Surrounded by technology and urbanity though we may be, the human brain remains profoundly hard-wired to respond to animals. When people are shown pictures of animals, specific parts of the amygdala — a structure central to pleasure and pain, fear and reward — react almost instantly.
The effect is large and consistent, and “may reflect the importance that animals held throughout our evolutionary past,” wrote researchers led by California Institute of Technology neurobiologist Florian Mormann in an Aug. 29 Nature Neuroscience paper.
“As the finding extends across many patients, it would imply something universal,” said study co-author Christoph Koch, also a California Institute of Technology neurobiologist. “As universal as the much better-known brain asymmetry for reading text and for comprehending and producing language.” The researchers suspect that animals were so important during evolutionary history as to merit a dedicated processing area in the brain.
“My enduring memory of Chaco Canyon is of emptiness. In an inner room in Pueblo Bonito, I look up at the ceiling and see slender parallel imprints in the mortar—fingerprints, left by a person who worked here a thousand years ago. In the fading light of a winter afternoon, he feels as real as me… ” —Leslie T. Chang on the American Southwest’s haunting and haunted landscape
(Source: cntraveler.com)
Did you know that 20% of American children have never climbed a tree? The UN says that because many young people are urbanized and alienated from nature, they may not realize the value of protecting natural ecosystems and species.
(Source: ordinaryasafairy)
“…In the mid-1990s, I made a conscious decision to stop worrying about the environment. There was nothing meaningful that I personally could do to save the planet, and I wanted to get on with devoting myself to the things I loved. I still tried to keep my carbon footprint small, but that was as far as I could go without falling back into rage and despair.
BUT then a funny thing happened to me. It’s a long story, but basically I fell in love with birds. I did this not without significant resistance, because it’s very uncool to be a birdwatcher, because anything that betrays real passion is by definition uncool. But little by little, in spite of myself, I developed this passion, and although one-half of a passion is obsession, the other half is love.
And so, yes, I kept a meticulous list of the birds I’d seen, and, yes, I went to inordinate lengths to see new species. But, no less important, whenever I looked at a bird, any bird, even a pigeon or a robin, I could feel my heart overflow with love. And love, as I’ve been trying to say today, is where our troubles begin.
Because now, not merely liking nature but loving a specific and vital part of it, I had no choice but to start worrying about the environment again. And here’s where a curious paradox emerged. My anger and pain and despair about the planet were only increased by my concern for wild birds, and yet, as I began to get involved in bird conservation and learned more about the many threats that birds face, it became easier, not harder, to live with my anger and despair and pain.
How does this happen? I think, for one thing, that my love of birds became a portal to an important, less self-centered part of myself that I’d never even known existed. Which is what love will do to a person.”
Technology Provides an Alternative to Love.
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“Mother Nature’s Child explores nature’s powerful role in children’s health and development through the experience of toddlers, children in middle childhood and adolescents.” (via)
