What animals can teach humans about living with stress
Skip to main content
  • Home
  • Economy
    • Aviation
    • Bazaar
    • Budget
    • Industry
    • NBR
    • RMG
    • Corporates
  • Stocks
  • Analysis
  • World+Biz
  • Sports
  • Features
    • Book Review
    • Brands
    • Earth
    • Explorer
    • Fact Check
    • Family
    • Food
    • Game Reviews
    • Good Practices
    • Habitat
    • Humour
    • In Focus
    • Luxury
    • Mode
    • Panorama
    • Pursuit
    • Wealth
    • Wellbeing
    • Wheels
  • Epaper
  • More
    • Subscribe
    • Videos
    • Thoughts
    • Splash
    • Bangladesh
    • Supplement
    • Infograph
    • Archive
    • COVID-19
    • Games
    • Long Read
    • Interviews
    • Offbeat
    • Podcast
    • Quiz
    • Tech
    • Trial By Trivia
    • Magazine
  • বাংলা
The Business Standard

Friday
February 03, 2023

Sign In
Subscribe
  • Home
  • Economy
    • Aviation
    • Bazaar
    • Budget
    • Industry
    • NBR
    • RMG
    • Corporates
  • Stocks
  • Analysis
  • World+Biz
  • Sports
  • Features
    • Book Review
    • Brands
    • Earth
    • Explorer
    • Fact Check
    • Family
    • Food
    • Game Reviews
    • Good Practices
    • Habitat
    • Humour
    • In Focus
    • Luxury
    • Mode
    • Panorama
    • Pursuit
    • Wealth
    • Wellbeing
    • Wheels
  • Epaper
  • More
    • Subscribe
    • Videos
    • Thoughts
    • Splash
    • Bangladesh
    • Supplement
    • Infograph
    • Archive
    • COVID-19
    • Games
    • Long Read
    • Interviews
    • Offbeat
    • Podcast
    • Quiz
    • Tech
    • Trial By Trivia
    • Magazine
  • বাংলা
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 03, 2023
What animals can teach humans about living with stress

Panorama

Faye Flam, Bloomberg
21 June, 2021, 12:55 pm
Last modified: 22 June, 2021, 05:06 pm

Related News

  • Ferret badgers: Our little-known mustelids
  • 73.5% school-going adolescents in Bangladesh suffer from stress: Study
  • Chained up and caged: How our forest department lacks in ethical treatment of rescued animals
  • Earth's smallest mammals by weight
  • From tiny humans to designer babies: How will humans look in the future?

What animals can teach humans about living with stress

Studies on whales and other creatures reveal how health is affected by a hard time, whether it’s a pandemic or a personal crisis

Faye Flam, Bloomberg
21 June, 2021, 12:55 pm
Last modified: 22 June, 2021, 05:06 pm
Sometimes it’s hard not to freak out. Photographer: David McNew via Bloomberg
Sometimes it’s hard not to freak out. Photographer: David McNew via Bloomberg

Considering how bad stress is supposed to be for our bodies, it's still a confusing concept. Is it worse for our health to have too much work or too little? To have too much responsibility or to be bored? The Covid-19 pandemic triggered lots of stress — even in people who never got the virus. It's not clear how much the forced isolation, fear or job loss harmed our health.

But scientists are starting to identify the kinds of stress that damage us physically by studying other species — not just lab rats, but animals from whales to iguanas to fish. That research has already generated some understanding of the harms we have imposed on them through captivity, pollution and underwater noise. It might also help us understand the harms we impose on each other.

Decades ago, scientists established a questionable narrative that stress was associated with "Type A" personalities — people who try to do too much. Much of the foundational research was funded primarily by the tobacco industry. That research came out at a time in the mid-20th century when heart disease had been sharply rising in the United States in parallel with the rise in smoking.

The tobacco-funded research propagated the message was that it wasn't smoking that was killing people but our busy "modern" lifestyle combined with Type A personalities and behavior. But no reliable, repeatable studies ever backed up a link between heart disease and Type A behavior or personalities.

