As Meg Daley Olmert contends in Made for Each Other, “The triumph of trust over paranoia enabled humans and animals to come together in domesticated partnerships and emboldened people to move beyond the social limitations of kinship and tribe and live harmoniously in a civilized world. . . .When humans began to keep animals and animals submitted to our care, we inadvertently created a chemical biofeedback system that changed our hearts and minds.”
Olmert’s wide-ranging, multidisciplinary research also makes a strong case for the hormone’s influence on people helped through animal-assisted therapy. Most significant is a 2003 South African study led by Johannes Odendaal and R. A. Meintjes showing that “when eighteen men and women interacted with their dogs (talking to them and gently stroking them) the owners’ blood levels of oxytocin almost doubled — and their dogs were also twice as enriched with oxytocin!” Along with this rise in the hormone came a significant decrease in blood pressure and the stress hormone cortisol, as well as an increase in beta endorphins and dopamine.
Promising studies have confirmed that oxytocin relieves some of the antisocial tendencies of autistics and can help people with attention deficient hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to calm down and focus. But the hormone doesn’t easily pass through the blood-brain barrier, making pharmaceutical versions used in scientific studies problematic for daily use. “Repeated injections of oxytocin in high doses has been shown to affect the emotional centers in the brain,” Olmert explains, “but that method of delivery is neither painless nor efficient. Nasal sprays also manage a degree of penetration. The problem is to reach the brain with the spray, you have to inhale almost three tablespoons of the substance. Even after all that unpleasantness, the effects are short-lived.”
Nature’s way is currently the only way for large numbers of people to benefit from oxytocin’s impressive, multilayered effects. With this realization, however, comes an inescapable paradox: City-based life works at odds with the very biochemical processes that made our species less aggressive and more likely to collaborate with others. Citing psychiatrist and animal-assisted-therapy pioneer Aaron Katcher, Olmert observes, “In our abrupt shift from farm to factory, we did a lot more than just put down the plow. More critically. . .we broke the bond with animals that helped make us civilized human beings. Katcher sees the fallout from this sudden interspecies divorce every day in children who are too wild to participate in polite society,” namely the increasing number of kids diagnosed with ADHD.
And what about all those hyperactive, hyperaggressive wolves on Wall Street? Wouldn’t it be the ultimate irony to discover that after eons of evolutionary trends encouraging sociability and mutual aid, concrete jungles cause people to devolve into increasingly more vicious behavior?
The Biology of Power and Connection
As decades of studies have shown, oxytocin buffers the fight-or-flight response, making mammals braver and more open to collaboration. But there’s another hormone that adds just the right amount of spice to the mix, particularly in the context of leadership development. In The Oxytocin Factor, Uvnäs-Moberg compares the “calm and connect” effect with a similar substance, vasopressin, which differs by only two amino acids. This behavior-altering peptide also encourages pair bonding, especially during sexual activity, but in a wider social context, it promotes a decidedly more active approach.
Vasopressin, Uvnäs-Moberg writes, “instills courage by making the individual feel aggressive and fearless. The rat, male or female, is prepared to attack, mark territory, and vigorously defend itself. Oxytocin instead fosters courage by diminishing the feeling of danger and conveying the sense that there is less to be afraid of. Animal studies appear to show that oxytocin has a special ability to make animals ‘nice.’ Physiologically, therefore, a substance related to strength and readiness (vasopressin) is a close relative to one that produces friendliness and caring (oxytocin). They function in different ways, and we need them both. As the popular Swedish fictional character Pippi Longstocking says, ‘The one who is powerfully strong must also be powerfully nice.’”
Nowhere is this paradoxical combination exercised more dramatically than in nomadic pastoral cultures where people must nurture and stand up to large, potentially dangerous animals. Here, herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores up the ante on mutual aid, dramatically modifying their own instincts to collaborate with creatures that would otherwise be seen as enemies, competitors, or dinner.
Humans and herding dogs, for instance, must relinquish a territorial orientation to migrate with their grazing companions while also tempering aggressive behavior to nurture, direct, guard, and protect the entire interspecies social system. Tribesmen and tribeswomen must be brave, appropriately assertive, and alert around animals ten times their size. Cattle and horses must be respectful of children smaller than their own newborns, and they must refrain from running from, or attacking and driving off, “family members” that, in any other context, would be seen as potential predators. From birth, all members learn to respond respectfully to the subtle, meaningful, constantly changing body language cues of multiple species, suggesting that a particularly powerful combination of biochemical factors and behavioral modifications acted upon those of our ancestors who chose to form partnerships with large herbivores.
Meat provides a surprisingly modest part of the pastoral diet. Modern tribes mix grains, roots, fruits, and vegetables (gathered, traded, or planted and reaped during seasonal migrations) with lots of dairy products, everything from butter and cheese to fermented mood-altering drinks like koumiss, which Mongolia’s nomadic horse tribes make from mare’s milk. Some cultures, such as Africa’s cattle-oriented Maasai and Siberia’s reindeer-based Even people, occasionally consume blood from living members of the herd, though milk remains the staple. (Moving with the animals keeps these people physically fit — electrocardiogram tests applied to four hundred young adult male Maasai found no evidence of heart disease, abnormalities, or malfunction. Despite significant dairy consumption, their cholesterol levels were about 50 percent of the average American’s.)
In the majority of these traditional cultures, cattle, sheep, goats, camels, horses, and other animals aren’t treated as slaves or commodities, but as valued members of an interspecies society. Herders exhibit tremendous pride and affection toward their animals, who in turn trust their two-legged companions to lead them to greener pastures, oversee their mating, assist with their births, and milk them — the ultimate oxytocin-producing activity.
Close interaction with agile, nonpredatory animals promotes mental, emotional, and relational balance — as well as a form of empowerment that deftly combines fierceness and sensitivity. It is, after all, much more dangerous to herd, ride, or milk a large herbivore, even a domesticated one, than it is to hunt it from a distance. Interspecies affinity, attention to nonverbal cues, mutual respect, and mutual trust are literally survival skills for herding cultures.
The Power of Observation
While archaeological records indicate that pastoral cultures gained increasing sophistication between ten and six thousand years ago, cave paintings suggest that humans and animals engaged in a much longer process of mutual observation, and this in itself had a transformational effect. In Made for Each Other, Meg Daley Olmert contends that quietly watching other animals could have jump-started the oxytocin response that eventually set the stage for interspecies partnerships.
Olmert emphasizes that oxytocin can be produced not only by touch but also by the highly concentrated focus that mothers show when adoring their newborns. She also thinks oxytocin may be released during the “hunter’s trance,” a term the evolutionary biologist Edward O. Wilson coined to describe an expanded state of awareness he encountered when observing animals in nature, in which heart, breath, and mind are quieted, resulting in heightened concentration and attention to detail. Still, it’s significant that Wilson was not hunting in these cases, but watching ants and other animals with pure curiosity and no expected outcome. Wilson’s choice to name this pleasant, slightly altered state “the hunter’s trance” suggests that he hadn’t differentiated between the intensely aware predatory stare of our hunter-gatherer ancestors and the soft, appreciative, inviting gaze of those ancient naturalists who were capable of actually bonding with animals.
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