What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund

Andrew Huberman 0:00 Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Carolina Westlund. Dr. Carolina Westlund is an animal ethologist and expert in animal behavior. Dr. Westlund and I discuss the relationship between humans and domesticated animals, with a focus on the evidence-based protocols for optimizing the mental and physical health of our pets. Dr. Westlund explains the best way to interact with our animals. Now, we may assume that the way we pet our animals and exercise them and feed them makes them truly happy, but as she points out, many of the things that people assume turn out to be false when it comes to our pets and their fundamental drives. She teaches us the very basic but powerful things that we can do to satisfy those drives, both for the animals' sake, of course, and to better our relationship with them. We also discuss the unique neurological and physiological requirements of different dog breeds. It's a fascinating conversation that stems from their lineage from wolves and will tell you whether or not your particular breed, even if it's a mutt, should be exercised in a particular way, whether or not it needs additional forms of stimulation that you're not currently giving it, and so on. And because we both realize there are also cat owners out there too, we discuss the often misunderstood communication signals and social needs of cats. As you may know, there is a tremendous amount of debate out there about the best training and practices for taking care of our dogs and other animals, and so much of that is grounded in speculation and training outcomes, which of course are important. The conversation today with Dr. Westlund approaches animal health and welfare through the lens of ethology and the species that our pets evolved from to provide actionable protocols that are grounded in science and that you can implement right away to improve your pet's wellbeing. So if you're a pet owner, this episode is going to be of immense value to you. If you're not a pet owner, you'll still learn a ton about animal biology and psychology, including yours. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost-to-consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Carolina Westlund.

Andrew Huberman 2:19 Dr. Carolina Westlund, welcome.

Karolina Westlund 2:21 Thank you.

Andrew Huberman 2:22 I'm super excited for this conversation.

Karolina Westlund 2:24 Yeah. Me too.

Andrew Huberman 2:25 I can barely contain myself. I think we have so much to learn from animals, and I think we have so much to learn from our relationship to animals. I also believe that we have all sorts of ideas about what animals experience, what they think about us, the relationship that we think we have with them.

Karolina Westlund 2:42 Oh, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 2:44 Today, you're going to set the record straight.

Karolina Westlund 2:46 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 2:47 (laughs) To start off, could you just briefly list off some of the species of animals that your students have worked with and studied?

Karolina Westlund 2:55 Most of my students are, like, guardians of animals, so they're like dog owners or horse trainers, or they might be veterinarians. Some of them work, uh, in a zoo as a, a zookeeper or animal trainer, and so on. So, my students are really diverse, and their, their knowledge levels is also really diverse, from the sort of person who has their first dog at the age of 40 to somebody who's been training animals for 30 years.

Andrew Huberman 3:25 I grew up around a few horse people.

Karolina Westlund 3:27 Ah.

Andrew Huberman 3:28 Uh, my first girlfriend had a horse, and it was remarkable to me to see and to, um, get some just external understanding of the relationship between human and animal through observing that.

Karolina Westlund 3:43 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 3:43 I think of, of all the relationships between animals and humans, the horse-human relationship seems to be the one where there's the most amount of physical contact, right? You ride a horse. Um, uh, you learn to read the horse's, uh, intentions. It learns to read yours through the subtle, you know, squeezing of the legs or g- or kicking, or, or, uh, you know, not kicking hard, but you know, um, like just like a nudge of the heel, um, just a slight tug on the reins. It's really remarkable. Um, what does the horse experience the world as? We, I've, I've heard before that, you know, they, they sort of have these orbs of, of awareness around them and that they're paying attention to things on the horizon, that they're, um, clearly paying attention to things very up close to their body. But if you were to put us into the mind of a horse, uh, as best you can, how does the horse experience the world as an wild horse and with a rider on its back trying to steer it in a particular direction at a particular speed?

Karolina Westlund 4:47 As an ethologist, I, I tend to take a step back and look at sort of, uh, the, the species in general. And horses are prey animals. They are also herd animals. And I think that, um, w- we, as humans, we tend to not really understand how different animal species can be from ourselves in how they perceive the world and what's important to them. Uh, so horses being prey animals means that they're usually quite vigilant, so they're paying a lot of attention to the world. And they have this, the vis- their visual field is really big, so they can sort of see what's happening back there. The issue I have with how we raise and keep horses today, as an ethologist and sort of looking at how animals live their lives in the wild, is that we keep them in a way that sort of challenges them in several aspects of that. So we tend to separate them quite early from their mom, even though in the wild they would stay for a very long time. So I think some of the concerns that I have as an ethologist with how we raise horses is the, the, uh, the early weaning that we sometimes see and also single housing for a species that's...... um, an aggregating species, and also that they, uh, in the wild, they will forage up to 16 hours a day, and when we bring them into captivity, we typically feed them in the way that promotes very quick eating, you know, for just a fraction of that time. And that can then lead to problem behavior. So, so for me, I think horses are probably one of the captive animal species where, for many individual horses, the type of life that we're offering is really not

Karolina Westlund 6:36 that great.

Andrew Huberman 6:37 Interesting. Dogs, I know, are very, uh, smell-oriented.

Karolina Westlund 6:43 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 6:44 They experience the world, um, perhaps largely, but certainly, uh, quite a bit through their noses. Um, they can sense odor at a distance.

Karolina Westlund 6:55 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 6:55 And certainly up close, they like to get their nose right into things-

Karolina Westlund 6:57 Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 6:58 ... and, and, and sniff, get deep sniffs, um, and they're always collecting information with their noses. There's a huge range of dog breeds, and I think any discussion about dogs requires that we, uh, first kind of separate out some of the major differences, um, at least in terms of the, the purebred versions of them.

Karolina Westlund 7:16 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 7:17 When I see a Mastiff versus a Chihuahua, uh, versus a, like a Scenthound, uh, I'm looking at, to me, what appear to be very different animals. Is it true that certain dogs rely on their sense of smell far more than others, and if so, um, do the ones that rely on their, on their nose, uh, just not pay attention to what they're looking at unless y- you insist? I mean, the, the other version of this question is, how should we interact with dogs differently depending on what breed of dog they are?

Karolina Westlund 7:49 Yeah. So I think, I can't really answer the first part of that question. I don't know the extent to which, uh, different dog breeds, uh, their, their sensory capabilities, how, how much that differs between different dog breeds. However, um, how to interact with different dog breeds, I think that's really, a really interesting question, because so, during the process of domestication and, and in, in just the last couple of hundred years really, we started selecting for different capabilities in the different dog, um, dogs that, that we needed for different tasks essentially. So, if we look at a, a wolf hunting sequence, what they'll do is they'll do an orient response where they, they sniff and they, they're sort of looking for a, uh, prey, and then they will do some eyeing and stalking behavior, so they'll focus and they'll do stalking, and then they'll do chasing, and then they'll do a grab bite, a killing bite, then th- they'll dissect, and then they'll eat the prey. So, we have this whole predatory sequence that we see in wolves, and what happened during the process of domestication was that we sort of selected for certain aspects of that sequence in different breeds, so we'll have the, the sniffers, the hounds that are really great at... And I, I guess maybe that answers your first question. I think that probably all dog breeds enjoy sniffing. It's one of the big things that people are exploring a lot new now is, is nose work. But anyway, back to, to the, this process of domestication, that... And then we had the, um, uh, the, the pointers who are, who, who sort of... We have really, um, uh, selected for that behavior, you know, in, in the, in a litter of puppies, we would select the one that was m- the most prone to do that behavior, and so over generations, we really, um, sculpted that, that, uh, niche, so to speak. So a, a, a pointer will typically not proceed to the n- to the next behavior of the predatory sequence. And then we have like the Border Collies who might do some chasing, uh, or some, some, um, eyeing and stalking and a little bit of chase, but ideally no grabbing, and we have the pure chasers, the Greyhounds for instance, and then we have the, the grabbers, the, uh, the retrievers, and then we have the killers, um, um, the Terriers, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 10:22 People I- I'm assuming were anticipating you to say the Pit Bulls or the Dobermans, but, uh, anyone that's owned a Terrier-

Karolina Westlund 10:30 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 10:30 ... will know that they are great, uh, ratting dogs.

Karolina Westlund 10:33 They, they, they, they were bred to, to, uh, exterminate, uh, small like rodents and stuff.

Andrew Huberman 10:39 Yeah. Anyone who's seen a Westie, those cute little, uh, West Highland Terriers, the little white ones, they're real cute. If, if one of those hears or senses a rodent in the wall-

Karolina Westlund 10:48 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 10:49 ... I've seen one stalk one for several days. It will move along, we use to call it rat TV.

Karolina Westlund 10:54 Yeah. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 10:55 The, um, Westie will sense where... When and where the rodent is there with an absolute fixation-

Karolina Westlund 11:01 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 11:01 ... and if there's any way to get into that wall and kill that rodent-

Karolina Westlund 11:04 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 11:04 ... it's coming out with that rodent in its mouth.

Karolina Westlund 11:06 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 11:06 It's remarkable.

Karolina Westlund 11:07 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 11:07 The amount of dedication is just striking, and it's all about killing that-

Karolina Westlund 11:12 Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 11:12 ... rat, yeah.

Karolina Westlund 11:12 Yeah. So, so we, we systematically, intentionally bred for that-

Andrew Huberman 11:17 Mm-hmm.

Karolina Westlund 11:17 ... like a hundred, couple of hundred years ago. And then we have the, the ones that don't show much of the predatory sequence at all, that simply mostly just eat, uh, which are, are the, um... What do you call them? Uh, the ones that, that, um, help, uh, livestock guardians.

Andrew Huberman 11:34 Mm-hmm.

Karolina Westlund 11:35 They, they still like the sniffing.

Andrew Huberman 11:37 Mm-hmm.

