#emotional complexity in animals

[informationatlas]

Mice Can Sing!

Rodents, often viewed as simple creatures, exhibit surprising complexity in their behavior. Mice and rats display human-like traits such as laughter when tickled, empathy by sensing each other's pain through facial expressions, and even an ability to discern artistic styles like Picasso and Renoir. 

Studies reveal that male mice produce intricate ultrasonic vocalizations, or "songs," to communicate with females. These songs vary in complexity depending on social context: when males can't see females but only smell their urine, the songs are louder and more intricate; however, when in the presence of females, the songs become simpler but longer.

Researchers at Duke University have found that female mice show a preference for more complex mating calls, indicating their effectiveness in attraction. This suggests that male mice invest more energy in attracting females when they can't see them, but once in close proximity, they focus more on mating behaviors. The study aims to explore the brain mechanisms behind these vocalizations and whether mice can learn new songs, potentially shedding light on communication disorders like autism. Published in the journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, this research underscores the complexity of rodent behavior and its implications for understanding animal and human communication.

(via Yes, Mice Can Sing. And You Won't Believe How Much They Sound Like Songbirds | HuffPost Impact)

[animentality]

I know it's a fact of life and all, but it does give me the heebie jeebies, knowing there's someone out there whose job is to masturbate male pigs so they can ship off semen to artificially inseminate sows.

Like I get it... it's just...like...business, circle of life, this is how the meat industry is efficient in how it breeds livestock, but...

I'm trying to imagine someone whose job it is to masturbate a caged pig, and it's like...

Hm.

I hope they pay them...something good.

Also I wonder if like...female pigs ever feel super weird about being artificially inseminated.

Like they know it's not natural.

I assume.

And then I think, well, what about the male pigs?

They probably know it's not natural either, being jerked off in a cage by some human.

What is going through their heads during all this...

[to-draw-time]

-holds up Dungeon Meshi characters-

What i like about them is that none are perfect, none are always 100% in the right or wrong; they have fleshed out personalities and all have done horrors and all have done acts of kindness. You cannot exist in a world and not have fucked up as much as you try to do good. Your own internal struggles affect those around you bc you inevitably make actions/choices based on them.

But everyone can recognize your faults and attributes and still choose to stand with you or be a part of your life. I think it is neat how Dungeon Meshi makes a point to actually point that out.

[un-pearable]

legitimately anyone who is a self described fan of children’s cartoons over the age of 12 needs to watch Infinity Train. it explicitly bridges the gap between the tone, tropes, and storytelling limitations of Y7 and the level of complexity than we want from it. every single person writing pages long screeds about character development and nuance in shows that are primarily marketed at a younger audience but have significant meaning to older age groups would get so fuckin much out of the themes and story of Infinity Train, which is explicitly a story about those more complex themes.

it gamifies character development as part of it’s core conceit. each season gets more mature as it deals with more complex issues of morality and ethics and it’s still a silly epsiodic show with fun gags. it grows up as the story progresses with each anthologic installment giving you more complex interpersonal relationships and issues. there’s on screen cop murder. cults. incredibly gay coded music duo from the 80s that are the most divorced twenty year olds you’ve ever seen. a story that grows with you.

and you can’t fuckin watch it anywhere bc the animation industry is a puppet at the whims of investors in love with the impossible horizon

Infinity Train is the result of a decade of shows like Adventure Time and Gravity Falls and Steven Universe, of animators and artists’s growing desire to tell stories that grow with kids beyond their designated demographic in the American cultural conscience. and you can’t watch it.

they were going to talk about alzheimers. the thesis of infinity train is that animation is a medium, not a genre. a vehicle for exploring complex topics in a way that live action can’t. it’s a therapy train that traumatizes it’s riders more often than not. they covered everything from divorce’s impact on children to trans-coded identity crisis to the realities of a Lost Boys experience. what it means to be human. they were going to talk about alzheimers

it’s literally a vehicle for character development . it’s the midpoint on the spectrum between children’s media and mature writing. it is everything you seek out of fan fiction being explicit in the text. and you cant watch it bc it being animated means it’s worthless

