Scientists... I am sorry but linking this behavior to child abuse, did they identify which birds were drug and alcohol abusers or other factors linked to child abuse? Who pays for this stuff? I am not sure why you posted this, for comments I suppose but this is just another study with a conclusion of "Oh interesting". Sorry, I did find it amusing those.
it makes sense. in many species, aggression is heightened when the animal (including humans) are raised around others who are aggressive.
Actually, what I find most interesting is the potential for hormone levels in infant birds to affect behaviors in adults.
I do not get the connection how "abusive" unreasoning birds are in anyway connected to reasoning, thinking humans who abuse. To beat your "loved ones", or to demean them, to harrass, or assault them is a CHOICE not a destiny.
Quote:understanding the cause and affect early childhood development has on the behavior of an adult, weather it be the human animal or other species, doesn't mean it is a justification. it is just an understanding how a family culture can influence the behavior of someone down the line. we are all products of our childhood experiences to some extent. and while yes personality, ability to judge and reason, and outside influences later on (broader societal culture, laws, schools, etc) teaching the abused that abusing is wrong have a significant impact on how they later behave as well, our earliest experiences remain a significant influence in the evolution of our personality. oh and birds are capable of thought as well just not on our level.
scratch'n'peck : Actually, what I find most interesting is the potential for hormone levels in infant birds to affect behaviors in adults. i think that is definitively a factor. stress hormones in most species radically affect how the brain develops later on and can alter personality.
Understand that this is pop science on a science blog aimed at being accessible. That is, observations are taken in sound bites and arranged in a manner to make it readable, understandable, and interesting to the general population. Newspapers do the same sort of coverage in the areas of science. For instance, one of our local PIs is involved in developing microelectrodes that are implanted in the brain (has expanded to human trials) that can allow paraplegics to move bionic limbs, patients such as those where the brain is active but the body offers no responses to talk by translating their electrical brain activity into actual words on a screen, and blind patients to see basic shapes. If you compare the newspaper stories to the actual scientific papers, you would not realize you were reading about the same project. XD There really is no way to cover such an extremely detailed study in a few paragraphs. It probably comes off as sounding sci-fi-ish to the general public at best, and offers no real depth to the problems of keeping the brain from reaching a threshold where the signals stop evoking a response, what this means to our understanding of the brain, how this technology was developed, etc. Actually, drug abuse is something that is heftily funded by the government, so you are paying for that. A study in the area of zoology tends to have multiple grants, often from private institutions. Half of the work some of the 'underlings' do is struggling to apply for and secure grants. Here is an example of a study before it hits the pop-sci coverage: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0004969 It includes funding sources. That is something any scientific, peer reviewed study will make known. It is the corporate-funded 'scientists' who are more closed about where their funding comes from, because there are some people who compute that, say, a large oil company funding scientists to investigate the effects of an oil spill is...probably not the best science. I would suspect the coverage of this article would read something like, "Bacteria helps bugs munch on lunch". Or, "Insects get help with digestion from bacteria". It would miss out on the bulk of the paper. There is a summary of this series of studies directed at the general public by one of the author's here: http://juliamallen.com/?p=33 Hopefully this helps illustrate the gap between the various studies and what gets filtered down. As a side note, drugs and alcohol actually alter the brain's chemistry and even the physical structure. By training rats to say, self administer meth, you can see the effects on behavior, hormones (something the blog pointed out as possibly playing a role in causing animals subjected to violence to develop in a way that would continue violence), and brain structure in ways you just can not explore in humans (people have a thing about not wanting their brains frozen and sliced up while still actively on drugs). This opens up avenues to create medication that focuses on those areas effected, and to explore behavioral modification that can better help people with addiction, that can ultimately help greatly in limiting or recovering from drug abuse. This would obviously have greater reaching benefits in areas such as child abuse, crime, etc.