Karolina Westlund 11:38 So they tend to retain the sniffing part, and then, uh, specific breeds will have one or perhaps a few of the behaviors from the be- from the hunting sequence. Um, so I think if we want to offer, uh, dogs a good, um, a good life, we should understand where they are on that scale, and also that the working dogs...... come, sort of, with this evolutionary backpack, their genetic backpack will, will, uh, encourage them to really want to do that work. And then we have the, also the, the sort of, um, I think they're sometimes referred to as toy breeds, the ones that, uh, lap dogs, who are not that interested in, in any of the, that working dog behavior. So, I think it's, we need to, uh, with regards to the different breeds, we need to really understand what purpose they were bred for,

Karolina Westlund 12:42 I think.

Andrew Huberman 12:43 I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Our Place. Our Place makes my favorite pots, pans, and other cookware. Surprisingly toxic compounds, such as PFASs or forever chemicals, are still found in 80% of non-stick pans, as well as utensils, appliances, and countless other kitchen products. As I've discussed before in this podcast, these PFASs or forever chemicals, like Teflon, have been linked to major health issues, such as hormone disruption, gut microbiome disruption, fertility issues, and many other health problems. So, it's really important to try and avoid them. This is why I'm a huge fan of Our Place. Our Place products are made with the highest quality materials and are all completely PFAS and toxin free. I especially love their Titanium Always Pan Pro. It's the first non-stick pan made with zero chemicals and zero coating. Instead, it uses pure titanium. This means it has no harmful forever chemicals and does not degrade or lose its non-stick effect over time. It's also beautiful to look at. I cook eggs in my Titanium Always Pan Pro almost every morning. The design allows for the eggs to cook perfectly without sticking to the pan. I also cook burgers and steaks in it, and it puts a really nice sear on the meat. But again, nothing sticks to it, so it's really easy to clean, and it's even dishwasher safe. I love it, and I basically use it constantly. Our Place now has a full line of Titanium Pro cookware that uses its first of its kind titanium non-stick technology. So, if you're looking for non-toxic, long-lasting pots and pans, go to FromOurPlace.com/Huberman and use the code Huberman at checkout. Right now, Our Place is having their biggest sale of the season. You can get up to 30% off all products now through May 12th, 2025. With 100-day risk-free trial, free shipping, and free returns, you can try Our Place with zero risk and see why more than one million people have made the switch to Our Place kitchenware. Again, that's FromOurPlace.com/Huberman to get up to 30% off. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each and every night. Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct, and that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees. Eight Sleep automatically regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your unique needs. Now, I find that extremely useful, because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night, and warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep, and I know that because Eight Sleep has a great sleep tracker that tells me how well I've slept and the types of sleep that I'm getting throughout the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep. Their latest model, the Pod 4 Ultra, also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees in order to improve your airflow and stop you from snoring. If you decide to try Eight Sleep, you have 30 days to try it at home. And you can return it if you don't like it, no questions asked, but I'm sure that you'll love it. Go to EightSleep.com/Huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and the UAE. Again, that's EightSleep.com/Huberman to save up to $350 off your

Andrew Huberman 16:09 Pod 4 Ultra. That's a beautiful and, to me, completely novel description of the breakdown of different breeds.

Karolina Westlund 16:16 Oh.

Andrew Huberman 16:16 Um, not according to the dosing of wolf versus mastiff genes, which is what some of the more reductionist, um, research papers on this really do. They have these charts. Uh, we'll provide a link to one that was published in Science Magazine about 10 years back that had this, sort of, dosing of mastiff, um, genes versus, uh, wolf genes. And, um, what you just described beautifully breaks down what one observes if you go to a dog park or the beach.

Karolina Westlund 16:46 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 16:46 My bulldog mastiff, Costello, he was, he was a mudded bulldog, so I always say, um, you know, no underbite. So it wasn't this or the outhouse out, it was this, right? So, uh, a proper bulldog, um, before they inbred them so much-

Karolina Westlund 16:59 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 16:59 ... that they have the underbite and the short snout, the brachycephalic, the breathing issues.

Karolina Westlund 17:03 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 17:04 But he, um, neither stalked nor, uh, chased.

Karolina Westlund 17:10 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 17:10 Nor was he interested in killing anything. He didn't have that, um, sense to try and harm.

Karolina Westlund 17:16 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 17:16 Uh, but he certainly liked to consume.

Karolina Westlund 17:18 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 17:18 So, he was at the end of that behavioral description.

Karolina Westlund 17:20 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 17:21 Um, and I think-

Karolina Westlund 17:22 And what, what were they bred for?

Andrew Huberman 17:23 So, um, I'll try and not take up too much time on this one.

Karolina Westlund 17:27 Okay.

Andrew Huberman 17:27 Uh, 'cause I wanna learn from you. The original bulldog line-

Karolina Westlund 17:30 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 17:31 ... um, was a cross between a mastiff, uh, something like a mastiff.

Karolina Westlund 17:35 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 17:35 A strong, large, uh, high pain tolerance.

Karolina Westlund 17:39 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 17:39 Um, and a pug, short snout.

Karolina Westlund 17:43 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 17:43 And the, the gene cross there, and obviously the dog geneticists weren't thinking about specific genes, they were thinking about traits.

Karolina Westlund 17:48 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 17:48 Was the short snout, um, was great for what's called bull baiting, because that short snout provides a, the kind of lever that when they bite down onto the nose of a bull, which is what they were used for, it was a pre- a cruel practice, um, very hard to shake them loose. The bull could shake them, and they're not gonna shake loose. Just think about trying to pick something up with long tongs.

Karolina Westlund 18:06 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 18:07 Right? The physics of this versus a, a clamp.

Karolina Westlund 18:09 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 18:09 Right? Like a C-clamp.

Karolina Westlund 18:10 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 18:11 Um, the mutation that takes the pain receptors out of the face, or reduces them, um, is close by another gene that is involved in generating the, the tensile nature of the skin. So, this is why they have the jowls, the folds.

Karolina Westlund 18:26 Oh, wow.

Andrew Huberman 18:26 And you can, I don't suggest anyone do this, but Costello, I'll just give an example, so- sometimes, unfortunately, would, like, get a fish hook through his jowl when he was playing at the ocean or something.

Karolina Westlund 18:35 Oh.

Andrew Huberman 18:36 And he'd come up to me, bleeding, smiling, you know, basically, "You have to take this thing out." Um-

Karolina Westlund 18:41 So, so his pain tolerance was quite high, yeah?

Andrew Huberman 18:43 Pain tolerance is very high in the front-

Karolina Westlund 18:45 Oh.

Andrew Huberman 18:45 ... of the animal, in the face.

Karolina Westlund 18:47 Oh.

Andrew Huberman 18:47 And toward the rear of the animal, you touch his back toe and it's, you know, the, the, so they have a gradient of pain receptors that runs high density in the back, low density in the front.

Karolina Westlund 18:54 Oh.

Andrew Huberman 18:55 So, they were bred for bull baiting.

Karolina Westlund 18:56 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 18:57 And the original line, um, has been bred out. It's, uh, people who care about the bulldog breed, um, and bringing some more, uh, humane breeding practices-

Karolina Westlund 19:07 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 19:07 ... to the bulldog, 'cause it's a pretty brutal breed now-

Karolina Westlund 19:09 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 19:10 ... um, have tried to re- re-establish the original line, which again, were elbows back, no, uh, no strong underbite.

Karolina Westlund 19:16 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 19:17 Um, as opposed to what you see now. Uh, so that's the sort of brief history on, on the bulldog. Um, they have to be born by Cesarean 'cause-

Karolina Westlund 19:24 Oh, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 19:24 ... big shoulders, small hips. Anyway, um, the, uh, the interesting thing about the bulldog, I always said, and this will take us back to behavior, was the contract that I felt I had with my bulldog was one of he would protect me to the death. You do notice that any time they hear a noise or anything, they're hypervigilant. Um, but if there's no impending threat, total relaxation.

Karolina Westlund 19:50 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 19:51 The most efficient use of energy of any-

Karolina Westlund 19:53 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 19:53 ... species.

Karolina Westlund 19:54 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 19:54 So basically, it was, "I'll die for you, Andrew, but unless your life is in danger-"

Karolina Westlund 19:59 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 19:59 "... I'm not gonna do anything."

Karolina Westlund 20:00 (laughs) Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 20:01 So, so maybe we could talk about temperament in dogs.

Karolina Westlund 20:03 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 20:04 And how they experience their emotional life.

Karolina Westlund 20:07 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 20:08 It, I don't know if we can make general statements about this, but you, you've spent a lot of your, uh, time, um, thinking about the emotional life of

Andrew Huberman 20:16 animals.

Karolina Westlund 20:17 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 20:17 What does a dog need in order to feel calm and safe?

Karolina Westlund 20:22 Great question. Um, yeah. So, in order to feel calm and safe, um, I think we, perhaps we should go to the core affect space.

Andrew Huberman 20:37 Okay.

Karolina Westlund 20:37 Which I think is one of the three emotional models that I find very, very useful in understanding, uh, providing like, a, a good environment for animals so that they can thrive, really. So, the core affect space is, is one way of, of depicting or conceptualizing emotions where we have, like, valence on the X axis, so how pleasant or unpleasant something is, and we have arousal on the Y axis. So, what you're asking is how can we make animals, and I'm not just, not just dogs, but any species, how can we put them in quadrant two of that core affect space, essentially? So, uh, low arousal and pleasant, so where they're relaxed and they're feeling safe and they're, they're sort of engaging socially with others and being sort of at ease, if you will. So, how do we get there? And I think that some of the things to consider is in the absence of negative emotions. So, if, again, if we're in the core affect space, in the, in the quadrant four, with the high arousal, unpleasant states, we'll find things like fear, uh, aggression. So, helping reduce that will sort of automatically help animals move to the right in the matrix. And in the lower quadrant three, with the unpleasant low arousal state, where animals tend to end up if they're sort of bored or depressed, is engaging them, providing an environment that's stimulating that they can sort of do interesting things and, to help them move into the, uh, to the right side of the core affect space. Um, and also, uh, to the, to the top, in that, um, the quadrant one is the high arousal, pleasant state, but that, that would be, like, seeking or foraging behavior, exploration, play, sex. Um, but as to your question, how do we get into, uh, quadrant two with, with feeling safe and sort of that warm, fuzzy feeling? Um, so some of the things to do might be to, uh, if the animal enjoys it, coming from you, and they often have to know you in order to really appreciate it, is like, tactile stimulation, so petting, essentially. Something that might interfere is that we primates, we humans are primates and we're huggers. We tend to g- sort of go like this when we want to interact with an animal that we really like. And to many animals, this is restraint and really scary. Uh, and so, uh, the type of body contact, well, that we offer to animals that we should consider whether they really enjoy it or not, whether they tolerate it or enjoy it. And one way of doing that is to offer a consent test. So, you might, you might offer your hand and scratch a little bit, ideally in a place that the animal really enjoys. So, most dogs don't enjoy having a hand on top of their head, but rather perhaps here.