[marsbotz]

not going to lie i do find it quite upsetting that so many ppl think that animals that arent immediately relatable to humans are completely incapable of thought or feeling. and thats the only thing that matters when it comes to animal rights arguments a lot of the time

[brown-little-robin]

あ

[paulinawoodpecker]

Comfort after T. rex attack

[aven0ux]

The teaser truly gave us Ed pining for Stede in his own violently creative way

I present to you exhibit A:

Interrupts a wedding to rob everyone

But ends up paying WAY more attention to the cake toppers (= Stede + Ed)

I feel like most scenes for the first episodes will be about Ed turning every situation he finds himself in into a way to bring up Stede (can’t have comfort without the hurt 😞) MUAHAHAHAHA

Ed keeps the toppers and imagines what his life would be like if Stede hadn’t left (he literally imagines them being married through these figurines - I CANT )

I imagine Ed keeping them in his pocket always and holding onto them tightly when he feels himself losing control of his emotions - cuz bbg is repressing big time

[mountmortar]

took that mbti test for the first time since high school because i wanted to see if it was as much bullshit as i remembered it being and sure enough i didn't even get the same result (intp then vs. istj now). it's just astrology for redditors

[roominthecastle]

River & Siegfried: parallels in trauma and healing

Animals, like people, cannot simply be tinkered with and fixed like a wristwatch. Undoing the damage will take time. But we'll try.

[bonestrouslingbones]

btw one of the things i want to do when i really rap up atbb for real is spontaneously get the energy at will to do actual updated fullbodies of the main 4 since now i actually have the ability to draw them the way they look in my head & have the skills to put some more variety in their shapes. basically i wanna

[hussyknee]

I've been having a severe PTSD episode for over five hours and it never registered because spending half the day in helpless fits of obsessive, murderous, paralysing rage is the nothing out of the ordinary for me. "Oh, I'm just an angry person like that" yes because I'm constantly triggered, retriggered and retraumatized by living disabled and dependent on Satan, who happens to be my egg donor.

It doesn't seem like I'll ever really internalise that these rages are PTSD episodes, especially since I'm a woman and therefore socially conditioned not to harm anyone except myself (that's a privilege reserved for six foot cis het men in charge of families who do the traumatizing). But in case it does anyone else good to hear: you aren't an "angry person". You have Complex PTSD. The rage outs are the exact equivalent of panic attacks and disassociation that Hollywood likes to show. The need to FIGHT is as a visceral, animal, instinctive and uncontrollable as the need for flight, to fawn, or to freeze. You aren't angry. You're fucking terrified and trapped and very, very ill.

[redandfranticfeelings]

after several months of tracking the solar opposites tag i'm starting to get a similar feeling from the fandom as all those posts about breaking bad where walt is really supportive of jesse's transition

[bear-do-well]

Just saw someone online call someone out for abusing their dog, for *checks notes* taking them to the vet

yeah, the dog is clearly sad and distressed from being taken to the literal doctor!! abuse, i say!!

[sskk-manifesto]

ಥ‿ಥ

[dazais-guardian-angel]

I just wanna say that. there’s something incredibly morbid and gross about the fact that bones took away literally the only thing Sigma had to his name before the casino: his past. And not only his past itself, but his right to narrate his own past. Instead, the TWO lines they do keep about it (about him naming himself Sigma, and finally finding his one place to call home, the casino).... are given to Fyodor to say. Fyodor, his most recent manipulator in a long, long line of manipulators.

And not even just his past, but by extension so many of his strong, strong emotions about himself and what he’s been through and how they’ve made him into the person he is now: his fear, his sorrow, his desperation, his determination, his righteous indignation. His pain. The majority of that is all gone from the anime.

Sigma barely has a story of his own; his past, his suffering, and his emotions are the only things he has claim to, that make him who he is. And bones took even those away from him. Flattening him into an empty piece of paper, ironically, just like he was born from and as.