Article on Stress in Animals
Posted by lisa on Oct 24, 2008
The LiveScience blog has a good article by Clara Moskowitz, on how stress affects animals. In addition to all the stressors of their normals lives in the wild or in captivity, they can pick up the stress of the humans they live with. Stress has both positive and negative physiological effects in animals, and inspires a desire for comfort food! From the article
In both humans and animals, stress causes the body to release adrenaline and cortisol hormones. These chemicals cause heart rate and respiration to speed up, and suppress the immune system. Stress also clamps down on the reproductive system, reducing libido and reproductive hormones, which ultimately increases the risk for cardiovascular disease.
All these all-too-human effects have also been measured in animals.
Wilson’s subordinate rhesus monkeys, for example, have disrupted reproductive cycles, are at higher risk for cardiovascular disease than dominant females, and seem to show up with higher rates of infection and illness.
“Stress is adaptive to a certain degree, but after a while it’s really maladaptive,” Wilson said. “One of the first things to be affected is the reproductive system. Yeah, it makes some evolutionary sense that you don’t want to reproduce if you’re in danger. But when your reproductive system shuts down, you have all these secondary effects, like increased cardiovascular disease risk, which are really maladaptive.”
Read the whole article here, and remember that massage triggers the relaxation response in humans and animals.
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Great article! I hope you dont mind me blogging about it as well. I was just thinking about the economy and the stressors we humans are under. Candy and I often talk about how animals take on the stresses even the illnesses of the owners.
Good site! Successes in future