Andrew Huberman 23:45 On their neck.

Karolina Westlund 23:46 Or, or, or, or the upper chest, sort of.

Andrew Huberman 23:48 Mm-hmm.

Karolina Westlund 23:48 Yeah. So, you might do that for a few seconds, and then you remove your hand to see does the animal enjoy this and will they then reinitiate that contact or not? Or will they move away? And I have, I have this issue with my cat now that he is not very... (laughs) He doesn't all- uh, sort of enjoy petting as much as I do petting him. So, I have to be really mindful that I, I really offer him the chance to say, "No, thanks."

Andrew Huberman 24:15 So we, um, might consider just touching the animal as a, you're calling it a consent test, like, as a-

Karolina Westlund 24:20 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 24:20 ... as a test. And then if they move toward you, then, uh, it w- what is the pattern of, of, uh, tactile stimulation that's, that dogs like? I've been reading up on this a little bit, and somebody, um, ran a, an experiment that I think is kind of interesting, uh, describing the differences between rates of petting, and it basically, the conclusion was that, uh, essentially they claim that all dogs, um, are averse to very rapid touch.

Karolina Westlund 24:46 Oh.

Andrew Huberman 24:47 And but that people tend to pat quickly, um, pet quickly.

Karolina Westlund 24:50 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 24:50 And they, they showed a beautiful example of s- just if one just deliberately strokes the animal very slowly-

Karolina Westlund 24:57 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 24:58 ... the animal's, uh, eyelids just start to hood.

Karolina Westlund 25:01 Okay, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 25:01 And you basically just, um, diffuse the tension very quickly.

Karolina Westlund 25:05 Yeah. Interesting.

Andrew Huberman 25:05 Which I f- I think is interesting that, you know, as humans we think, "Oh, we wanna pat the dog on its head," and for some reason we associate patting with fast patting.

Karolina Westlund 25:13 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 25:13 Or petting as a, as a quick process.

Karolina Westlund 25:16 Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 25:16 You're gonna scratch and pet this animal, where it very well could be that all the dogs out there are just dying for some really nice slow strokes.

Karolina Westlund 25:23 Yeah, and I also think that that nice slow stroke, if you're sort of in a calm, emotional state yourself, then we might tap into another interesting, uh, emotion theory, which is the polyvagal theory, and this concept of co-regulation. So if you're really calm and relaxed, then you're sort of sending out these cues, these, um, uh, subtle cues that other individuals are reading and picking up on. And it seems that we do that with vis-à-vis also our dogs, and, uh, certainly also horses it seems. So that just being calm and relaxed yourself can really help relax the dog. And what you say about the fast petting or patting really makes sense to me. I know there is one study in horses that show that, that if you pat a horse, many horses find that aversive. So, in other words, it's something that they'll work to avoid, and yet that is often how we reinfor- how we try to reward them when they do something that we want. They do enjoy wither scratching. So back at the nape of the, um, the mane, if you scratch them there, they'll typically enjoy that. But I would say that, that, um, ch- different animals, different individuals will have these individual preferences, and just trying to see what they like. And perhaps also if you're, if you're offering your hands like this, they might even scoot around to show you which body part they want scratched once they learn this, this, the, the rules of that communication.

Andrew Huberman 27:00 I feel like dogs want the part of their body scratched that, uh, they can't access on their own.

Karolina Westlund 27:06 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 27:07 Like, I'm yet-

Karolina Westlund 27:07 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 27:07 ... to meet a dog that doesn't like being scratched on its rump.

Karolina Westlund 27:12 Bum scratching is a big thing for many animals, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 27:14 Yeah.

Karolina Westlund 27:14 Horses too.

Andrew Huberman 27:14 Like just, like, the, like, the top side of their-

Karolina Westlund 27:17 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 27:17 ... back leg.

Karolina Westlund 27:18 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 27:18 Right? Like right there.

Karolina Westlund 27:20 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 27:20 It's gotta feel so good-

Karolina Westlund 27:21 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 27:21 ... because they can't get to that.

Karolina Westlund 27:22 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 27:23 Um, as well as underneath their rear leg.

Karolina Westlund 27:27 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 27:28 Right? Like just kind of in the crook of their rear leg, um, with that, that soft skin there.

Karolina Westlund 27:33 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 27:34 Right? That, um, but, you know, having interacted with dogs that were more skittish versus more calm-

Karolina Westlund 27:40 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 27:41 ... um, I totally agree that different animals, regardless of breed, um, just have a completely different rel- relationship to, to touch.

Karolina Westlund 27:51 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 27:51 And, and how quickly they want

Andrew Huberman 27:53 to interact. I've heard, and I don't know if it's true, that for dogs space is a big thing. Um, I don't know if this is true. I'm sure, uh, someone will, um, refute this. But the idea that, you know, if your dog runs up to you when you walk in, or to, you know, a dog runs up to you and it's a new dog you're just meeting and they touch you or they jump up on your shin, that there's a, that it's their attempt to dominate you. Like, "This is my space. I'm controlling you." That, because you wouldn't necessarily walk up to a dog that you just met and just get right in their space without kind of them approaching you as well. What are your thoughts on this whole dominant-submission thing on the basis of touch and space?

Karolina Westlund 28:31 That's like Pandora's box there, right there. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 28:33 Great. I don't have any st- uh, you know, stake in this. I just would like to learn and I would like people to learn so that they can have, uh, better interactions with-

Karolina Westlund 28:40 Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 28:40 ... with and for animals.

Karolina Westlund 28:41 Sure.

Andrew Huberman 28:42 Yeah.

Karolina Westlund 28:42 Yeah, so first of all, I think that, that actually, we often do walk up to strange dogs that we never b- met before. We're like, "Hi. Can I pet him?" And then we start patting on, on top of the-

Andrew Huberman 28:52 Guilty.

Karolina Westlund 28:52 ... animal's head.

Andrew Huberman 28:53 Guilty.

Karolina Westlund 28:53 So I think that we do do that.

Andrew Huberman 28:54 Mm-hmm.

Karolina Westlund 28:55 And then this whole discussion about dominance is really interesting, because as an ethologist how we define dominance is completely different from how most people (laughs) define it. And I actually, I looked into the encyclopedia to see how is, um, dominance defined there, and I find that there's two, like two lines of that definition. So one is the ethological definition of dominance, and one is the sociological definition of dominance. And I think that what we're doing often is that we're misus- we're, we're using the sociological definition on animals, um, in a way that's, I think, unfortunate, 'cause the ethological definition is about priority of access to resources. Here's a resource. Here's, like, five individuals coming up to it. There's just one there. The dominant individual will have priority of access to that resource. The others simply have to wait or look elsewhere.

Andrew Huberman 29:53 Mm-hmm.

Karolina Westlund 29:54 Uh, and this reduces the risk of sort of confrontation, and aggression, and all the costs associated with that. So it's, it's just, it's normal that animals who hang out together, who are, like, in a stable social group, will organize or, or have some sort of, uh, dominance hierarchy within them that, that allows this to take place to reduce the risk, th- the risk of aggression. Uh, it tends to become exacerbated in captivity.... compared to, uh, in, in, wild, uh, contexts because then the animals can disperse.

Andrew Huberman 30:27 Mm-hmm.

Karolina Westlund 30:27 And there's like, there's a resource over there that they can go and get instead. But when we house them, uh, w- and we're offering, uh, specifically we're offering, like, here's, you have two cats or three cats and now it's here, here's the food, you're, you're putting the animals in conflict because cats are solitary hunters. So they actually do pref- if you have several cats, you should feed them s- in, uh, sort of separate locations to reduce that sort of heightened arousal that goes with that type of feeding.

Andrew Huberman 30:59 Okay. There's dominance among dogs, or among dogs and other non-human animals. I'm thinking in terms of the relationship between human and dog.

Karolina Westlund 31:08 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 31:08 Um, and touch and space.

Karolina Westlund 31:10 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 31:10 You know, I've heard that, um, if the dog touches you, it thinks it owns you. I've heard that if you move into a space, um, that the dog is and it backs away, then it's, uh, you know, it thinks of you as dominant. Um, I've also heard that if the dog moves into your space very quickly, that it sees itself as kind of the leader in this, uh, relationship. There are a lot of theories out there about this, and I'm realizing that all these theories about animals, um, must be very contentious because, um, they lack the language to tell us what we want to know.

Karolina Westlund 31:43 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 31:44 And so we're, we're always sort of guessing when we're doing ethology.

Karolina Westlund 31:46 I, I would not label any of those situations that you described as a dominance interaction, actually.

Andrew Huberman 31:51 Hm.

Karolina Westlund 31:51 I would rather, if the dog backs away when you confront them, I would sort of s- rather label that as perhaps a fearful reaction.

Andrew Huberman 31:58 Mm-hmm.

Karolina Westlund 31:59 Uh, not submissive as in giving you priority of access to a resource.

Andrew Huberman 32:04 Mm-hmm.

Karolina Westlund 32:04 Typically, feral dogs in the wild will form linear dominance hierarchies with regards to a- the access to resources. And that, that might shift depending on what the resource is. So it's not like it's, is written in stone or anything. So it's, it's like fluid and variable, but there's still typically some sort of like, uh, hierarchy when it comes to the priority of access to resources. Then we have another social role, which is the l- role as a leader, and when I as an ethologist say leader, I mean the one that leads, that, that sort of work, walks first in line from one, um, location to another. I like to take the example of, of elephants, that they, when they migrate, it's typically one of the, the old females, the matriarch who leads the way. She's the leader, so she'll help them find... She knows where to go, essentially. Um, and there's other social roles as well. There might be the controller, who is the animal who tends to initiate, um, a change in activity. So we see this in cows, for instance, that all the cows are standing up and they're, they're grazing, and then one cow, the controller, lies down and everybody lie, else lies down also.

