Going Solo

The Solo Seal

Recently in the papers, the tale of ‘Sahara’ the Arctic Seal was told.
It seems that Sahara is not keen on the cold Arctic Waters around Greenland and Iceland to the extent that he swims South instead of North putting himself in jeopardy.

The consensus of opinion it seems is that there is something wrong with him….why cannot there be something wrong with the consensus?

Is it not possible that Sahara is an evolutionary revolutionary? Could he be the next signal of global warming? Or could it be that he is a ‘Jonathon Livingston Seal’ he can because he thinks he can.

Against everything the little seal is holding onto the idea that he deserves to live in the South that he will be able to feed and get himself adapted to the heat of sunnier climbs.

Sahara the evolutionary revolutionary, I like the sound of that. His is a story worth the telling.

If nothing else it shows the tendency of behaviourists and experts to insist on keeping things in boxes. Unlike the Great Whites of Seal Island whose behaviour is unique due to the currents and mapping of the sea bed at that point, Sahara’s behaviour is seen as unusual in a negative way. This little seal is mistaken, he is wrong. He has to be made to fit into the Arctic Seal code of behaviour so buy him an ice machine and make him like it!

The sharks however, less cuddly and more assertive in what they want to do are allowed to keep their behaviour in fact it is positively re-enforced by the behaviourists and marine biologists who leave out seal decoys for them to ‘hunt’. Whose behaviour is the most OCD? Who is driving that particular bus?

The difference being in the outcome perceived by the scientists; the shark behaviour is positive because it feeds them and is a progression of hunting instinct and a sign of intelligence at work. Poor little Sahara on the other hand is seen as a negative because no one can actually work out why he does this. They assume he is phobic of his home waters, they assume that there is something wrong with him. He is not physically sick it seems but chooses possible death rather than stay in his home environment… perhaps there is something wrong with the environment not the seal?
Is it perhaps not the animal behaviour that is at odds with their relative situations? Let’s turn the microscope on ourselves and our perception of what is normal behaviour and what is not.

Who are we to decide what is and what is not normal behaviour? I would posit that we change the word ‘normal’ for uniformly acceptable – at least that is what we like uniformly acceptable behaviour. Slight variations are allowed of course, but must only be quirks that are amusingly clever enough to pique our interest but that we may also bring back into the general acceptable table of reference.

There seems to be no morphogenesis here with the sharks and the seal, neither would meet the other… Unless of course Sahara has decided to become a Superhero Seal Saviour going to The Cape to save the population of Seal Island from being eaten by the relentless Great Whites. Flights of fancy, but then who would have thought of a shark that would jump like a dolphin… how did that work? Have the sharks encountered dolphins? Yes possibly, therefore it is not inconceivable to have a learning curve of monkey see monkey do – all the elements being in place to promote the serendipity of the first incident. The unique currents and layout of the seabed around seal island and a very hungry and quite powerful shark.
Maybe they are one time learners, perhaps they follow each other in a school mentality, and they must have some kind of social/hunting scale that allows them to not attack each other? So they are aware of each others differences… or was it just that one lucky fluke. The lack of morphogenesis is a telling one BUT there are a lot of sharks there and they come in from all over at the breeding season, when food will be plentiful, how do they know – who do they follow – who did it first? Was there a Jonathon Livingston Shark to go with the little seal’s efforts to find his comfort zone? Getting there is only half the problem staying there and thriving that is the biggie.

N.B as far as the behaviourists are concerned the famous Pavlov’s dogs were actually also a product of re- enforced behaviour – at first his experiment did not work so he punished the dogs that did not respond. If it doesn’t fit in with the idea of how it is thought it should go – make it by whatever means was okay to do in those days – hopefully karma has sorted that one out I have an image of an aging Pavlov dribbling into his soup and a stern nurse type giving him into trouble for requiring a bib at his age! That would be justice in my book.

But again we come to the anthropomorphism of animals and do we also have a right to do that, why, in fact do we do that?
If we believe that they are just humans dressed in a four legged furry body then it is actually quite evident why we are so cruel to them. We are not much better with ourselves really.

Giving an animal the benefit of humanistic tendencies is one thing, trusting them to exhibit those tendencies on tap is another; the pack mentality is the trigger for the anthropomorphism with dogs and to a certain extent cats. We believe they know exactly what we are saying because of what they do in given situations and the more we create those situations the more we see the behaviour. We reward the behaviour so of course the animal is going to repeat it especially if there is a reward of food or a favoured toy. Carrot and stick, it is donkeys ages old, and it still works in various forms; especially with us as we too are animals.
So we are animals, we think – we believe things are just so because we have worked out that doing a series of things will generate a certain response or result. If it pleases or adds to our comfort and progression we keep it if it does not, well as human animals we have a tendency ourselves to hold onto bad habits.
Dr Phil says if you keep doing the same thing you will keep getting the same result. Obvious but then the truth usually is. Succinct and to the point if you cannot see what is wrong with what you are doing and it does not serve you – change it.

What makes a seal believe he can buck the trend? To begin with does he even know what trend it is that he is bucking? Does he know what a trend is?

How much of a drive was the instinct to feed responsible for the first shark to leap at such speed to get the seal from the island in South Africa?

We believe we know; we believe we understand these things almost better than they understand themselves.
We believe all that and more – but we do not believe in ourselves, we are less than totally aware that the beliefs we hold make our lives so rigidly habitual.