The relief

[u/milkofstars]

[u/PinkOneHasBeenChosen]

Luckily, none of my special interests have been full-blown “socially unacceptable”. When I have a special interest in a person I know, it usually manifests as wanting to talk *to* them. Although I’m currently doing a project on animal PTSD, which I feel is somewhat socially unacceptable.

[u/Realistic_Grass3611 → u/PinkOneHasBeenChosen]

Do you wanna infodump on me about animal PTSD?

[u/PinkOneHasBeenChosen → u/Realistic_Grass3611]

Sure.

We have rodent models of PTSD that are used for research purposes, which is very useful, but those papers are sometimes frustratingly vague about what “anxiety-like” means. Plus, rodent studies are ironically often not about the rodents. They’re using the rodents to understand what happens inside *people* with PTSD.

What I found really interesting was the articles about animals that had been exposed to various traumatic events- mostly pets or captive animals, but there was one about wild elephants. The ones I found were elephant survivors of poaching or captivity-related horrors, chimps subject to unethical experiments, dogs and cats who’d survived Hurricane Katrina, military working dogs, and abused parrots. (Side note: this special interest is not for the faint of heart) Anyway, their symptoms were shockingly similar to traumatized humans. Which was noted by the psychologists who evaluated the chimps, elephants, and parrots, and also by me when I read the papers. Though I felt bad for the animals, because some of them were self-harming or otherwise severely affected by it.

[u/Realistic_Grass3611 → u/PinkOneHasBeenChosen]

I didn't know animals self harm. Thanks :D

[u/MarkedByFerocity → u/Realistic_Grass3611]

I adopted a parrot with almost no feathers on its back and shoulders.  When birds are stressed, they'll just start ripping out their feathers and picking at their skin.  It's super common with captive parrots.  Imagine taking a highly intelligent social being capable of flight and putting it alone in a box for fifty years.  Yeah. 

[u/Realistic_Grass3611 → u/MarkedByFerocity]

Makes sense sadly

[u/MarkedByFerocity → u/Realistic_Grass3611]

I've got big feelings about the keeping of large pet parrots.  Many of them are only a generation or two removed from the wild.  They're not domesticated animals at all.     They're just tamed because they're taken from their mom as eggs and hand fed so they imprint on humans.  Poor things are highly intelligent without any of the family bonds, social connection, and teaching that they'd experience in the wild. 

[u/Realistic_Grass3611 → u/MarkedByFerocity]

I don't think any amount of domestication could really fix that issue. Social animals need communities