Andrew Huberman 33:25 Wow.

Karolina Westlund 33:25 And they start ruminating. They will often synchronize their behavior, but they will follow... It's not that one individual is, is sort of imposing on the others, but rather they do that and the others follow suit.

Andrew Huberman 33:38 Interesting.

Karolina Westlund 33:39 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 33:39 Um, I have heard this, that, uh, when you walk your dog, that your dog should be next to you or behind you. Uh, very few dog owners actually walk with their dog behind them.

Karolina Westlund 33:50 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 33:50 Just, I live in an area that is, you know, uh, frequented by dogs and, and, and, uh, and owners. Um, it's interesting to kind of interpret that as a question, which is if the dog walks in front, does it mean that it somehow is the leader? I mean, uh, are humans just completely wrong about all this stuff?

Karolina Westlund 34:11 I, I think so.

Andrew Huberman 34:12 Great.

Karolina Westlund 34:12 Yeah. I think that we, we carry a lot of... And actually, I, we haven't mentioned this, I think, but I, I have very little practical experience about dogs, with dogs. I haven't lived with dogs, I haven't trained dogs. But many of my students train dogs, and I help them. So, uh, b- but that also means that I don't carry any of these sort of assumptions that you're, you're supposed to have your dog behind you or beside you, that if you don't, then... So, um, which means that I can, I can look at that type of statement and go, "Really?" (laughs) Uh, because I think that, that there's a lot of learning occurring, of course, that you teach the dog that if you stay at my side or behind me, then, uh, you know, there won't be any unpleasantness. But if you pull ahead, I'm gonna yank you back. So there'll be an unpleasant, um, uh, consequence to the pulling behavior whi- which will then influence the animal's choice in staying next to you. But I think we very often, what we label as dominance can very often be just, if we just remove that label and we look at the animal's behavior, we can, we can explain it in other terms. And again, I would not use... Uh, for me, dominance, as an ethologist, has to do the pri- with the priority of access to resources.

Andrew Huberman 35:28 So along the lines of priority of access to resources, when I got my puppy, I was taught in the dog training course that I took with him, uh, that I should eat and then he should eat. Um, or that we could eat alongside one another different food, although I confess I often fed him steak.

Karolina Westlund 35:52 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 35:52 Um, if it was a appropriate food for a bulldog, I fed it to him. Uh, it, as opposed to letting him eat before me because of this access to resources thing.

Karolina Westlund 36:00 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 36:01 Is there any truth to that? This is taught in a lot of, uh, dog/owner training.

Karolina Westlund 36:04 I...

Andrew Huberman 36:04 'Cause a lot of dog training is actually owner, owner training.

Karolina Westlund 36:07 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure.

Andrew Huberman 36:08 Right? Of course.

Karolina Westlund 36:08 I've, I mean, y- you have to set up the situation to work for you and the animal, but again, I would not frame that in terms of, of, uh, dominance. Dogs, uh, form relationships with us, but as far as I know, from the ethological perspective, we have no role in a dominance hierarchy among dogs. They know that we are different. And they will respond, they will learn to expect that if a...... in this context, that will happen, in that context, that will happen. And so we can often reframe that, uh, from, in a different learning system than, than dominance.

Andrew Huberman 36:46 That's a novel perspective, because I think that so much of what's out there in terms of dog/owner training is really about, um, not so much dominance, but really trying to establish a relationship where it's clear that you're the caretaker, to quote-unquote make them feel safe, um, so that their job is very clear, so they don't feel the anxiety of needing to perform roles that perhaps are yours. It's a lot like what you hear when you hear about parent-child-

Karolina Westlund 37:11 Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 37:11 ... training basically. (laughs)

Karolina Westlund 37:12 Yeah,

Karolina Westlund 37:13 yeah.

Andrew Huberman 37:13 Um, so maybe given the, the sort of pattern of, of your answers over the last couple of questions, I, I should ask the question, um, which is a really straightforward one, which is, how do you think about animals? Like, like, what is your view of animals when you, when you think about them? I know you're interested in their welfare and improving their wellbeing-

Karolina Westlund 37:34 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 37:34 ... and, um, conditions, but h- how do you ... Like, when you see, uh, an animal, it, um, most people say, "Okay, well, that's a dog, that's a horse, that's a parrot. Um, can I interact with it? Maybe I don't want to, or maybe I have a phobia." Who knows?

Karolina Westlund 37:47 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 37:47 But how do you think about animals? Like, what, what's driving this inquiry in terms of their, their emotional and their cognitive life?

Karolina Westlund 37:54 First of all, I think that we humans are also an animal species. And that we, we, I, we, we tend to sort of put ourselves on a pedestal in thinking that we, we are one, and then animals are like this, this, the other, uh, as if it were, uh, homogeneous, which is, it really isn't. So, so each animal species have their own adapt- we have our own adaptations, and each animal, all, all the other animal species that we surround ourselves with will, with, do as well. So, um, I don't know if that really answers your question. But, uh, I tend to... So, the work I do is to sort of try to help animals live better lives with humans, and that very often starts with understanding how that animal species would live in the wild and the type of, of life that they have, whether they're a predator, whether they're a prey animal species, uh, how they process the world, the, the type of information that they take in. Um, so for instance, we might see a dog who's wagging its tail, and we might think that it's only happy dogs that wag their tails, but actually, tail-wagging is seen in many different contexts. Uh, and we might think of it as a visual communication thing. But actually, it could be that they're disbursing scent. That the tail wag will sort of ... That scent will waft over to you so you can, uh, take in information about my current emotional state.

Andrew Huberman 39:29 They definitely have scent glands back there.

Karolina Westlund 39:31 Oh, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 39:31 Yeah. Interesting. So, can we interpret dog wags of different types?

Karolina Westlund 39:35 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 39:35 Is there a, is there a way to do that?

Karolina Westlund 39:36 So, so one very interesting thing is that the dog wagging with a predominant left wag tend-

Andrew Huberman 39:43 Left for the dog?

Karolina Westlund 39:44 Left for the dog, so he's-

Andrew Huberman 39:45 Mm-hmm.

Karolina Westlund 39:45 ... wagging on the left-hand side of his body-

Andrew Huberman 39:47 Mm-hmm.

Karolina Westlund 39:48 ... tends to be associated with negative emotional states, and on the right tends to be associated with positive emotional states. Uh, and, and the same, cats tend to look at the world from the n- the left when in a negative emotional state-

Andrew Huberman 40:04 So-

Karolina Westlund 40:04 ... and from the right when in a positive emotional state.

Andrew Huberman 40:07 So, uh, looking from the left, meaning the left eye slightly forward-

Karolina Westlund 40:11 Yeah, so, so taking-

Andrew Huberman 40:11 ... uh, the head tilted, so the right eye-

Karolina Westlund 40:13 So taking in that information with this eye.

Andrew Huberman 40:15 So, okay, so for the-

Karolina Westlund 40:15 If you're scary, I'm gonna look at you.

Andrew Huberman 40:16 Some people are just listening, they're not watching-

Karolina Westlund 40:18 Okay. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 40:18 ... so they can't see this. So, what, um, what Karolina is describing is if the, the head is turned slightly to the side, so the left eye is forward-

Karolina Westlund 40:25 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 40:26 ... that's a, um, a negative-

Karolina Westlund 40:27 So they're looking at the stimulus-

Andrew Huberman 40:28 Mm-hmm.

Karolina Westlund 40:29 ... with their left eye-

Andrew Huberman 40:30 Mm-hmm.

Karolina Westlund 40:30 ... if that stimulus is fear-inducing.

Andrew Huberman 40:32 And, and the opposite to the right-hand side-

Karolina Westlund 40:35 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 40:35 ... if it's, um, more attractive-

Karolina Westlund 40:38 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 40:38 ... to them, or, uh-

Karolina Westlund 40:38 Yeah. So this is lateralized.

Andrew Huberman 40:40 C- interesting. And then the tail wag, you said a dog wagging on the left-hand side, more negative.

Karolina Westlund 40:45 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 40:45 Right-hand side-

Karolina Westlund 40:46 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 40:46 ... uh, more positive. What about, uh, full sweeps?

Karolina Westlund 40:48 Yeah, full sweeps, uh, and I, I don't know the details here, but certainly, uh, the type of tail wag, whether it's sort of very low and fast or whether it's high and, and sort of stiff will communicate different emotional states.

Andrew Huberman 41:03 Do you think that over time, we learn these signals without realizing that we learned these signals?

Karolina Westlund 41:08 Yes, absolutely.

Andrew Huberman 41:09 Because we associate it with our dog being in a particular-

Karolina Westlund 41:11 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 41:12 ... circumstance or behaving-

Karolina Westlund 41:13 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 41:13 ... in a certain way.

Karolina Westlund 41:14 So studies have shown that, that we humans are actually, um, we learn to read dogs by exposure, even passive exposure, just b- living in an environment. And apparently, it, it's if we live in a culture where dogs live close with humans, we get better in reading dogs, and than in cultures where dogs don't interact that much with humans. Um, so there's that. And there's also this, the issue that we are typically better at reading gross body language than we are at reading facial expressions. Apparently one of the reasons being that dogs move different facial muscles when they make emotional facial expressions. They move different muscles than what humans do.

Andrew Huberman 42:02 What can you tell us about the facial expressions of dogs?

Karolina Westlund 42:05 Well, there's been some studies in the last couple of years that have looked at which muscles are moving-

Andrew Huberman 42:11 Mm-hmm.

Karolina Westlund 42:11 ... when, in, in which contexts.

Andrew Huberman 42:14 Mm-hmm.

