Well, sometimes. Certainly keeping a ‘working dog’ with a strong herding drive or guardian instinct in an apartment without adequate stimulation is going to produce behavior that looks like anxiety. A hunting “gun dog” needs to have a drive to retrieve downed game but also needs to be trainable, and while the failure of ‘bad’ dogs is often in the owner but some dogs are just unnaturally anxious, aggressive, or prone to unacceptable misbehavior and congenitally resistant to training, especially those which have been aggressively inbred for ‘show’ characteristics.
Yes, very much this. When creating animal models of mental illness, it is necessary to know what behavior specific to that species corresponds to the mental illness of interest. For example, an indicator of increased anxiety in mice is increased pooping. Counting droppings in the home cage is occasionally used as an objective measure of mouse anxiety. A human who poops all over their home is indicative of something, but anxiety wouldn’t be my first guess.
Sleeping 20 hours a day might indicate severe depression in a human, but is perfectly normal for a cat.
That is a common definition of mental illness. For example, ADHD is maladaptive for a school or office environment, but might not matter at all in other environments.
I once adopted a kitten (that was twice returned to the shelter) who was diagnosed with. antisocial personality disorder. He was absolutely adorable and would be sitting on your lap purring while you were petting him, then he’d turn around and attack you without warning. The vet made a clinical diagnosis-I can’t remember all the methods he used, but one was that he shook a can of coins and the cat had no startle reflex, which he said was very abnormal. We had 2 choices: medicate him with monthly injections of depoprovara and daily prozac pills or put him down. Due to the insanely expensive cost for the drugs, we put him down.
Yes, I agree; there are plenty of dogs with what can only be called defective minds, who would be a problem in any environment. Where there is no selection for mental capabilities you can get some very strange unpleasant results.
But many breeds are not suitable for pets who spend most of their lives doing nothing, alone in an empty house, as most pet dogs do, who have been bred to do a job superbly. Gun dogs, herding breeds, working terriers, police K-9 breeds.They might seem ‘mentally ill’ in such a poor environment for them, but they are not.
Well, I’ve owned 5 goldens - including field goldens, and have known countless more. IMO there was something different about his this golden’s brain worked than EVERY other golden I’ve known.
We had a Brittany. Now THAT was an impressive working dog - but a shitty pet. We gave her to an aid hunter and I’m sure she had a great life.
I’ve known a lot of dogs, and there are those who have a screw loose, no doubt about it. It’s often hard to tell if they just are not being handled right (training, exercise, etc.) but some leave no doubt.
No, I don’t think so. And I doubt there are any meaningful studies on the subject.
Anecdotally, when my mother died, the last time I saw her (hospice set her up on the ground floor of her house)…all I could manage was to hold her hand and say a few soft words.
Her cat (now my father’s cat!) didn’t appear to care for that. Scratched the hell out of my hand. Could have been some notion of territoriality, or could have been craving attention/play. Very aggressive, though.
Have visited the father since, and it seems no harm done, “psychologically” to the cat.
Yes, there’s the very famous essay by Thomas Nagel, “What’s It Like To Be A Bat.” Much more metaphysics than physics.
There is the notion of ecological niches, largely developed and made mainstream by JJ Gibson, an influential psychologist, whose work included extensive research on perceptual systems of various species.
I prefer to liken it to that scene/episode in Altman’s movie MASH: well, we’ll just have to wait until we do an autopsy. We just don’t know.
Yeah, too many people get a dog with the expectation that it will be attractive furniture and don’t appreciate that they are animals with rich internal lives, deep needs, and intrinsic drives. Nobody should be getting a Belgian Malinois or a Border Collie as a family ‘pet’; these are active, highly intelligent breeds that need intellectual simulation and a firm hand in training in addition to physical exercise or else they will become anxious, destructive, and potentially even dangerous. ‘Gun dogs’ are generally poorly suited as family dogs, and most terrier breeds are known for their destructiveness if they do not have near constant companionship and something to focus their intense hunting drive upon. Leaving a dog with strong drives alone for hours at a time without any stimulation is like putting a human prison in solitary confinement; it creates emotional problems just due to isolation and lack of social engagement or purpose.
It might even be beneficial in some … hence the popularity of “neurodivergent” construct.
So yes we have to understand what is normal or at least typical behavior and function the animal’s “natural setting” to comprehend what the behavior means (and as you point out what behaviors indicate stress or anxiety in the species, be it increased defecation or grooming…) “Natural setting” is placed in quotation because of the number of examples animals who have been livestock or pets for thousands of years of breeding.
What is the “natural setting” for a specific dog breed?
And when their behavior is a poor fit for the environment they are in, is it “normal” behavior in an abnormal environment, or is it reactive mental illness (anxiety disorder, depression, whatever) triggered in response to the stress of being placed in an environment maladaptive for who they are? Of course such are not mutually exclusive.
The parallels with human variety of wiring, fit for the environment in which they in, and response to a poor fit, are significant, and we have a hard enough time appreciating it in other humans!
Using laser pointers with dogs can give them OCD. It comes from the fact that they never physically catch their prey. I read that and stopped with our puppy and he was still messed up for months after that.