Wild Animals Fear Humand

In the last week, I’ve written a bit about Limbic Imprinting, which occurs when baby (neonatal) animals, often only a day or two old, are taken away from their parents and love-bombed with food and attention by humans.  

The result is a permanent change in the animals Limbic System (aka, the paleo-mammalian brain cortex) which is involved in emotional processing and motivation in vertebrate animals. 

Limbic Imprinting is a physical thing, and it permanently changes the “fight or flight” part of the still-developing brain of a very young neonatal mammal or bird.

Limbic Imprinting is key to understanding why the “taming” of wild animals captured when only a few hours or days old, is so often successful.

It also explains why scientists who are breeding endangered species to return to the wild (California Condors, Black-footed Ferrets, Whooping Cranes, Red Wolves, etc.) are so careful to mask their human identities while caring for neonatals.

Limbic Imprinting (or the lack thereof) also explains why adult feral versions of “domesticated” animals are so difficult to work with despite descending from thousands of years of domestic stock.

As for wild animals, raised without close contact with humans, few things are more terrifying than humans.  As J.A. Baker writes in his book, “The Peregrine”:

“No pain, no death is more terrible to a wild creature that it's fear of man…. A poisoned crow, gaping and hopelessly floundering in the grass, bright yellow foam bubbling from its throat, will dash itself up again and again onto the descending wall of air, if you try to catch it. A rabbit, inflated and foul with myxomatosis... will feel the vibration of your footsteps and will look at you with bulging, sightless eyes….We are at the killers. We stink of death. We carry with us. It sticks to us like frost. We cannot tear it away.”