Karolina Westlund 42:14 So, uh, so they'll, they'll expose the dog to different types of stimuli and they'll look at, they'll film the dog and look at what, what muscles are twitching, where, where is, where is the face moving in response to the stimuli. So those types of, of studies have found that, that, you know, w- when you, when a dog is exposed to, let's say, p-... thunder or firework sounds, they will show a, a certain facial configuration. When, uh, their owner returns home after not being seen for several hours, they will show a different facial con- configuration and so on. So it, it seems that they do show facial expressions, it's just that some of those facial expressions are the, it's not the same muscles that we show in the corresponding emotional state. So that would, I think, bias us to misreading dogs' facial expressions, uh, from that perspective. But then again, if we live with dogs, we start... we, we won't observe just the facial expression, we will observe the entire dog. And we're often better off reading their body language than we are reading their facial expression. Even though I think that studies also show that the face is

Karolina Westlund 43:24 where we look first.

Andrew Huberman 43:26 Which behaviors in dogs, uh, are maintained from interactions with other dogs, um, when they interact with humans? For instance, um, if, uh, one is gonna, like, take a dog out on a walk and it's familiar with the sound of the leash coming off the, the hook or something like that, it's not uncommon for a dog to go into that long, full, um, uh, you know, front leg stretch that people call down dog, you know, in yoga.

Karolina Westlund 43:55 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 43:55 So, uh, um, and some people will say that's a kind of remnant of the puppy play, um, kind of stance. Again, people say this stuff. People are often self-appointed dog experts.

Karolina Westlund 44:07 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 44:07 This is kind of interesting, like, and the, and I've learned this from researching it online, that the, the various camps of, of, quote unquote, "dog experts"-

Karolina Westlund 44:15 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 44:15 ... disagree vehemently with each other.

Karolina Westlund 44:17 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm, oh, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 44:17 I mean, they, they write to me saying, you know, "They're evil."

Karolina Westlund 44:21 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 44:21 "This person is cruel." You know, they, they blame each other of animal cruelty-

Karolina Westlund 44:25 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 44:25 ... for different training, um, different training tools.

Karolina Westlund 44:28 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 44:28 We'll talk about that a little bit later.

Karolina Westlund 44:29 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 44:29 But, um, dogs will do this, uh, down dog type, uh, movement-

Karolina Westlund 44:35 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 44:35 ... whatever it means, with other dogs, and they'll do it with humans.

Karolina Westlund 44:38 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 44:38 Do you think it means the same thing in those two different contexts?

Karolina Westlund 44:42 Most probably does. That play bow that you're describing is, uh, what's referred to as a meta-signal for play. So, it's typically shown in a play context, and I haven't seen it described, but then again, I'm not a dog owner, uh, but I haven't des- seen it described in, in the context of, "Let's go for a walk." But certainly, in the play context, um, as far as I know, dogs play a bit differently with humans than they do with other dogs, but they do enjoy playing with humans. Uh, and, and sometimes I think we humans have a hard time knowing whether what we're seeing is play or aggression, because there will be elements from the aggressive repertoire within a play bow. But typically what we can do then is look for what's referred to as MARS, M-A-R-S. So M being the meta-signals, so those play bows, or in other species, it will be other behaviors that are sort of indicating that I wanna play. Uh, I know chimpanzees have like 30 or 50 different meta signals for play. Um, M-A, A is for activity shift, so we'll see different behaviors. They might be chasing, they might be pouncing, they might be wrestling, biting each other, uh, but you'll see these activity shifts, and it's not in the same order as it would be if they were truly fighting. Uh, M-A-R, R is for role reversals. So you'll see that the, the dog, uh, the dogs, if they're of different sizes or different, um, sort of stamina or how big they are or how, um, competent fighters they are, would be that they'll take turns at winning and losing.

Andrew Huberman 46:25 Yeah, I've seen that.

Karolina Westlund 46:26 Yeah, because they, it's not fun playing if you lose all the time. So in order to keep playing, the bigger dog needs to lose sometimes. So they-

Andrew Huberman 46:33 Hmm.

Karolina Westlund 46:34 ... they need to, in order to, to keep this interaction going, uh, that's the way to do that. And the last one, S is self-handicap. So the larger dog will, will self-handicap themselves. You might see them doing a tug of war, and the large do- large dog is just standing there and holding the thing, and the small dog is, like, pulling and, and really trying to get the thing, and the big dog is just standing there doing nothing. But then if a human takes over the toy and starts pulling, then the big dog will engage and start showing more of his strength and, and, uh, escalate that behavior.

Andrew Huberman 47:06 That's a beautiful thing when you see animals adjusting their level of a kind of vigor in play-

Karolina Westlund 47:10 Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 47:11 ... so that the play can continue.

Karolina Westlund 47:12 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 47:13 And it's very sweet. I mean, it, it speaks to a bigger question, which is, uh, do dogs have empathy?

Karolina Westlund 47:19 Oh, I think so. Absolutely. I can't say I've, I've seen any studies on it, but, but just, uh, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 47:27 I mean, I think-

Karolina Westlund 47:27 I think so.

Andrew Huberman 47:28 ... many, uh, dog owners are familiar with when, uh, we're grieving-

Karolina Westlund 47:32 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 47:32 ... um, a dog will often come closer as opposed to moving further away. Um, I mean, I've seen some incredible moments, you know-

Karolina Westlund 47:41 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 47:42 ... we interpret these things, right? We anthropomorphize.

Karolina Westlund 47:44 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, sure.

Andrew Huberman 47:44 But I had someone in my home years ago who was, was grieving a, a f- a death in her family, and, uh, Costello came in and, you know, put a paw on her knee, and it's hard to not interpret that-

Karolina Westlund 47:55 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 47:55 ... um, as a, a meaningful moment-

Karolina Westlund 47:57 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 47:57 ... of empathy. And who knows what he was ex- experiencing. Uh, maybe he was experiencing distress for all I know, but, but it, the, the more, uh, pleasant interpretation is that he wanted to extend comfort.

Karolina Westlund 48:08 I think it makes sense from the evolutionary perspective that social animals who live in a co- cohesive social group, uh, are good at reading each other's, uh, emotional state, and also, uh, good at sort of trying to buffer negative emotions if, if it's possible to do that. And so I, I would expect it with the, any of the sort of more cognitively advanced species, I would expect

Karolina Westlund 48:39 some type of empathy.

Andrew Huberman 48:41 I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also contains adaptogens. I started taking AG1 way back in 2012, long before I even knew what a podcast was. I started taking it, and I still take it every single day, because it ensures that I meet my quota for daily vitamins and minerals, and it helps make sure that I get enough prebiotics and probiotics to support my gut health. Over the past 10 years, gut health has emerged as something that we realize is important, not only for the health of our digestion, but also for our immune system and for the production of neurotransmitters and neuromodulators, things like dopamine and serotonin. In other words, gut health is critical for proper brain function. Now, of course, I strive to eat healthy whole foods from unprocessed sources for the majority of my nutritional intake. But there are a number of things in AG1, including specific micronutrients that are hard or impossible to get from whole foods. So by taking AG1 daily, I get the vitamins and minerals that I need, along with the probiotics and prebiotics for gut health, and in turn, brain and immune system health, and the adaptogens and critical micronutrients that are essential for all organs and tissues of the body. So anytime somebody asks me if they were to only take one supplement, what that supplement should be, I always say AG1, because AG1 supports so many different systems in the brain and body that relate to our mental health, physical health, and performance. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com/huberman. For this month only, April 2025, AG1 is giving away a free one-month supply of omega-3 fish oil along with a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2. As I've highlighted before on this podcast, omega-3 fish oil and vitamin D3 plus K2 have been shown to help with everything from mood and brain health to heart health and healthy hormone production, and much more. Again, that's drinkag1.com/huberman to get the free one-month supply of omega-3 fish oil plus a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2 with your subscription. Today's episode is also brought to us by Joovv. Joovv makes medical grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast, it is the incredible impact that light can have on our biology. Now, in addition to sunlight, red light and near infrared light sources have been shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health, including faster muscle recovery, improved skin health and wound healing, improvements in acne, reduced pain and inflammation, even mitochondrial function, and improving vision itself. What sets Joovv lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy device is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning specific wavelengths of red light and near-infrared light in combination to trigger the optimal cellular adaptations. Personally, I use the Joovv whole body panel about three to four times a week, and I use the Joovv handheld light both at home and when I travel. If you'd like to try Joovv, you can go to Joovv, spelled J-O-O-V-V, .com/huberman. Joovv is offering an exclusive discount to all Huberman Lab listeners with up to $400 off Joovv products. Again, that's Joovv, spelled J-O-O-V-V, .com/huberman to get up to $400

Andrew Huberman 51:46 off. I've always been, um, delighted and, uh, curious about the fact that if two animals of the same species both receive food or a treat, it seems, I don't know, but it, uh, it seems that they are paying attention to how much treat the other is getting. And as a sibling, I have an older sister, who I get along very well with, um, and always have, but when we were kids, I'll never forget like, um, if there was a treat like a milkshake or something. She would point out that she had slightly more than I did.

Karolina Westlund 52:26 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 52:26 Um, if there was a slice of cake or something, it was as much as we would look at the- s- the slice of cake being served to us, we were looking to see how much, uh, the- the other one got.

Karolina Westlund 52:35 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 52:35 And this was a reflexive thing. And we're not competitive in- in any dimension really. Uh, we've always respected e- each other's strengths and- and- and weaknesses in a- in a way that's very, uh, complimentary, but when it comes to treats-

Karolina Westlund 52:49 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 52:50 ... humans and dogs-

Karolina Westlund 52:52 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 52:52 ... pay a lot of attention-

Karolina Westlund 52:53 Oh, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 52:54 ... to who's getting what.

