Environment

Nature Isolation and Stable Vices

By Rafe SagarinJuly 17, 2012 No Comments

I have a friend who is a businessman in southern California who is fascinated by applications of biological principles to society. In fact, he runs his very successful business based on his own interpretations of biological, physical and chemical properties (more on that in a later post). Though he prefers to remain anonymous, he occasionally sends me some fantastic linkages between the natural world and society. Here, I’m passing along an article he sent on “stable vices”, the strange behaviors sometimes exhibited by horses (as well as zoo animals) when held under certain (not necessarily inhumane) conditions:

http://www.usask.ca/wcvm/herdmed/applied-ethology/articles/flannigan.html

My friend raised the interesting point – “can you substitute humans for horses in this article?” In other words, is our increasing physical isolation from nature, and from one another, causing us to exhibit “stable vices”?

Published On: July 17, 2012

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Rafe Sagarin

Rafe Sagarin is a marine ecologist at the Institute of the Environment at University of Arizona. Rafe’s research includes everything from the historical and current sizes of intertidal gastropods (snails) to developing better ideas for national security, based on natural security systems. He is particularly interested in the Sea of Cortez, or Gulf of California, its ecological history, and the fascinating people past and present who have lived, worked, researched and journeyed there.