But others over the years suspected there was something valuable there that needed to be untangled. "It's been so hard to define stress that people have made proposals that we jettison the world from science," says Michael Romero, a Tufts University biologist. "For many years people were asking what is a stress response … It's something that the body initiates in response to a noxious stimulus called a stressor," he says. "And what is a stressor? That is something that turns on a stress response." It's a circular definition.

He says he had a flash of insight early in his career when he travelled to the Arctic — a wet, cold, and seemingly stressful place. It was stressful for him, but not for the native animals. They were adapted to live in that environment.

The current understanding equates stress with environmental conditions more than with behavior. Romero says unhealthy stress in animals comes from extreme weather events such as storms or floods – things that go beyond what they're adapted to. The other major causes of stress are predators, famine, infectious disease, social conflicts and human-generated environmental changes — chemical and noise pollution, for example.

A few years ago, he studied marine iguanas in the Galapagos. A group of them survived a terrible oil spill, but those with the most elevated stress hormones were more likely to die months later. Another study in fish showed that those living downstream of a mining spill showed hormonal changes associated with stress.

In his favorite stress research technique, scientists measure stress hormone levels in Eastern right whales by using dogs to sniff out fresh whale feces, which contain stress hormones (and happen to float for about an hour after being deposited). Those studies revealed that noise and fishing lines create stress, but that whales' stress levels plummeted in the days that ship traffic subsided, temporarily, after 9/11.

He says stress hormones represent an evolutionary trade-off. They can be lifesaving in an emergency by channeling energy to a fight or flight response.

Most stress-related disease seems to be connected to problems regulating the hormone cortisol, he says, which is an anti-inflammatory substance. This can be beneficial — think of the most effective drug against acute Covid-19, dexamethasone, which is an anti-inflammatory. But anti-inflammatory substances can also suppress the immune system, so a long-term cortisol imbalance can leave an animal more vulnerable to viruses, bacteria or parasites.

And stress can help animals by shutting down fertility during times when it might be unfavorable to reproduce — when there's too little food, for example. That's been documented in humans, too. Women who have recently survived famines or been freed from concentration camps are unlikely to get pregnant.

There's a popular idea about "the upside of stress" — which is the title of a popular TED talk and book by a psychologist who said she had once been wrong to tell patients to avoid stress.

The problem with that thesis is that if the source of stress is something people can avoid, then it probably isn't the health-destroying kind of stress that's killing whales and iguanas, and probably people as well.  

Stimulation, challenge and excitement may be something we humans are adapted to live with – just as those arctic creatures are adapted to extreme cold. As I learned from biologist Lori Marino, a lack of challenge will also stress out and sicken captive marine mammals. When they're in captivity, she said, people used to think they led "cushy" lives, with abundant food, safety and no need to work beyond performing in shows. But they die much more often of infectious disease than their wild counterparts even though they usually live in clean, filtered water.

They were clearly suffering psychologically, she says. Captive orcas are known to bash their heads against the walls and shatter their own teeth. "It becomes a situation where there's really no escape … they are literally bored to death."

While fewer animals are captured today, those born in captivity are still stressed. They may not know a different life, but evolution shaped them to live in an open ocean surrounded by others of their species — not the solitary confinement of a tank.

The lesson for us is that it's not enough to tell people to focus on the positive — or to avoid stress, which looks to be rooted in environmental factors rather than behavior. You might not be stressed by working 80 hours a week if you love what you do. If you hate your job, on the other hand, you can avoid one source of stress by quitting, but might risk replacing it with the stress of being short of money.

But maybe those animals can guide us toward ways to change the way we treat each other. That way we can help each other through the rest of this pandemic and be less vulnerable to the next one.

Disclaimer: This article first appeared on Bloomberg, and is published by special syndication arrangement

Features / Top News

Human / animal / stress

Comments

While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderation decisions are subjective. Published comments are readers’ own views and The Business Standard does not endorse any of the readers’ comments.