Karolina Westlund 52:55 Fairness, yeah. There was this- this, uh, uh, experiment done on capuchin monkeys by Frans de Waal and his team, um, and apparently they did it and they published a paper on it and, you know, nobody read it. And then like a decade later, uh, in preparation for a presentation, they, uh, redid some of the experiment and- and filmed it. And he shared that on (laughs) on the presentation. I don't know if you've seen it, but essentially it's two capuchin monkeys and they're next to one another so they can each see what the other is getting. And they're asked to do a task, like give a ... the- the researcher hands them a rock and they hand it back to the researcher and then they get a reinforcer or a treat, uh, as payment for that behavior. And so the first, uh, monkey, uh, gets a piece of cucumber, and he's happy. He eats that cucumber. And then the- the researcher turns towards the second, um, monkey, and requests the same behavior, gets the same behavior, and feeds that animal a grape. And capuchins, uh, are not too enthusiastic about p- cucumbers, but they really love grapes. So when she then turns back to the first monkey again and s- and repeats the behavior and again feeds that one a cucumber that he was happy to eat like 30 seconds ago, he actually throws a tantrum and throws it back at the researcher sort of going, "Ugh, I saw that you fed the other guy a grape." Uh, and the- the audience is laughing. So it's- it's like, I think we all recognize that situation that we- we take affront to somebody else getting paid better for the same quality of work.

Andrew Huberman 54:41 Yeah, I'm always interested in these studies, um, that every few years something... I didn't know that one, so thank you-

Karolina Westlund 54:45 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 54:45 ... for sharing that, where, uh, there's something about resource allocation that's revealed.

Karolina Westlund 54:50 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 54:50 And then for every one of those, there will be a study that shows, for instance, uh...And I'm not gonna get the details right here, but, um, that crows f- uh, will, um, teach each other ways to open boxes so that another one-

Karolina Westlund 55:05 Oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 55:06 ... can get food-

Karolina Westlund 55:06 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 55:06 ... even if they don't have access to that food.

Karolina Westlund 55:08 Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 55:09 Um, just, it seems like an act of altruism.

Karolina Westlund 55:11 Yeah, yeah, sure.

Andrew Huberman 55:11 So we'll see fairness, we'll see altruism.

Karolina Westlund 55:13 Oh, yes.

Andrew Huberman 55:14 Um, a very different picture than this whole notion of dominance hierarchies-

Karolina Westlund 55:18 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 55:18 ... and every member of a species is just trying to get the most that they possibly can-

Karolina Westlund 55:23 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 55:23 ... even at the expense of others. It's, it's beautiful in a way, and we, again, have to be careful not to anthropomorphize, to not assume that members of a species are doing this because they're benevolent. That's a nice in- I like that interpretation.

Karolina Westlund 55:36 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 55:36 But maybe as you pointed out before, that having a, a ha- happy group makes for more happiness for oneself.

Karolina Westlund 55:44 Absolutely. I think if the, if the group is doing well, then everybody's better off. So there's, there's, we, we used to think that there was just sort of individual selection, but there is a certain amount of group selection also. The individual selection is stronger, but certainly if there's a group that collaborates better, that will do better than the group that isn't collaborating as well.

Andrew Huberman 56:05 Mm-hmm.

Karolina Westlund 56:06 And it's interesting, you've mentioned a few times now the risk of anthropomorphism.

Andrew Huberman 56:10 Mm-hmm.

Karolina Westlund 56:11 And I think that the, if we look at, uh, that as a sort of, um, a continuum from anthropomorphism, which we might then define as, you know, thinking that animals are just the same as humans, it's only just that they have some fur so they're a bit different, but more or less the same, and on the other side is what we might refer to as anthropodenial. That was a term coined also by Frans de Waal, the one with the, the capuchin experiment, uh, where, where we don't recognize that in fact there are commonalities between humans and other animal species. And I think that we, in our sort of fear of anthropomorphism, we have fallen into anthropodenial, and I think that the, the answer is probably somewhere in the middle, that we do share lots of commonalities with animals. I think that, for instance, even though our perception of the world might be really different, how we process that information and the, the types of emotional and mood, um, responses or changes in mood that we get in response to the environment are very much the same, although it will be different stimuli that, um, uh, that a- different animal species pay attention to, that are more re- m- more or less relevant to them, depending on which species it is. But I think that we've, we've fallen into, we've, we've so avoided this topic of anthropomorphism, we've been so afraid of it that we've fallen into the other trap, which is sort of denying that they have anything

Karolina Westlund 57:45 to do with us.

Andrew Huberman 57:47 Let's talk about a species that, um, can be divisive. Cats.

Karolina Westlund 57:53 Oh.

Andrew Huberman 57:54 My sister has cats, and I don't mind them. I can't say I gravitate toward them.

Karolina Westlund 57:59 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 58:00 But I don't dislike them.

Karolina Westlund 58:01 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 58:01 You do own a cat.

Karolina Westlund 58:03 Yep. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 58:03 And you're an animal ethologist.

Karolina Westlund 58:05 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 58:07 Tell us about cats from the perspective of an animal ethologist. When you look at a cat, what do you, what are you looking for to tell you something about whether or not it's a friendly cat? I mean, obviously if its hair is standing up on its back and it's arching and it's hissing, that's obvious, but w- w- what are you looking at in the context of the way that cats, um, evolved, and, and their species in general?

Karolina Westlund 58:33 Hmm. So the, the common house cat that we have today as a pet, um, um, evolved as a solitary hunter, uh, but that aggregates in social groups. Um, loose social groups, so they sort of hang out together, but it's not this really, uh, uh, cohesive group. And they, they hunt on their own, so they'll eat on their own also. And me as an ethologist, what I tend to do when I look at an animal species is I look at three things. I look at their social environment. So typically with cats, I would then say that they, you know, um, they should, if they are raised well, so they've had, had the opportunity of spending enough time with Mom, typically it should be up to 14 weeks, which, uh, I think that we, we see that in Sweden nowadays. I don't know how it is here in the US. But that seems to be, uh, long enough for the animal to actually learn how to be a cat, so that they don't get too emotionally disturbed by the separation once we wean them and, and sort of put them in a new environment. So, so just looking at the social bit is one thing that I do, the first thing that I do. The second thing that I do is I look at, how do they get food? So again, cats are solitary hunters, so I would look into ways of... And, and they, uh, as opposed to dogs, cats typically retain the whole hunting sequence.

Andrew Huberman 1:00:04 Mm-hmm.

Karolina Westlund 1:00:05 Uh, sometimes the killing bite isn't quite there, but certainly the grab bite, and the fact that some cats will, i- if they're, it's an outdoor cat, that they might bring their prey back home is, to me, is simply, it's not that they want to gift you with, uh, (laughs) their, uh, their kill, but rather that they feel safe in... So they're simply bring- bringing their, uh, um, their prey to a place where they feel safe.

Andrew Huberman 1:00:34 So it's not a gift. We can put that one to rest.

Karolina Westlund 1:00:36 I, I wouldn't say th- I, I would not call that a gift, no.

Andrew Huberman 1:00:39 Mm-mm. I had a, a girlfriend in graduate school, and her cat would catch these very large mice and put them in our shoes...

Karolina Westlund 1:00:48 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:00:48 ... at night. It was dreadful.

Karolina Westlund 1:00:50 Would the cat put them in the shoes or would the mice hide in the shoes?

Andrew Huberman 1:00:56 Well, they were dead when we found them.

Karolina Westlund 1:00:57 Okay.

Andrew Huberman 1:00:57 So I'm assuming that-

Karolina Westlund 1:00:59 The cat put them there.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:00 ... the cat would put them in the shoes.

Karolina Westlund 1:01:01 Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:01 The cat also loved to retrieve-... tin foil balls, little tin foil balls. I've never seen a cat retrieve.

Karolina Westlund 1:01:09 Oh, yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:10 At first, I didn't-

Karolina Westlund 1:01:10 They can, they can learn that.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:11 ... I wasn't too enthusiastic about the cat, and then I developed a really close relationship with it.

Karolina Westlund 1:01:15 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:15 At least from my side, I thought it was-

Karolina Westlund 1:01:17 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:17 ... a close relationship.

Karolina Westlund 1:01:18 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:18 Um, and he would catch mice, put them in our shoes at night while we slept.

Karolina Westlund 1:01:24 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:01:24 It was pretty unpleasant. You had to check your shoes in the morning.

Karolina Westlund 1:01:26 Yeah. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:01:27 So those weren't gifts?

Karolina Westlund 1:01:28 I would not assume that they were gifts, no, no.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:32 Mm-hmm.

Karolina Westlund 1:01:32 Uh, from what I know, uh, cats will sort of bring back what they, what they, um, catch to a place where they feel safe.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:41 Mm-hmm.

Karolina Westlund 1:01:41 And then they often lose interest if it's not moving anymore, so, so and if, obviously, if, if your cat or that cat killed the mice, they had pro- that cat had progressed to the actual killing bite. Many cats don't do that, they only have a crad- grab bite, so they'll, they'll just let the, (laughs) the little rodent go to run off.

Andrew Huberman 1:02:00 I've seen that where they'll play with them, right?

Karolina Westlund 1:02:01 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:02:01 They'll...

Karolina Westlund 1:02:02 Yeah. So, so they'll let it go and if the mouse is still, they can actually dis- sort of escape, uh, attention because the animal, the, the cat might grow bored and walk away. But the moment they start moving it again, then they're, they're sort of restarting that whole, um, uh, predatory sequence again. But back to your question about how to interact with cats, or whether, how to read them. So, that would be the third thing that I'm looking at is how do the animal species in front of me, how do they respond to perceived threat? And I'm saying perceived threat here because sometimes we are all well-intended, we're like, "Hi," and we want to, we want to hug them because we're primates, and they really don't like that. So, so they will respond to us as if we were a predator and, um, I think that, uh, again, comes down very much to the types of interactions, social interactions, the type of learning that the, the animal has had when they're really young. So for instance, there's a study showing that if you handle young kittens between the ages of like two and eight weeks for at least an hour a day, and, and when I say handle, I just mean that sort- sort of interact with them and, and play and have them, uh, sort of on your lap and so on, they will become very social as adults. So they will be the type of cat that will jump up into your lap and fall asleep purring. If you interact with that young kitten less than, uh, like 15 minutes a day, they won't be fearful of humans but they'll be more like walking up to you and saying hi and then walking away.

Andrew Huberman 1:03:42 The aloof cat.

