Cats, Aggression, and Psychological Adaptations

• Psychological Adaptations: A Model and It's Relevance by James Brody, 4/24/97
  
  

The Cats, Aggression, and Psychological Adaptations

A dove calls at dawn outside my bedroom window. Emmy jumps to the oak shelf at the foot of the window, her head cocked upward, her nose almost against the glass, her pelvis shifts right and left, she targets the bird.

Research done in the '60s and early '70s (led by John Flynn PhD at Yale) lay a foundation for understanding the cat's Psychological Adaptation(s) for attack. Olds and Delgado had described the apparent rewarding effects of hypothalamic (HT) stimulation. Rapid discoveries were also made that sites maintaining self-stimulation would also generate varied behaviors such as eating, drinking, mating, and aggression. Later work with chemical and electrical stimuli demonstrated diverse networks of brain sites that maintained each of these behaviors. Behaviors tended to occur in intact sequences and to be relatively stereotyped. Cats, with larger brains than rats but lower costs and more docile manners than rhesus, were major contributors to our knowledge.

Flynn, with his coworkers and assistants, observed:

a) Tickling a cat's lip ordinarily elicits withdrawal, tickling the lip during HT stimulation elicits a bite. (Tickling a kitten's lip also elicits nuzzling and biting.) Raising the intensity of the electrical stimulation made it possible to elicit bites ever further from the lip's midline and with ever gentler touch.

b) Some cats are "visual" biters; others "muzzlers." That is, blindfolding some cats disrupts the HT bite sequence even when the anesthetized rat is placed to their lip. Other cats only bite the target after muzzling it. (Emmy, too, muzzles each bite before opening her jaws.) Cutting, under anesthesia, the sensory nerve supply to the cat's muzzle disrupted the bite sequence regardless of HT stimulation.

c) Research in other labs demonstrated that stretching the jaw muscle elicits contraction, just as it does for most other muscle groups. But, pressure to the tooth elicits relaxation.

d) Applying pressure to the front foot pads often elicits flexion of the entire arm and claw extension. (Try it on your own tabby if you haven't disarmed her to protect your couch. Try it again when she's hungry!)

None of us called these things "elements of a psychological adaptation." (Simon's home base) was still Carnegie University, artificial intelligence was still a blond. And, I was a dog lover before doing the cat work.

We're now comfortable with the ideas of firing patterns and of neural nets, each stage of which refines the signal in preparation for the next. The initial pattern is aborted, amplified, made more persistent, or routed to other centers as a function of its exact characteristics. All these things go on, yet Emmy's curled on my lap while I type. She's adamant that her right cheek rest on my right wrist while she purrs. She would be an awesome predator if half my size and she caught me without my toys. In either version, she's beautiful.

NOTES:

1) Frans de Waal notes correctly that cats seem less altruistic and less able to form alliances than apes. My gang show behaviors suggestive of altruism and alliances although not up to the apes' symphonic abilities. Mine get on the table, share my pea soup (and retch afterwards!), and bring me things they catch. I am told they get "weirded out" when I am gone too long. I suspect many people see less spontaneous cat behavior by trying to enforce primate rules such as "Stay off the table."

many people see less spontaneous cat behavior by trying to enforce primate rules such as "Stay off the table."

2) I appreciate her hunting not only because of memories I have from postdoctoral days. Emmy's not spayed, there are a bunch of fine cats inside her (great eggs!). And, she almost died once secondary to a vet's misdiagnosis. I defied medical direction and brought her back from the yellowed, shrunken, skeleton she had become. (It's been 5 years; I'm still furious. Yes, primates can form alliances with cats.)

3) I wonder about another Psych Adaptation. Emmy was the loudest of her 6 siblings and still can meow in pure tones. Gretchen often fed her separately. It is said that some mother cats cannot eat themselves and must be fed out of earshot if the kittens are distressed. I know human mothers with the same trait.

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