Aspies Untamed?

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Here's a thought....

For many, many years I was involved in ferret advocacy, which meant spending way too much time proving that ferrets were, in fact, a domestic animal and therefore not under the purview of state fish and game departments. In doing this I gathered (of course I did, I'm an Aspie) every iota of knowledge I could on what exactly makes a domestic animal different from its wild counterpart.

Several changes are very familiar: Compared with their domesticated counterparts, wild animals have:

- a larger brain, typically 10% larger than the domesticated variety. (No, no, I will hold my Aspiation in check and not go into details unless someone gives me the slightest hint they might be interested! )

- far more aversion to looking con-specifics in the eye than the domesticated variety.

- except in certain circumstances like hunting in packs, less interest in the behavior of con-specifics and far less desire to manipulate said behavior (i.e., a far lower tendency to politics on every level).

There are a number of other changes as well but I'm not sure they're relevant here.

What is relevant, I think, is this: Humans as a species also had brains 10% larger than they do now until between 10-15,000 years ago--when humans and dogs domesticated each other. Aspies, as a group, are more "wild" in their behavior. I just finished listening to "The Autistic Brain" by Grandin, and she mentioned therein that people on the spectrum also tend to show that 10% increase in brain size, which makes me think: are we throwbacks to/re-emergences of the pre-domesticated human? It's not conclusive, but there sure seems to be a lot of evidence to point that way. Domesticated humans adapted to living in towns and on farms; perhaps non-domesticated ones do better in large cities... To me, that would be entirely cool!

One thing I've been wondering about is that wild animals reach maturity, particularly sexual maturity, later than their domesticated counterparts. I know I was very late on the latter and as for the former, I live by the motto that "Childhood is Fleeting, but Immaturity is Forever." Hmmm... I see a research paper here...

Any thoughts?

To your last question: Maybe it is because wild animals need more time and ressources until they grow big enough for maturity. I only can compare it with cats, but when we moved 12 years ago, their was a tiny little small, terrible thin farmcat visiting us. So we didnt want a own pet, but liked cats so we kept it the way it was, and she visited us from now and then for some extra food. Naturally she wasnt sterilized, and suddenly we had a bunch of baby cats under the stairs to our house entrance. ^^ We decided then to adopt the mothercat fully (and sterilized her ^^) and also kept two of the babies (for the third we found a nice home.)

The thing is, that the catbabies, that were of the same sort of the mum, simply grew much taller then her, so if you compare them from head to tailend, they were when grown out about 10-15 cm longer then the mothercat. The mothercat that was about 9 month old, when she got pregnant also got more healthy, when we fully adopted her and also went to the veterinary with her, vaccined her ..., but she only growed a bit broader, not longer anymore. XD The babies that had their first veterinary visit with three weeks (had an eye infection) and that had the advantage, that their mum already was fed by us, so lots of milk from mum and additional food, when they could eat on their own, were with 6 months already larger, then their mum was with 9 months and were still growing a bit afterwards. I also dont think that they got that from their father, because the silhouette and form was like the mothercat, simply longer and taller and the other farmcats looked very comparable.

So maybe the wild animals simply get later mature, because they dont grow that fast because of lack of food and so on. So there are still lots of other farmcats around us, but our two babies simply were monsters compared to them (And no, they didnt have that much overweight, only about 2 pounds each cat.) and theoretically all of them should have been cousins, aunts, nephews and so on, so they were related. We also needed to sterilize our female babycat with 6 months, because she was already starting to get horny ^^, while her mum got her first babies, according to the veterinary, around 3 months later.

Well, in this case, you're comparing an underfed domestic cat to well-fed ones, and yes that certainly has a lot to do with it. What I'm talking about here is groups as a whole, say, Felis cattus (or whatever it is these days...) to Felis lybica. You see the same differences in dogs/wolves, ferrets/polecats and I would expect Equus ferus caballus vs. Equus ... originalis? ... if there were any left. It's a matter of comparing group to group and not individual to individual.

So glad to hear you took in the cats, though! I live on a farm and people just drive by and leave them here. That's how I got the ostrich...

@neilson_wheels, Oops, you're right! I originally wrote it the other way around and guess I didn't edit thoroughly. It should read, "typically 10% larger than the domesticated variety." I'll see if I can edit the original. Well spotted!

Interesting. Maybe animals need greater brain power to survive alone?

Bat, I know little about the domestication of ferrets, but I am aware of a fascinating experiment on how dogs became domesticated. Maybe there are some parallels between domesticated dogs and ferrets as per this article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox

What I can say is that wild canines tend to have larger brains than most domesticated animals simply because wild canines not only have to fend for themselves, but protect themselves as well. The domesticated varieties have humans to depend on. There are exceptions to this rule though. Border collies, for instance, which were selected for high intelligence, have every bit of the intellectual capacity of their wild cousins, as well as athletic prowess, though not the ferocity.

As far as the evolution of humans go, it is an old wives' tale that human evolution stopped when humans migrated out of Africa. It is also not the case that all evolution takes many tens of thousands of years. In fact, human evolution has sped up around a hundred times since we became "domesticated". Here is a fascinating book making these arguments I can highly recommend to anybody interested in such things:

http://www.amazon.com/The-000-Year-Expl ... +explosion

disclaimer: this is my brain w/out coffee
read at your own risk...

maybe solitary animals just have more 'brain-foam' like a bicycle helmet coz they bonk their head more looking around for danger that the moo'rs see by being in a herd.

brains got too big at one point and had to start folding and reorganizing for efficiency, so size isn't everything guys.
where have I heard that before?? hmmm well, nevermind I guess.

leave it to an aspie to see big brainz as a perk.
leave it to a boxer to see big muscles as a perk.
leave it to a shark to see 400 billion razor sharp teeth as a perk.

regardless if we're smarter, we are currently less effective as humans
 that sux.
this is true no matter how we "spin reality" looking for advantages

on the third hand- specialization in strong points and avoiding soft points is the essence of effectiveness and efficiency.

all humans (generally) are excellent at problem solving
and one thing we aspies are very, very good at: is cold, hard, reality
(meaning at least we'll eventually solve the right thing and not stick our heads in the sand, no matter how brightly colored it is)