Captivity and self-directed behaviour

With so many self-directed behaviours in animals associated with captivity it is worth considering what captivity means. Mostly we associate captivity with the simple fact of being caged behind bars or enclosed within a limited and secure area. But these images do not capture the real meaning of captivity because they fail to focus on the meaning of freedom itself.

Why do organisms under certain conditions, often related to laboratory captivity, fall back upon themselves and manifest behaviours, such as hair pulling, bar sucking and self-biting? I would argue it is because their environment is unnatural and the normal expression of species typical behaviour has been thwarted.

To be thwarted means that you have been deprived of satisfaction despite your best efforts to attain it. We may feel thwarted when our lottery ticket raises our hopes of winning a nice cash prize, only to see that the next drawn ball shows the wrong number. Of course, we get over such disappointments quickly;  not only will there be another lottery next week but nearly all of us lose and losing does not threaten our presently understood sense of place in the world.

But imagine being thwarted in ways that disrupt the social continuity of your experience or deprive you of connection to your environment. Prolonged isolation or being placed in a sterile environment with no way of gratifying yourself would not be like taking a fish out of water and placing it on a slab whilst still keeping it artificially respirated. The animal would have no use for itself – no way of being a fish, despite being a fish. This paradox for me goes to the root of why organisms perform self-directed behaviours.

More concrete examples of how captivity disrupts the continuity of species specific experience and makes an animal redundant unto itself include the following:

artificial food products that do not allow the animal to engage in species specific eating patterns or provide a sense of satiation following digestion – bar sucking is often noticed in such cases.

Cage conditions that limit an animals movements or access to materials (such as straw or 'house' building materials) so that it cannot complete species specific fixed action patterns of behaviour – stereotypical repeated movements are common in these instances.

A restricted visual field (e.g. a 180+ degree vista blocked) or limited space for movement so that foregrounded dangers or approaching threats cannot be properly evaded and a suitable proximity achieved that allows for a sense of safety and comfort – feather plucking in parrots has been noted in this respect.

Peer group separation, such as housing mice with their siblings only – this has produced fur pulling behaviour.

These are just a few of the situations that have been found to produce self-directed behaviours in animals. Ultimately, if you take an animal out of its natural habitat, you risk placing it in a world in which its being no longer has meaning in a social or biological sense. Animals are finely tuned to their natural environment and must be or they would not survive in the wild! Once this environment is changed, often unaccountable changes are produced in the animal as a result.

Animals, like humans, are free when they have control over their own internal physiological states. When they are hungry they are can eat the food they want to eat; when they are frightened they are free to flee danger or fight their corner; when they are in open spaces they can roam etc. Freedom is homeostasis in operation - the preservation of one's continuity of experience by control over the internal environment through a free response to environmental conditions.

As a final point, it is worth noting that animals born in the wild and brought into captivity do not manifest self-directed behaviours. It is only those organisms that develop in unnatural conditions that are forced to fall back upon the body and develop behaviours that offer them some way of coping with the situation they have been born into.

I believe humans who display self-directed behaviours are suffering in a similar way.