Top Stories

  • International Monetary Fund logo : AP via UNB
    IMF sets time-bound reform agenda as it releases first tranche of loan
  • Shipped Bhola gas to cost higher, yet cheaper than spot LNG
    Shipped Bhola gas to cost higher, yet cheaper than spot LNG
  • The trio spearheading the revival of book cover designs
    The trio spearheading the revival of book cover designs

MOST VIEWED

  • The trio spearheading the revival of book cover designs
    The trio spearheading the revival of book cover designs
  • Andy Mukherjee. Sketch: TBS
    What makes India's billionaires' support special for Adani
  • While the Padma bridge in operation is changing the lives of millions in the south for the better, passenger rush to Shimulia ghat died down. Photo: Masum Billah
    How are the Shimulia ghat businesses faring after Padma bridge?
  • After so many investments going embarrassingly wrong, as was the case with Sam Bankman-Fried, perhaps tech investors’ preference for less experience will wane. Photo: Bloomberg
    Are you the next Steve Jobs? Good luck raising money in 2023
  • Infographic: TBS
    How to redirect inward remittances to formal channels
  • An elderly couple's lonely battle to save Dhaka's trees
    An elderly couple's lonely battle to save Dhaka's trees

Related News

  • Ferret badgers: Our little-known mustelids
  • 73.5% school-going adolescents in Bangladesh suffer from stress: Study
  • Chained up and caged: How our forest department lacks in ethical treatment of rescued animals
  • Earth's smallest mammals by weight
  • From tiny humans to designer babies: How will humans look in the future?

Features

Andy Mukherjee. Sketch: TBS

What makes India's billionaires' support special for Adani

38m | Panorama
Photo: Rejaul Hafiz Rahi

A jackal farewell

1h | Earth
The trio spearheading the revival of book cover designs

The trio spearheading the revival of book cover designs

2h | Panorama
Six Jeep Wranglers and a special XJ Jeep Cherokee set out into the depths of Lalakhal, Sylhet for an experience of a lifetime. Photo: Ahbaar Mohammad

Jeep Life Bangladesh: A club for Jeep owners to harness the power of their vehicles

1d | Wheels

More Videos from TBS

A proper price formula can help investors to plan big

A proper price formula can help investors to plan big

17h | TBS Round Table
Rumors about Sarika that everyone thinks are true

Rumors about Sarika that everyone thinks are true

15h | TBS Entertainment
Mugging rife in Tejgaon, murder in Wari

Mugging rife in Tejgaon, murder in Wari

17h | TBS Current Affairs
What secrets are hidden behind Adani's wealth?

What secrets are hidden behind Adani's wealth?

16h | TBS Stories

Most Read

1
Bapex calls candidates for job test 9 years after advert!
Bangladesh

Bapex calls candidates for job test 9 years after advert!

2
Leepu realised his love for cars from a young age and for the last 40 years, he has transformed, designed and customised hundreds of cars. Photo: Collected
Panorama

'I am not crazy about cars anymore': Nizamuddin Awlia Leepu

3
Photo: Collected
Energy

8 Ctg power plants out of production

4
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) logo is seen outside the headquarters building in Washington, U.S., September 4, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas/File Photo
Economy

IMF approves $4.7 billion loan for Bangladesh, calls for ambitious reforms

5
Photo: Collected
Court

Japanese mother gets guardianship of daughters, free to leave country

6
Fund cut as Dhaka's fast-track transit projects on slow spending lane
Infrastructure

Fund cut as Dhaka's fast-track transit projects on slow spending lane

EMAIL US
[email protected]
FOLLOW US
WHATSAPP
+880 1847416158
The Business Standard
  • About Us
  • Contact us
  • Sitemap
  • Privacy Policy
  • Comment Policy
Copyright © 2023
The Business Standard All rights reserved
Technical Partner: RSI Lab

Contact Us

The Business Standard

Main Office -4/A, Eskaton Garden, Dhaka- 1000

Phone: +8801847 416158 - 59

Send Opinion articles to - [email protected]

For advertisement- [email protected]