Recently Walter Brandes of To the Tipping Point, a New Hampshire business consulting practice, contacted me for permission to use that business name because I’d already claimed TippingPoint Inc. I agreed and then he and I had a delightful chat about the role of tipping points in human and animal behavior. That discussion later caused me to muse yet again about how much more readily our society accepts what we can learn from animal physiology compared to animal behavior.
For example, most people are aware of and accept that countless animal studies still form the foundation of our drug-testing process. Another example comes from the amazing field of biorobotics where researchers have long used their knowledge of how animals accomplish various mechanical tasks as the foundation when designing robots. Another, relatively new discipline called biomimicry studies natural models with an eye toward using them to solve a much broader range of human problems.
For as fascinating as such disciplines are, they usually either ignore or tiptoe around what animal behavior can teach us about our own. This occurs in spite of the millions of people (including researchers) who relate to their own animals as valued members of their families. It also occurs in spite of all the studies demonstrating the considerable amount of DNA and brain processes we share with members of other species. Nonetheless within the human behavioral community and its allied disciplines, the starting point typically has been that human behavior represents a separate entity rather than a variation on the animal behavioral theme.
But before we start condemning “them,” we companion-animal-lovers must share some of the responsibility for this artificial barrier. As our society has become more and more urbanized, our knowledge of normal animal behavior has increasingly diminished, and once accurate animal analogies have been distorted to fit our beliefs. And as is so often the case, this triggers in a more-is-better linear progression over time. So we originally begin with a fat cat as one possessing sufficient skill to ensure his or her survival in times of limited food supply, but end with a bloated symbol of conspicuous (and unhealthy) over-consumption.
Then we have all those self- and other-proclaimed Top Dogs. There’s nothing quite like a presidential election or Wall Street crisis to cause pundits and commentators to chirp about “alphas.” This animal behavioral reference incomprehensibly has been shoehorned into the sports metaphors that are as numerous in American business and politics as overpriced hot dogs in a stadium. Because the goal is winning and the process is viewed as combative, the alpha naturally more often than not is portrayed as the winner of the fight.
But although this might be true on the athletic field, it’s not true within the animal kingdom in the long run. There, the winners are those who get the job done using the least amount of energy, and one thing we can say for sure about fighting is that it uses a lot of energy. Worse, the return on that energy investment can be sufficiently low that it would make any thinking investment banker consider a career change. For one thing, no one ever wins a fight; the winner is simply the one who loses the least. For another, fighting is self-limiting; it’s only an effective strategy if you’re very strong and your competitor/opponent is very weak. If not, over time the fighters and their successors will spend more and more time and energy fighting to gain less and less at the same time as they increase their own vulnerability.
So in animal terms, the ideal male and female alphas are the ones who can rise to the top creating the least amount of stress for themselves and those around them. What those with less skill and experience must try to accomplish using force, these individuals accomplish with their presence. Looked at in animal behavioral terms with its underlying energy-efficiency, being a winner-of-the-fight-alpha doesn’t seem nearly so glamorous, does it?
For thousands and thousands of years, animals have been working out energy-efficient strategies for successfully dealing with subordinates, work and family, male-female relationships, parenting, division of labor, and other activities that we humans struggle with at home and on the job. As the consultants at To the Tipping Point LLP venture forth to increase their clients’ sales and profitability while humanizing the workplace, I seek to help my clients animalize their bond-space. As many I’ve worked with have discovered, it’s easy to whisper to animals with problems. The real challenge is to communicate with them in their own language, to bring them and ourselves to the tipping point beyond which a new and better reality exists for human and animal alike.
If you have any comments regarding subject matter, favorite links, or anything you’d like to see discussed on or added to this site, please let me know at mm@mmilani.com.
Recently Walter Brandes of To the Tipping Point, a New Hampshire business consulting practice, contacted me for permission to use that business name because I’d already claimed TippingPoint Inc. I agreed and then he and I had a delightful chat about the role of tipping points in human and animal behavior. That discussion later caused me to muse yet again about how much more readily our society accepts what we can learn from animal physiology compared to animal behavior.
For example, most people are aware of and accept that countless animal studies still form the foundation of our drug-testing process. Another example comes from the amazing field of biorobotics where researchers have long used their knowledge of how animals accomplish various mechanical tasks as the foundation when designing robots. Another, relatively new discipline called biomimicry studies natural models with an eye toward using them to solve a much broader range of human problems.
For as fascinating as such disciplines are, they usually either ignore or tiptoe around what animal behavior can teach us about our own. This occurs in spite of the millions of people (including researchers) who relate to their own animals as valued members of their families. It also occurs in spite of all the studies demonstrating the considerable amount of DNA and brain processes we share with members of other species. Nonetheless within the human behavioral community and its allied disciplines, the starting point typically has been that human behavior represents a separate entity rather than a variation on the animal behavioral theme.
But before we start condemning “them,” we companion-animal-lovers must share some of the responsibility for this artificial barrier. As our society has become more and more urbanized, our knowledge of normal animal behavior has increasingly diminished, and once accurate animal analogies have been distorted to fit our beliefs. And as is so often the case, this triggers in a more-is-better linear progression over time. So we originally begin with a fat cat as one possessing sufficient skill to ensure his or her survival in times of limited food supply, but end with a bloated symbol of conspicuous (and unhealthy) over-consumption.
Then we have all those self- and other-proclaimed Top Dogs. There’s nothing quite like a presidential election or Wall Street crisis to cause pundits and commentators to chirp about “alphas.” This animal behavioral reference incomprehensibly has been shoehorned into the sports metaphors that are as numerous in American business and politics as overpriced hot dogs in a stadium. Because the goal is winning and the process is viewed as combative, the alpha naturally more often than not is portrayed as the winner of the fight.
But although this might be true on the athletic field, it’s not true within the animal kingdom in the long run. There, the winners are those who get the job done using the least amount of energy, and one thing we can say for sure about fighting is that it uses a lot of energy. Worse, the return on that energy investment can be sufficiently low that it would make any thinking investment banker consider a career change. For one thing, no one ever wins a fight; the winner is simply the one who loses the least. For another, fighting is self-limiting; it’s only an effective strategy if you’re very strong and your competitor/opponent is very weak. If not, over time the fighters and their successors will spend more and more time and energy fighting to gain less and less at the same time as they increase their own vulnerability.
So in animal terms, the ideal male and female alphas are the ones who can rise to the top creating the least amount of stress for themselves and those around them. What those with less skill and experience must try to accomplish using force, these individuals accomplish with their presence. Looked at in animal behavioral terms with its underlying energy-efficiency, being a winner-of-the-fight-alpha doesn’t seem nearly so glamorous, does it?
For thousands and thousands of years, animals have been working out energy-efficient strategies for successfully dealing with subordinates, work and family, male-female relationships, parenting, division of labor, and other activities that we humans struggle with at home and on the job. As the consultants at To the Tipping Point LLP venture forth to increase their clients’ sales and profitability while humanizing the workplace, I seek to help my clients animalize their bond-space. As many I’ve worked with have discovered, it’s easy to whisper to animals with problems. The real challenge is to communicate with them in their own language, to bring them and ourselves to the tipping point beyond which a new and better reality exists for human and animal alike.
If you have any comments regarding subject matter, favorite links, or anything you’d like to see discussed on or added to this site, please let me know at mm@mmilani.com.