Both animals are in threatening environments. One has been trained and one has not. Note the hooded eyes, flat not pinned ears? Suspicion. What is going to happen. The feline above has it's "thumb on the hammer" ready to cock it, That is your warning. Note the whiskers relaxed ready to go taut. The feline below intimidates because of it's size, but it has been trained to not do what it wants(attack/predator) as a horse is trained not to do what it wants(flee/prey). The feline above doesn't know it can't do what it wants as it hasn't been trained. Training is 95% mental and 5% physical. Both felines will hurt, size intimidates, and the fear of death scares humans. Which feline has the upper hand(offense) if you let it(defense)?
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Do you note any similarites in the facial expressions
Posted by
Wade G. Burck
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2 comments:
Wade. There's too much that we don't know about the house cat. Is it feral, or somebody's pet? Has it been swimming for its life to find high ground in a flood, or did somebody just drop it into the water to take a picture? Even if it had all the training in the world, it's a cat in a hugely frightening, stressful situation. It's annoyed, it's scared, it's defensive. Even the best of training flies out the window when stress reaches a breaking point. Your well trained totally obedient dog gets hit by a car and breaks the pelvis. You rush out into the street and pick him up and he bites you. It's a reaction to stress and pain, an entirely primal behavior. Any behavior is contextual over a continuum. A single picture may or may not say the same thing as a series. Particularly when stress is overriding, physiological mechanisms of behavior supplant both naturalistic and learned behaviors. I hesitate to assume anything, but I reckon the stress exhibited by cat #1 and the stress exhibited by cat #2 are worlds apart.
Ben,
A world apart. One was trained accept/ignore the stress, and one wasn't given that option because of it size. One was lifted up, placed in the water. Accept or attempt to escape. One was taught, to keep all emotion "in check". You can not force/subjugate the control of those emotions. If you are physically superior you can. If you are not you have to go into the head. Some trainers teach a horse to walk underneath them. Thats natural. Some have the skill to teach them to piaffe underneath them. That's unnatural, only the horse doesn't know it, because he has been taught/trained it is natural by the controlling at that moment of all emotions.
Wade
Wade
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