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Jitro
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09 Jan 2013, 10:18 pm

Can animals be autistic like humans can?



blue1skies
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09 Jan 2013, 10:21 pm

Hmm... That's an interesting question! I suppose it's possible, to some degree, but it would be very different than autism in humans. I'm guessing the animal would just be an outcast, because it couldn't follow any social rituals.



WerewolfPoet
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09 Jan 2013, 10:23 pm

Canine Autism is a legitimate veterinary diagnosis. Supposedly, scientist were able to induce autism-like symptoms in monkeys with a specific vaccine...

As autism is simply a set of traits, the diagnosis could be applied to any social awry, hypersensitive, stereotypic animal.



Chloe33
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09 Jan 2013, 10:36 pm

Our cat, Rico we adopted from the vet's office when he was a kitten and she had saved some strays.
He has always been super sensitive to the point where he will not tolerate loud music, or certain types of music.
Our other 2 cats don't mind music at all.
Today my wife had music on and Rico completely freaked out running around the house screaming so we had to turn it off.
He is also scared of the ceiling fan. He will look at it fearfully. We had only turned it on once when we moved in. He is just scared of it.

He only responds to my wife or i. He is fine with his grandma, who comes to visit sometimes, yet anyone else he hides from them.

The other day my wife was using a power saw (working on the house) and it was very piercing and i was holding Rico and humming to him and i think it's the only reason he didn't run and hide.

Out of all the numerous felines i have observed, and have, i have never seen one like Rico. He's our special baby. He was saved very young by a woman who saves strays and we got him as a young kitten. He's never had a bad history or any horrific experiences. All our cats are indoors only.

He's probably almost 5 years old now. He went through a phase 2 years ago and when he was younger as well, that when either my wife or i would leave the room he would literally scream as if he were hurt. If both of us were out, grandma sat in at that time to calm him for a good 15 mins.

He had the worst time during our move, he is horrible with change.

We are still slightly unsure whether his running room from room today was due to music (he's heard before, hid, yet never screamed and paced like today) or that the position of the litter box had been moved. He was so freaked out by the move i seriously was afraid we were going to have to find a vet. We had a harness for him to get him excercise and he sat on the bench seat with my dog, between us.

Now that the litter box is back to himself.

He gets very overwhelmed with too much stimuli. His sisters love him though, and he loves them. Neither of his sisters have issues with noises and the one will literally sit on my wife's thigh while she was tattooing herself. I actually got a pic of that :)

Rico is like a forever kitten, he never grew into kitty adulthood.
There is no training him, and when he wants something like food, he wants it! Our others haven't taken on his begging behaviors though.
He has his own individual little quirks, however compared to our other cats and others i've observed, Rico is our special boy :farao:


I definitely believe animals can be Autistic



Sylvastor
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09 Jan 2013, 11:00 pm

Could be possible. If it is possible, my budgie could be autistic. :lol:

He reminds me of myself, although he's all fine eating from my hand, sitting on my finger, arm, shoulder and even head, following me and so on, he doesn't like being touched (threatens to bite) and prefers to stay in his cage most of his time even when given the option. Pop music makes him aggressive and classic music and metal makes him active/turn rounds tweeting all the time.

When me and my parents chose him, he was basically the outsider in the cage anyway (sitting all alone in a corner and coming closer to us while the others took distance). He still does that in his cage. Sometimes, when we pass by he follows me and my mother on the cage's wall and only stops doing so if you play with him, if the cage is open he will sit on the door and tweet. He also managed to escape the cage once when he felt like flying some rounds in the living room (I was quite surprised at this accomplishment, we came back from church and the cage is closed, the budgie not inside and he is sitting in the kitchen on a shelve staring at us). He also figured out how to get our attention to signalize he wants to play and always sleeps on the same swing in his cage.

For a budgie, he is clever and seems to be annoyed by foreign objects a lot. Change something in his cage and he will complain all the time. As you may know, birds usually have that metal ring with the serial number when you buy them. I have no idea how, but he managed to detach it from his leg quite early. When we were searching for it, we couldn't find it. My guess is it fell into the ventilation on the floor and is somewhere stuck on the filter (there is no way he could have swallowed it :P).
Certain noises highly irritate it and/or make it angry.
He has certain "rituals" that could even be considered stims. As a little bird he used to do rolls around the pole, this looked funny. When he became too big to do that (tail touching end of cage on either of the two poles - exception is the swing but it was moving and he has made a bad experience when trying that there by falling off of it), he started to do a repetitive movement with the bell in his cage, I can't describe it but it's funny to see it though.

