If you're interested @barbc, there's a fascinating book by John Bradshaw called "In defence of dogs". He puts all these arguments forward, and describes many of the delightful little social gestures that go on between members of a wolf pack - play, nuzzling, etc.
You say that like it’s a bad thing!
Agreed. But evolution tends towards fostering behaviours that overall benefit the survival of species. Which will tend to include behaviours that increase the chances of an individual's survival, but maybe not at the expense of the wider population. It is even possible that in some species it acts as a warning sign for others to keep away.
That just feels right. The other half of that question would be: Do the mechanisms that fight the illness, themselves consume additional energy? Instinctively feels that will be the case. Which might tie in with diverting energy from non-life-critical energy consumers. A bit like (I think I recall this right) the way the body responds to some injuries by withdrawing blood flow from extremities, to retain supply to life-critical subsystems.
I think that is a pretty neat encapsulation. I especially like "underpinned by a state of energy depletion", which is not a phrase typically used when describing ME, but maybe should. Persistent and unrelenting energy depletion really does underpin ME.
We had our goldie from 8 weeks to nearly 17 years, and although he surely knew how to "give you the look" with those big beautiful brown eyes, and though he got very sick quite a few times in his life, he never played the sick card. You might reasonably ask how we could know, but actually it was incredibly easy; when he was sick he was vomiting and diarrhoea, temperature, etc. And moreover the one thing he was incapable of was eating anything, let alone treats; we were only too delighted when we could tempt him again.In my, somewhat limited, experience, dogs will "sham" all the time once they determine it leads to a reward, the reward can be extra attention, eliciting behaviour they find desirable, treats etc. - it doesn't matter, once they've discovered that being injured will attract favourable attention they will put it on when it occurs to them.
'orrible sneaky things
edit - by all the time I don't mean continously, I mean it becomes another trick in their repertoire.
) to get their treats, I've never known one to sham illness.
Just to add another confusion, predators are typically wary of eating obviously-diseased prey.
I'm sure some of our most deeply embedded behaviours originate from before we had even evolved into humans
Agreed.
I think it may be a little more to it when it comes to ME. ME is just different somehow, and I think people with no understanding of it get fooled by that difference. They are convinced they understand what is going on, but are actually totally misunderstanding. All heavily reinforced by official medical opinion and high profile media stories.
You mean natural selection? It's more of a biased randomness.
Yes agreed. The candidate traits occur randomly, and prevailing conditions then determine which of those traits potentially persist in a species as worthwhile survival traits. I was really emphasising that design has nothing to do with it.
