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Essay / The meaning of adopting a “meerkat brain”
Humans live in society, we are always exposed to social relationships, we have family, we have friends, we interact with each other, but why are humans social beings? In his book Neuroscience of Human Relations, Louis Cozolino states: “Using evolution as an organizing principle, we begin by assuming that our social brains emerged during natural selection because being social improves survival. “So I chose an animal that can be compared to humans in terms of social and survival skills, and also to compare reactions when we face danger. This animal is the meerkat. In the wild animal world, meerkats are characterized by their resemblance to humans in what we call social behavior. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Meerkats in the wild are extremely social creatures, they live in crowds of up to 40 animals. And they live in a “matriarchal” society, where the oldest woman is the leader. They show affection by grooming each other. They guard the young of the dominant female and also protect their crowd from danger. Meerkats are social creatures and share so many behaviors with us that they can feel and express anger, confusion, fear, and because they are used to living in a community and this is important for their survival, when they are excluded from the group or crowd. they suffer and some of them do not survive. Biologists at the University of Cambridge have been studying meerkats for more than 10 years. Alex Thornton and Katherine McAuliffe, authors of a paper in the July 14 issue of Science, document how meerkats teach their young to handle the highly venomous scorpions that are one of their favorite meals. These researchers observed that meerkats teach young members of the group how to hunt. Dr. Thornton and McAuliffe focused on one of the skills that young meerkats must learn: how to eat a scorpion. But when baby meerkats are too young, older meerkats will give dead scorpions to the young ones and others will cause them to hunt the scorpion. But what they found interesting was that meerkats that caught live scorpions learned to hunt more quickly than those that caught dead scorpions. So from this we can say that meerkats have intellectual simulation and learning like humans do. Meerkats are known for their guarding stance. When the group forages or explores, one or two guards will stand on higher ground or a tree to scan the area while the others eat or explore. If the guard detects danger, it will send an alarm cry, which all the meerkats will understand. Under the leadership of the matriarch to which it belongs, then all will run for protection until the danger has passed. Meerkats face times of panic and anxiety, not only as individuals, but also as a group. Let's try to compare this with human behavior. People's lives are always under pressure, we are anxious, we worry about whether we will be on time, students are under pressure about their results, adults worry about money problems, Teenagers feel pressure about their appearance or social behavior. active, children feel anxious when exposed to a social environment...