Also, he has an irrational hate on my father (although he doesn't dare to attack him), strangers are a no-go to him and are unnerving him. A very selective bird. Even my grandparents are considered strangers it seems. :lol:


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09 Jan 2013, 11:52 pm

There is a mouse model for Rett syndrome. The mice have all the symptoms that human Rett syndrome patients have, one of which is autism.

They are trying to create transgenic monkeys too, but I don't think they've done it yet. Monkeys are pretty complex compared to mice. Or, rather, we're more used to working with mice, I think. Monkeys are expensive and difficult to care for, and much more aware than mice, so you just don't want to do research on a monkey unless you absolutely have to. For that matter, you don't want to use a mouse if you can get away with a cell culture.

The study where they claimed to induce autism in monkeys with vaccines has been pretty much invalidated, by the way. Their methods absolutely sucked--they had a control group of only three. I'm honestly surprised the thing got published at all. On top of that, they separated the monkeys from their mothers at birth and raised them alone. How in the world is a monkey supposed to show normal social behavior under those circumstances to begin with? And of course the researchers weren't blind to which monkeys were in which groups. I'm an undergrad and I could have designed a better experiment than that... most likely by the time I was eight years old. Seriously, what did these people do--buy themselves some white coats in a costume shop and decide to call themselves scientists?


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Rudywalsh
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10 Jan 2013, 12:57 am

Can animals have autism?

I had a dog once that wouldn’t look anyone in the eyes and laid his biscuits out in a straight line, so I guess it’s possible.



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10 Jan 2013, 1:56 am

blue1skies wrote:
Hmm... That's an interesting question! I suppose it's possible, to some degree, but it would be very different than autism in humans. I'm guessing the animal would just be an outcast, because it couldn't follow any social rituals.


My mom has a cat who is like this. He doesn't seem to understand any social cat-rules. He is running away when another cat want's to play with him or whatever, he doesn't like to be touched and he was developmental delayed as a kitten (cat toilet training, eating etc.). He even still looks young, but he is 16 now.


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Question14
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10 Jan 2013, 2:04 am

Surely Natural Selection would eliminate autism in animals?



Rudywalsh
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10 Jan 2013, 2:13 am

If natural selection eliminates autism in animals, then why do human beings have autism, we humans are also animals?



kahlua
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10 Jan 2013, 2:23 am

My horse hates people, hates being touched, has food intolerances etc. Kind of reflects me really.

He does actually socialise well with other horses, so I guess that rules out autism !



Question14
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10 Jan 2013, 2:26 am

Well, in animals it may be a even more serious disadvantage to its genes than a human. Autism social problems cause the animal to not find a mate, not passed on and so on...

But with humans, well. Prehaps the autism is mild or the person with autism is succesful, like a great artist or thinker and so on. Success in human life, is different to a animals. The princlple are the same but work differnetly...


then again you make a valid point.

and yes, why did natrual selection not elimante Autism... oh Selection works on a large time frame, and considering how little time humans have existed that would explain why autism has not disappeared???



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10 Jan 2013, 2:37 am

Rudywalsh wrote:
If natural selection eliminates autism in animals, then why do human beings have autism, we humans are also animals?


Because humans have a social structure that allows those with autism to survive and even thrive in the environment and a social acceptance of it that allows autistics to pass on their genes. Animals would have no tolerance for those who couldn't follow the social rules of the species, and they wouldn't pass on their genes, not to mention severely autistic animals would get no support from other animals once they were grown and no longer looked after by their mother, so they would probably starve or get themselves hurt in some other way that weeded autism genes from the population. Humans may be animals, but we are by no means standard animals.


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Rudywalsh
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10 Jan 2013, 2:56 am

If autism is man made through our own intervention, then nature is off the hook.

We humans could possibly be the culprit in creating autism ourselves. Nobody really knows.



JellyCat
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10 Jan 2013, 3:14 am

StarTrekker wrote:
Rudywalsh wrote:
If natural selection eliminates autism in animals, then why do human beings have autism, we humans are also animals?


Because humans have a social structure that allows those with autism to survive and even thrive in the environment and a social acceptance of it that allows autistics to pass on their genes. Animals would have no tolerance for those who couldn't follow the social rules of the species, and they wouldn't pass on their genes, not to mention severely autistic animals would get no support from other animals once they were grown and no longer looked after by their mother, so they would probably starve or get themselves hurt in some other way that weeded autism genes from the population. Humans may be animals, but we are by no means standard animals.


I'm pretty sure (some) primates have similar social structure to us humans.
I think that plenty of animals would look after their child if their child couldn't looks after themselves.



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10 Jan 2013, 4:09 am

Tests have shown that mice can be autistic. The autistic mouse tends not to mix with the other mice and it takes pieces of cheese and arranges them in a straight line, smallest to largest. :wink:


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