One of Vox’s rabbit stalkers said, “I want his heart rate to increase to the point where it can’t pump blood anymore.”
Notice, how many of us would say that? When my heart rate increases, I am exhilarated. My muscles are pumped up and poised to contract. I feel energized and alive. If I had an enemy, I would never say, “I hope his heart rate increases!” What bad could come of that?
Likewise, I would just assume that as a heart rate increased, it would increase blood flow. When my heart races, it is racing blood to my muscles, and fixing the exhaustion I have inflicted upon myself. I would assume an increasing heart rate would be beneficial, not detrimental. The idea of connecting an increased heart rate with diminished blood flow would never occur to me.
Now imagine you are a rabbit. Vox just laid out some awful truth. You feel the shock and horror piece your psyche like a knife. Your heart rate increases and you can feel it pounding in your chest. You start to feel fundamentally unwell, and begin to black out. Your arms feel empty and weak, and you can barely lift them. Your legs feel rubbery and weak. The periphery of your visual field is beginning to close in. Your whole body feels as if it isn’t getting enough blood flow, and moreover, it feels as if you would die were it to get worse. You would connect an increased heart rate with all of that bad stuff. I could see eventually connecting it subconsciously with symptoms of a decreased blood flow.
Now imagine if that happened to you all the time.
Suddenly when you want Vox to suffer, you wish an increased heart rate on him, to the point he will have no blood flow at all, which is where you logically assume that sensation is heading. The death this stalker wished on Vox is the most extreme version of what this stalker feels on a regular basis. It is what this stalker thinks would happen to him, if his amygdala were to experience a maximal hijack. He was wishing a hijack on Vox.
These people have to live the most awful lives. Even sensations we associate with life, pleasure, and healing, they innately experience as associated with death, pain, and suffering. If they would just leave other people alone, the pity I would feel for them would be immeasurable. These are the horrors of the hidden lives of rabbits.
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I, too, have noticed rabbits become physically ill over the most trivial things – seeing someone eat meat, ethnic jokes. Such things make them feel sick!
In my experience, small animals in peril act competently, applying all sorts of instinctual tricks to break free, not giving up until they’re dead. E.g. a cat hears two chipmunks quarreling in the weeds, barges in, and snatches one. I catch the cat and free the chipmunk. For a few seconds this chipmunk performs a twitchy rabid zombie dance in front of the unrestrained cat, who forgets that this rodent was perfectly healthy 20 seconds ago. Chipmunk suddenly bolts, and the cat runs after but fails to catch it.
Has anyone observered or provoked an amygdala hijack in a rabbit or other small animal?
I’m not sure a pure r-strategist species of selfish individualists can be correlated to a species which exhibits a changeable strategy precipitated by resource fluctuation, and in which social interactions within competitive groups have had an effect on modifying behaviors.
That said, as a child my family fed birds, and I fairly often found myself watching as a small hawk zoomed in and grabbed a dove or Blue Jay, at which point I would run out to try and save the prey from its death. Usually the small hawk and the bird would flop around on the ground for a minute or so until the hawk could get to its neck and kill it. As I would approach, the hawk would take off, and more than a few times a dove would just be lying there as if dead. I’d pick it up, and after a few seconds, it would come back to life, similar to your description of the chipmunk zombie dance.
In retrospect, I could see that as being an amygdala which was out of options, and in a state of almost shock, to the point the animal simply didn’t have the ability to think logically and respond properly to external stimuli. I thought at the time it might have been merciful, as once caught by a predator, the animal just zoned out and didn’t know what was happening to it. Back in those agnostic days I wondered if it was evidence of some merciful entity making things kind, even for the prey.
In both the chipmunk and the dove, it wouldn’t be a logical, “lets fool our enemy with this act,” so much as a freak out that eventually gave way when an option to escape was spotted and seized upon.
While I think the “state of being” is similar, I think what really differentiates humans is that in human rabbits, they have evolved to see that state engendered by simple social cues. Maybe since death seems so far away to us, the brain adapts, and social out-grouping becomes akin to death, and as a result the stimulus which will precipitate that locked-up state are social cues indicating out-grouping is happening. Perhaps if the world were much harsher, and death were a common fate, then we’d adapt the other way and social out-grouping would be meaningless compared to having a werewolf pin us to the ground and tear out our throats – ie, if the world is K, rabbitism would fade away naturally, whereas if the world is harmless and r, rabbitry becomes normal.