Karolina Westlund 1:03:43 The aloof cat. Yeah. So, so I think the early life experiences can really shape the type of temperament, if you will, or how sort of vigorously animals respond to changes

Karolina Westlund 1:03:56 in the environment.

Andrew Huberman 1:03:57 What is this behavior of bumping, uh, where, where the cat bumps its head against you or your arm? Uh, is it to, um, spread smell?

Karolina Westlund 1:04:07 Yeah. I would say that is scent marking, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:04:09 So, and when they're scent marking you-

Karolina Westlund 1:04:11 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:04:12 ... why are they scent marking?

Karolina Westlund 1:04:14 I would think that it's, it's like something you do in your group. You do mutual scent marking, which means that everybody in the group smells more or less the same. So it's a s- it's a way of sort of greeting and incorporating the others in the group. So there will be a lot of scent exchange within, uh, this type of species living in a group. That would be my guess as to why they do that.

Andrew Huberman 1:04:39 So, is scent marking about territory as well? Like, if a cat, you know, scent marks in corners and-

Karolina Westlund 1:04:45 Oh, yeah. They-

Andrew Huberman 1:04:45 ... does that sort of-

Karolina Westlund 1:04:46 ... but that's a different, that's typically not the... because the- they have like multiple scent glands in the face that are... and, and one of them is used to scent mark sort of the inner territory, and this is where they feel really safe. And then they usually have this urine scent marking which is in the out, sort of, um, the outskirts of the territory.

Andrew Huberman 1:05:07 Hmm.

Karolina Westlund 1:05:07 And you, you might see this if you, if, for instance, you have an indoor cat and they start peeing, and you bring out a piece of paper and a layout of your, um, your house or apartment, and you start m- sort of putting a little ring to where you find the, the pee. That will give you a lot of information because if, if it's a territorial thing, it will typically be at the edges of... so at the windows or doors. If it's a, an elimination problem that the cat has sort of maybe perhaps, uh, it hurts when he pees, so then he learns to associate pain with going in the box. And so the box starts representing painful experiences, so he'll start going outside of the box. But that type of behavior will be seen in that context instead.

Andrew Huberman 1:05:57 Interesting. Um, so if your cat is urinating inside, you now have a, an experiment to run. The use of a litter box-

Karolina Westlund 1:06:05 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:06 ... is a pretty interesting one to me. It's not one I spend a lot of time thinking about.

Karolina Westlund 1:06:10 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:06:10 But if you, uh, sort of step back and you say, okay, here's this animal that we've domesticated.

Karolina Westlund 1:06:13 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:14 And it readily learns how to cover its waste.

Karolina Westlund 1:06:17 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:18 Um, which is very different than a dog.

Karolina Westlund 1:06:20 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:21 Which can be trained to with- withhold until you go out on a walk.

Karolina Westlund 1:06:25 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:26 That's basically the-

Karolina Westlund 1:06:27 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:27 ... two different strategies there. (laughs)

Karolina Westlund 1:06:28 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:30 Um, and I don't know what it is if you own a monkey, um, or something else, but what is it about the covering of waste behavior? Is that something i- in cats, is that a natural behavior they do in the wild? And if they roam, why do they bother? Or is it, um... and then sort of tacked to this is that with dogs oftentimes after they eliminate waste, they'll step away from it and kick dirt in the general direction.

Karolina Westlund 1:06:58 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:58 And I've heard it interpreted two ways. One is that they're trying to spread scent, and the other is that they're trying to cover waste. So again, uh, this is why I was interested in talking to an animal ethologist as opposed to a pet, uh, behavioral trainer, right? I'm also interested in that, but, but I think we have to again acknowledge that...... much of the interpretation that we have about animals' behavior is just human interpretation.

Karolina Westlund 1:07:21 Yeah, certainly.

Andrew Huberman 1:07:22 So, so what is this, uh, covering of waste? Do we know what it's for in the wild, in cats?

Karolina Westlund 1:07:28 The covering of waste, um, is a way to sort of reduce the risk of infection. I would assume that they also don't eliminate close to where they eat. So, if we have a hou- a, a cat in our house, we shouldn't have the litter box next to the food, which I wish I had known when I had my first cat 20 years ago, 'cause she had that very setup with the food right next to the litter box. And I would also assume that the behavior of dogs when they sort of kick at their poop typically, right, not, uh, pee-

Andrew Huberman 1:08:01 Mm-hmm.

Karolina Westlund 1:08:01 ... uh, that it's a way of spreading scent, uh, because if it were covering scent, uh, the behavior would look very different, I think.

Andrew Huberman 1:08:07 Mm-hmm.

Karolina Westlund 1:08:08 But I haven't seen any sort of, any scientific study on that topic.

Andrew Huberman 1:08:13 Okay, so cat owners take note, separate the food from the litter box by-

Karolina Westlund 1:08:16 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:08:17 ... by some distance.

Karolina Westlund 1:08:18 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:08:18 I was always, um, somewhat surprised, uh, although less so over time, uh, how much determination and effort my bulldog would put into peeing on things-

Karolina Westlund 1:08:32 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:08:32 ... on walks.

Karolina Westlund 1:08:33 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:08:33 Because I feel like it was one of his great joys in life.

Karolina Westlund 1:08:36 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:08:36 There I go again, anthropomorphizing-

Karolina Westlund 1:08:38 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:08:38 ... but-

Karolina Westlund 1:08:38 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:08:38 But to smell something and then pee there-

Karolina Westlund 1:08:42 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:08:43 ... um, he seemed to have an endless supply of urine for this.

Karolina Westlund 1:08:47 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:08:47 Um, it was really remarkable.

Karolina Westlund 1:08:49 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:08:49 You know, as, as a scientist and someone who loves dogs and loved him, you know, more than words, I just (laughs) was like, "This is amazing." Like-

Karolina Westlund 1:08:56 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:08:56 ... like, he loves this behavior.

Karolina Westlund 1:08:58 Yeah, yeah. And he's also reading the pee mail from the other dogs-

Andrew Huberman 1:09:01 Right.

Karolina Westlund 1:09:01 ... that are in the, the neighborhood. So, the urine tells a lot of information to the other animals. It tells what, what gender, what, you know, reproductive state, perhaps also something about the animal's emotional state or mental state.

Andrew Huberman 1:09:13 Mm-hmm.

Karolina Westlund 1:09:13 So, I wouldn't hesitate to say that, that, that was one of the joys of life for, for dogs that they-

Andrew Huberman 1:09:19 (laughs)

Karolina Westlund 1:09:19 ... they, that's, after all, that's how they communicate. So it, it's... And they spend a lot of time doing it, and they're willing to work to get access to that, uh, opportunity. So ab- absolutely, I would, I would think that it gives them positive emotional experiences doing that.

Andrew Huberman 1:09:34 So, there's some innate drive in, in dogs, it seems, to, um, read the emotional and hormonal states of other dogs that have been-

Karolina Westlund 1:09:44 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:09:44 ... been there. Uh, to me, it, it felt like their form of social media.

Karolina Westlund 1:09:47 Yeah, yeah. Sure.

Andrew Huberman 1:09:47 Like, "I'm gonna post here. What are other people posting here?"

Karolina Westlund 1:09:51 Yeah, yeah. Sure.

Andrew Huberman 1:09:51 "What's going on?"

Karolina Westlund 1:09:51 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:09:52 Um, I mean, clearly there's some brain real estate devoted to this behavior.

Karolina Westlund 1:09:57 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:09:57 I'm, I'm not, I'm not being facetious. I mean, I look-

Karolina Westlund 1:09:59 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:09:59 ... I look at alec- you know, you look at a human brain, 40% of that real estate is for vision.

Karolina Westlund 1:10:05 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:10:06 Another 40%, it's mixed in there with other stuff, is for motor behavior.

Karolina Westlund 1:10:11 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:10:12 W- we have neural real estate for smelling and certainly for touch, but even if you're a massage therapist or you're a ca- or you do, you know, touch-based work, you're, uh, even if you're a braille reader, um, the amount of neural real estate for these other things is, is vastly larger-

Karolina Westlund 1:10:30 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:10:30 ... except for the blind person where the visual stuff is taken over by the tactile stuff-

Karolina Westlund 1:10:34 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:10:34 ... and auditory. So, amount of real estate correlates. Um, so when I see a behavior that's like, this is what, this is one of the main things dogs do-

Karolina Westlund 1:10:43 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:10:43 ... yeah, it's pretty striking.

Karolina Westlund 1:10:45 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:10:45 So, dogs descended from, they were domesticated from wolves.

Karolina Westlund 1:10:48 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:10:48 Correctly? Did that happen at independent locations around the earth?

Karolina Westlund 1:10:53 Don't really know the answer to that question and, but it seems that they domesticated themselves, that it, it was sort of wolves that started hanging out next to human habitation and that it was sort of the, the, the least fearful and the sort of most, uh, explorative wolves that dared do this. So, so it was, it was, it wasn't that we caught wolves and said, "Aha, I'm gonna breed you now." But it was rather that, that was, it was like a symbiotic relationship that developed over time.

Andrew Huberman 1:11:25 Interesting. I don't know of any other species that does that, except maybe, uh, like certain fish or dolphins that follow fishing boats so they can get some of the catch.

Karolina Westlund 1:11:33 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:11:34 But that's different because, you know, I see these Instagram videos of like an otter jump- jumping on a kayak and there's some interaction-

Karolina Westlund 1:11:42 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:11:42 ... uh, that's regular. They c- you know, that the person goes out on their kayak-

Karolina Westlund 1:11:46 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:11:46 ... they, they interact with this otter.

Karolina Westlund 1:11:47 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:11:47 So animals will do this, but usually there's some sort of, uh, food, it just sounds like food payoff is-

Karolina Westlund 1:11:52 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:11:53 ... is, and safety

Andrew Huberman 1:11:54 is really the key.

