MinuteEarth

Why Pets Have Surprisingly Small Brains

Listen Later

To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:

  • Domesticated animal: a species of animal bred by humans over generations to become nonreactive and gain characteristics suitable for life as a farm animal or pet
  • Tame animal: an individual animal raised in a way that it has become less dangerous and frightened of people
  • Feral animal: an animal that escapes from captivity or domestication (& regains some similar & some different characteristics compared to its pre-domesticated state)
  • "Fight or flight": an instinctive physiological response to a threatening situation that readies a creature to either to resist forcibly or escape
  • Limbic system: the brain’s “panic button” - a system of nerves and networks near the bottom of the cortex that controls basic emotions (e.g. fear, pleasure, anger) and drives (e.g. hunger, sex, dominance)
  • Telencephalon: the most developed and anterior part of the forebrain, consisting chiefly of the cerebral hemispheres, and the brain region that shrinks most in domesticated animals
  • Domestication: a sustained multigenerational, mutualistic relationship in which one species (e.g. humans) assumes a significant degree of influence over the reproduction and care of another species (e.g. cows) in order to secure a more predictable supply of a resource of interest (e.g. milk/meat/traction), and through which the domesticated organisms gain advantage over individuals that remain outside this relationship (e.g. aurochs, which went extinct), thereby benefitting and often increasing the fitness of both species involved


    • MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC

    https://neptunestudios.info

    If you like what we do, you can help us!

    - Become our patron: https://patreon.com/MinuteEarth  

    - Buy our merch: http://dftba.com/minuteearth  

    - Buy our book: https://minuteearth.com/books

    - Sign up to our newsletter: http://news.minuteearth.com  

    - Share with your friends and family

    - Leave us a comment (we read them!)


    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    ...more
    View all episodesView all episodes
    Download on the App Store
    MinuteEarthBy Minute Earth
    • 4.2
    • 4.2
    • 4.2
    • 4.2
    • 4.2

    4.2

    5 ratings

    More shows like MinuteEarth

    View all
    Planet Money by NPR

    Planet Money

    30,861 Listeners

    More or Less by BBC Radio 4

    More or Less

    891 Listeners

    The History Hour by BBC World Service

    The History Hour

    588 Listeners

    BrainStuff by iHeartPodcasts

    BrainStuff

    1,649 Listeners

    Gastropod by Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley

    Gastropod

    3,647 Listeners

    CrowdScience by BBC World Service

    CrowdScience

    482 Listeners

    Savor by iHeartPodcasts

    Savor

    1,498 Listeners

    Today, Explained by Vox

    Today, Explained

    10,286 Listeners

    The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week by Popular Science

    The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week

    2,171 Listeners

    FT News Briefing by Financial Times

    FT News Briefing

    668 Listeners

    Short Wave by NPR

    Short Wave

    6,569 Listeners

    Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford by Pushkin Industries

    Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford

    5,141 Listeners

    The World in Brief from The Economist by The Economist

    The World in Brief from The Economist

    1,074 Listeners

    The world, the universe and us by New Scientist

    The world, the universe and us

    119 Listeners

    Unexplainable by Vox

    Unexplainable

    2,307 Listeners