The Fear of Animals

Wild animals are instinctual creatures. Nature (or God, depending on your viewpoint) has given them instincts to survive the harsh elements of this planet, and particularly to escape other predatory creatures that stalk the land, sea, and air. These instincts are even present in man, although to a degree that they can be controlled and overridden by conscious thought. As well, some of these instincts, through the process of constant bombardment of repetitive stimuli, can undergo a process of extinction whereby the instinctual response becomes less and less after repeated stimulation.
Given these natural instincts of animals, I will here maintain the observation that the worst thing you can do to a wild animal is to make it afraid. When a wild animal encounters a stimuli that is either shocking, sudden, or novel (perceived as a threat), its body undergoes an automatic process which scientists refer to as the “fight or flight” response. This is a natural response to some sort of external stressor. It involves a rapid release of energy-gathering substances within the body, including the familiar hormone epinephrine (also known as adrenaline), as well as other catecholamines. These hormones produce a body-wide systemic response that allows the animal to fight off the offending stimuli, particularly predators, or flee to avoid death. The effects of this response include dilation of the pupils, an increase in heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration (which results in increased oxygenation to muscles), and constriction of blood vessels close to the skin so that if an injury is sustained, blood loss is attenuated.
The “fight or flight” response is present in humans as well. Have you ever had a person jump from behind something suddenly and scare you? It does not feel that good. The sudden release of the catecholamine hormones can mainly be described as anxiety-producing (similar to a short-lived panic attack), although some people describe it as a “rush.”
The response is the same in a wild animal. Making an animal afraid is even worse than when somebody scares you. Humans can adjust their stress response consciously, and, because of our high level of intelligence, threats are perceived very differently than animals. To a wild animal, if the stress response is initiated, the particular stressor is almost always perceived as life-threatening.
Think of a deer that stares straight at your headlights on the highway while you are speeding straight at it at 55 MPH. The stress response is paralyzing. Again, try to get within 5-10 feet of a squirrel or other small wild animal. Especially if they have never seen a human being in their lives, they will perceive you as a threat to their life and try to flee. Even worse is when a wild animal is captured.
Luckily, repeated exposure to humans and other threats attenuates this response, evidenced by deer and other animals that are walking around towns in the middle of the street without fear. They have adapted their stress response due to the process of extinction. The domestication process is a good example of how animals can genetically lose the stress response when exposed to humans, but there are only a handful or so of these species.

So the next time you encounter a wild animal, be careful about how you approach it. The “fight or flight” response is a very powerful natural instinct. On one hand, it is a good thing, because it aids survival of the species as a whole. But to that individual animal, they perceive you as a threat, and thus they think they are going to die. It is a shame that most people do not think about this nor do they care when they frighten a poor animal. Hopefully after reading this, you will. Please remember that other forms of life live on this planet as well. We should, as Albert Schweitzer says, have a “reverence for life.”