Karolina Westlund 1:11:55 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:11:55 Does that mean that animals at, at a very basic level are looking to optimize food intake and safety? And what does that tell us about zoos? I personally have a, uh, a pretty strong, um, visceral reaction to zoos that, um, have large carnivores. Uh, I realize we could have a discussion about elephants too, but I feel like large carnivores hou- housed in zoos creates some issues for me. I won't go into what this is, but, but I also hear that zoos have, um, positive, uh, breeding programs, uh, endangered species protection programs.

Karolina Westlund 1:12:32 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:12:32 Uh, what's your take on zoos?

Karolina Westlund 1:12:34 When we talk about zoos, it's perhaps good to talk about the evolution of zoos because back in the day, like 150 years ago, it used to be more or less a menagerie that, you know, here, here's a lion and here's an elephant and here's a zebra, and they were all in little, uh, small cages and the only thing that you did was see the animal really. Zoos today tend to have the purpose of doing a lot of conservation work. So there's, there's, um, what's referred to as in situ conservation where you work to preserve wild habitats and creating national parks, et cetera, and, and sort of giving the opportunities for, for reintroduction of species for, and so on. And there's ex situ conservation, which is then housing those-... uh, animal species that are, are threatened with extinction in an environment, and ideally, that environment should then be good enough to promote, uh, um, species-typical behavior and so on. So, I'm, I'm, I mean, I'm conflicted. I think that, that many zoos are sort of doing a lot of, um, a lot of good in, in, in this effort, and also educating the public. And many, I think that many people who go to zoos, that might awaken in them an interest in animals, which I think is a good thing that we, that we care about animals. But also, that sometimes the, um, the housing is- isn't optimal, and certainly some species are a more, a lot more difficult to keep in captivity compared to others. So, polar bears are, are really difficult to keep because they're, they're, they're ranging primate, um, carnivores. They walk miles and miles and miles, and it's really difficult to, to provide those species specific opportunities in captivity compared to other, uh, carnivores who have more of a, a different type of approach to, to predation.

Andrew Huberman 1:14:39 One of the things that really turned me onto, uh, just how, um, more sophisticated, um, cat species are than I ever assumed was, um, something that happened when I was a post-doc at, also at Stanford. Uh, I was a member of the San Francisco Zoo. The San Francisco Zoo is an outdoor zoo. By comparison to most other zoos I've been to, and I haven't been to that many-

Karolina Westlund 1:15:03 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:15:03 ... but it's a pretty, uh, nice landscape.

Karolina Westlund 1:15:05 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 1:15:07 Um, there's an outdoor lemur, uh-

Karolina Westlund 1:15:09 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 1:15:10 ... I call it an exhibit, but, you know-

Karolina Westlund 1:15:11 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:15:11 ... in, uh, indoor/outdoor lemur thing that's really amazing. There's some giraffes, all this. Well, um, around the time I was in, when I was a post-doc, I will just briefly tell this story. I was at the movies in San Francisco and I, I stepped out to get something to drink and the, the kid behind the counter said, "Th- a tiger escaped from the San Francisco Zoo and is killing people." And I thought, "What? Like, that's crazy." Turns out that was only partially true. What had happened is there was a tiger there, Tatiana-

Karolina Westlund 1:15:41 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:15:42 ... who, um, they used to have these moats around the, the tiger enclosure.

Karolina Westlund 1:15:46 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:15:46 And it was very close to Christmas. People can look this up and get the details. And there were a couple of kids who were throwing either pine cones or, or throwing something at the tigers.

Karolina Westlund 1:15:56 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 1:15:56 Okay? The zoo was near shutting down. Tatiana either ran up or jumped the moat. I don't know how she did it. Um, got out and moved through the crowd. This is the, to me, the interesting part, moved through the crowd, completely ignoring most of the people that were around, centered in on, and killed one of the kids, then moved to the second kid. Worked him pretty well. The authorities showed up, killed Tatiana. This opened up a whole discussion in the zoo community, um, raised a lot of, uh, kind of complicated questions about enclosures, et cetera. The enclosures there, by the way, now are very different. They have these high glass-

Karolina Westlund 1:16:45 Oh, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:16:46 ... uh, as well, and, of course, the ending was sad for everybody. Um, I took a break from my membership there. I reactivated a few years later. They no, I don't, that tiger, you know, obviously is gone, but, um, I- I still am conflicted about, um, about this whole picture. What's interesting to me is the intentionality of the tiger.

Karolina Westlund 1:17:06 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:17:06 So, this was not a bloodthirsty tiger-

Karolina Westlund 1:17:08 No.

Andrew Huberman 1:17:08 ... that just wanted to kill humans-

Karolina Westlund 1:17:10 No, no.

Andrew Huberman 1:17:10 ... or eat humans.

Karolina Westlund 1:17:11 No, no.

Andrew Huberman 1:17:12 It was those two humans-

Karolina Westlund 1:17:13 Yep.

Andrew Huberman 1:17:13 ... that pissed her off-

Karolina Westlund 1:17:14 Yep.

Andrew Huberman 1:17:15 ... and those two humans were gonna pay.

Karolina Westlund 1:17:16 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 1:17:17 And they paid.

Karolina Westlund 1:17:18 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 1:17:18 The family sued the zoo and then the, it then, it was a whole thing. I don't know how it ended up, uh, with the law, with the lawsuit, but it was a whole thing, so people can look this up online. Um, when you hear that, that a tiger did that, as opposed to just going into a frenzy the way humans sometimes go into a frenzy, attacking whoever and as many people as possible, what do you think? What does, what, what does it tell us about tigers and their, um, consciousness?

Karolina Westlund 1:17:47 I think we often don't give animals enough credit. Uh, to me, it's not surprising that, that she, she experienced something really unpleasant that she came to associate with two individuals, and that generated a negative emotional state and aggressive behavior that she then carried out, directed towards those two people.

Andrew Huberman 1:18:16 Does it surprise you how directed it was?

Karolina Westlund 1:18:18 No.

Andrew Huberman 1:18:18 As opposed to just... I mean, there were plenty of people around that were an easier, um, you know, easier kill.

Karolina Westlund 1:18:26 I would think that a fearful animal might lash out at anyone, but an animal that is angry tends to be more premeditated in a way.

Andrew Huberman 1:18:37 Mm-hmm. Calculated.

Karolina Westlund 1:18:38 Calculative, in a way.

Andrew Huberman 1:18:39 Yeah.

Karolina Westlund 1:18:39 So I would expect that if, if you had scared the tiger, she might show defensive aggression, which is just lashing out at whoever is closest.

Andrew Huberman 1:18:48 Mm-hmm.

Karolina Westlund 1:18:48 But this was offense, offensive aggression.

Andrew Huberman 1:18:51 Yeah.

Karolina Westlund 1:18:51 And so that is, that

Karolina Westlund 1:18:53 is premeditated.

Andrew Huberman 1:18:55 I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function. Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing.Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health. This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient levels, and much more. They've also recently added tests for toxins such as BPA exposure from harmful plastics, and tests for PFASs, or forever chemicals. Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to your physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors who are expert in the relevant areas. For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had elevated levels of mercury in my blood. Function not only helped me detect that, but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, I'd been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification. And I should say by taking a second Function test, that approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by Function's simplicity and at the level of cost. It is very affordable. As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com/huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners. Again, that's functionhealth.com/huberman to get early

Andrew Huberman 1:20:41 access to Function. Can we talk a little bit about the, um, the prey and stalking and capture and killing sequence?

Karolina Westlund 1:20:50 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:20:51 One of the things that, um, I've always been fascinated by is when a, let's just use a cat as an example, could be large cat, could be small cat, is in its stalking mode that it essentially gets one ballistic strike opportunity-

Karolina Westlund 1:21:07 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:21:07 ... before the, the, before the chase is on, or-

Karolina Westlund 1:21:09 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:21:09 ... or the animal gets away or it gets caught, right?

Karolina Westlund 1:21:12 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:21:12 And we will see the, um, we had a cat when I was a kid, um, that would like stalk and, you know, so obviously like creep up and then right before it would leap at the prey, it would-

Karolina Westlund 1:21:28 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:21:28 It would start chattering its teeth.

Karolina Westlund 1:21:30 Ah, yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:21:31 Um, I'm assuming that was behavioral suppression or something leaking through. What, what's going on when, when a animal does that very deliberate stalking, that calculation, um, and the, like teeth chatters or, or like twitching is starting to occur? What is that?

Karolina Westlund 1:21:45 My guess would be perhaps some sort of, sort of displacement behavior that there's motivation to move on in the sequence of behaviors to the next behavior, but it's not quite time yet. And so that sort of activation then gets an outlet through that behavior. But I really don't know.

Andrew Huberman 1:22:02 Mm-hmm.

Karolina Westlund 1:22:02 I don't know. I haven't seen this discussed.

Andrew Huberman 1:22:04 So it's almost like a, like a hydraulic pressure or something building up?

Karolina Westlund 1:22:06 Maybe. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:22:07 Interesting. Interesting. Um, we've talked about dogs. We've talked about cats. Let's talk about birds.

Karolina Westlund 1:22:15 Okay.

Andrew Huberman 1:22:16 I had parrots when I was a kid.

Karolina Westlund 1:22:17 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:22:18 They were domestically bred, little gray-cheeked dwarf parrots. It didn't turn out poorly. It didn't turn out great. They, they were, um, I didn't clip their wings 'cause I couldn't bring myself to, and they flew around my room a lot and shitted around the room a lot and threw a lot of food on the ground a lot. And, uh, eventually made sense to give them to somebody who had a, an aviary.

Karolina Westlund 1:22:39 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:22:40 Um, parrots are smart. Yeah?

Karolina Westlund 1:22:43 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:22:44 What are parrots thinking about?

Karolina Westlund 1:22:45 I think what, what all animals are thinking about, where their next meal is come, come, gonna come from, uh, social interactions, and whether there's any threat anywhere.

Andrew Huberman 1:22:53 Is that really their, like 90% of their conscious life?

Karolina Westlund 1:22:57 I would, I would say, I would say that, um, uh, if the animal doesn't feel safe, then it's very hard to engage the animal in any type of sort of f- If an animal is fearful and you try to feed them, they often won't take food, for instance. So the sense of