident but
after regaining full mobility horses did
come back into my life
and one horse in particular has made a
lasting
impact and he has taught me so much
his name is hera so para is this
big-bodied beautiful horse who had a
bright
future ahead of him or at least that’s
what i was told at first but after being
with multiple trainers
and no real results para came back to me
with a long list of behavioral issues
and
two professional recommendations
of humane euthanasia
now just to paint a clear picture for
you this horse was rearing up and
striking out
at everyone who would approach him in a
stall and everyone told me he was mean
dangerous and unpredictable
i listened intently to each of these
trainers and i noticed something
interesting i noticed the fear they had
because of para
but even more so i noticed the fear
para had because of them so
i began seeking alternate training
methods
and what i found were two extremes
feed him carrots until he loves me
or use a whip until he respects me
both felt polarized and equally both
felt wrong
it actually reminded me interestingly
enough of an incident
years prior my very first day in college
a lesson that i learned i sit down in
class
the professor comes in he hands out this
worksheet and it’s full of all kinds of
controversial topics like
abortion and the death penalty and
beside each of these topics is a scale
of one to ten
and we were supposed to rate how much we
either agreed or disagreed with the said
topic
now i grew up in a conservative family
very strong religious beliefs
as you can imagine i adamantly disagreed
with a few of these things
i really didn’t think very much of it i
marked my choices went back home
the next day i came back into that same
class and was presented with an
assignment
to research for one week the topic that
i so
adamantly disagreed with and present a
presentation one week later to room full
of 300 people
convincing them of the opposite and why
they too
should follow my choice that was a very
difficult
task but it taught me an important
lesson
and that was that the middle of the road
is the sweet spot
and it can be found by balancing our
instinct
with her intellect and our reasoning
skills
see what i realized was that the act
that i so adamantly disagreed with
or more importantly was socialized to
believe was wrong
was actually a viable solution in some
circumstances
have you ever asked yourself that
question are your
ideas really your ideas or were you
simply socialized to believe those
things
it’s actually a very difficult thing to
know without serious
self-reflection and true understanding
of both sides of an idea
or a debate see life is not
necessarily black or white
there is a lot of gray area and i
believe that when we embrace the gray
our lives become much more colorful
to me the black and white parts of life
are our
instincts and the gray area is our
reasoning skills
which is derived by our intellect
see the horse sees the mountain lion and
he’s out of there
he doesn’t wait around to reason with
his herd to see if that mountain lion
just so happens to have the same
intentions as the last one
no he simply sees the mountain lion and
he leaves
what that mandatory college assignment
taught me were lessons that i carried
with me into my adulthood
i listened intently to both sides of
stories
i respected all human intellect and i
remained independent
in my own views i really felt that i had
found the gray area
and that was the main reason i knew
there had to be some middle ground for
my horse para
and then one day that lesson really sank
in
it was the first day i had her back in
my own care i
saddled him up to ride him and i admit i
was a bit fearful
as i approached him he was wide-eyed and
skeptical
and i realized that we both had fear
of the same thing being hurt him by me
and me by him now i’ve never hurt an
animal in my life
it’s not my nature to do so but i can
also assure you
that all the treats in the world
wouldn’t have convinced para otherwise
so reluctantly
and i’m ashamed to admit this against
all my principles of avoiding the
extremes
i gave pera a sedative out of my
own self-preservation my own fear of
being hurt
i gave it to him i walked back into the
tap room
and just moments later i walked out to
be met
by a horse who was nearly unrecognizable
his eyes half shut glazed over
his head resting up against the stall
wall with his lip turned sideways
i felt like a monster
because i had fallen victim to the human
superiority complex
i finally realized that i had been
listening to
everyone’s side of their story except
perez and he was the very subject
of it all you know there was something
in pera in that moment that i understood
i knew exactly what he felt like
as a matter of fact i vividly remember
on the day of my accident
being wheeled into the trauma center at
shands university
already heavily sedated under bright
lights
listening to a neurosurgeon and a
neurologist
two complete strangers to me above me
arguing my own future
i knew what para felt like para wasn’t
mean
he wasn’t unpredictable he was afraid
his survival instincts had kicked in and
rightfully so
at that with that new understanding
we started over completely i turned pear
out with 13 other horses
he established his place in the herd he
got back to his natural instincts
in his natural environment and he
actually started to enjoy
life again see show horses like many
show animals
are treated artificially they’re kept in
these small
box stalls without a herd to follow
and modern lifestyle creates this
artificial environment for
us as humans and animals alike and that
separation
from our natural environment has been
proven time
and time again to cause both
physiological
and psychological changes
before visiting para every day i would
quiet my mind
and my body by focusing solely on my
breath
and my energy amazing things started to
happen
at first pear would take hours to catch
sometimes either i’d run out of daylight
or i’d give up
whichever one came first but after
i made those changes in myself
my energy my approach para
actually started coming to me
he would leave those 13 other horses to
approach
me calmly and curiously and it begged
the question
why had this horse gone from striking
out at other people
to wanting to be with me
now i am a data-driven person so i dove
into research and i found there have
been multiple studies conducted but one
in particular
that was published in 2018 that
proved horse’s heart rate actually
mimics
that of the person touching or handling
them
so horses too have been added to the
list of emotionally responsive
animals to humans see animals are master
discriminators
they can depict the slightest change in
smell in our vocal variety
and in physical and emotional changes
on our faces para was sensing
all of those things silently
pera learned that i wasn’t there to hurt
him
i was there to help him against
all odds turns out i wasn’t the mountain
lion
in a human suit instead i was able to
use my
intellect my reasoning skills to better
understand
pera and how he sees the world and his
innate instincts but i was also able to
use my
past experiences to generate empathy
for him pera’s eyes began to soften
and we started to read each other’s body
language
as i would get bigger and taller para
would back away from
me and when i smiled and bent down
parent coming would come and say hello
i realized he’s so smart his
instincts are far greater than mine
because he lacks all this
intellectual clutter that i hold onto
he simply reads a situation
he responds to the evidence at hand and
he acts accordingly
in other words pera doesn’t complicate
simple things
like you and i do every day as humans
see humans have a very developed
neocortex
which controls conscious thought
self-awareness and language
and many other mammals on this planet
lack that same development
making us one of the only that’s capable
of humor
vulnerability planning for the future
moral decisions and
all these other things and sure those
things
can help us create a fulfilling life
but it’s a very fine line that we walk
because
all of these things suggest reasoning
which must be balanced by our instincts
and that i believe more than anything
else is what animals can teach us
the ability to be present to be
here right here in this moment to listen
and to make decisions based on our best
judgment
derived from our intellect and also
balance it with our innate instincts
going back to pera a lot of people tell
me
i gave pera a second chance and perhaps
to some extent that
is true and by the way if you’re
wondering
i do ride i’m back in the saddle para
and i have created this
incredible partnership and unbreakable
bond
but beyond that para has given me
an opportunity to truly discover this
delicate dance between our instincts
and our intellect because when we can
master that balance that dance between
those two things
not only will your life become more
fulfilling
but i believe it also makes our lives so
much more colorful
so let’s dance
you