Saw a video I can’t find of a cat missing both front legs playing energetically with a kitten. Kinda amazing how animals seem to easily cope with what would be severe body image trauma in humans. Anyone been with a pet that’s been through an amputation? How quickly do they adapt?
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I mean adapt psychologically, and get past depression etc, not physically. I assume the lay around weak and unhappy for a bit before learning to use their new body? I think I’d be pretty traumatized and take a while to even try adapting physically.
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In general, I think the facts that humans mentally inhabit an idealized world including an idealized body image is both a strength and weakness. Animals literally can’t go around thinking they’re too fat or too ugly. They are what they are. No body image to have issues with.
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Even more impressive when you remember that their bodies mean a lot more to them since they don’t have as much of a mental life. Their identities are not invested in writing novels or signing petitions or winning elections.
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I’ve been hearing more and more about body integrity dysphoria (BID) lately. It sounds like phantom limb syndrome in reverse. I wonder if animals can have this or it requires a primate+ level brain capable of having a body image at all. Mirror test etc. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_inte
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This is kinda my folk theory of this sort of thing. X-axis: increasing brain complexity. Y-axis: increasing abstraction of identity and associated glitch conditions. From phantom limb and sleep paralysis on the low complexity end to gender dysphoria on the high end.
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The mirror test, if you think about it (the recognition test not the phantom limb therapy) implies a primitive self model that can get arbitrarily complex and abstract and incorporate verbally coded theories of self for verbal species.
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In general, this cat represents an aspirational state (ht for finding video) for me, in terms of capacity to handle trauma. How can humans heal mentally this efficiently without giving up higher brain capacities? twitter.com/onewalleee/sta
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Exhibit C:
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Replying to @vgr
One of our cats lost his front leg - don't remember the timings, but he seemed happy by the time he'd recovered his strength. Occasionally would try to bat something with the missing leg but as far as we could tell that didn't bother/frustrate him
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That said animals can of course get mentally traumatized and show long-term effects. We had one cat that was super scared and high strung all his life, from the day we got him. Really fragile. Hid under the bed for days when we first brought him home. Hid from all visitors.
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He was a year old when we got him, 11 when he died. Never really healed. Overate, got obese, was super needy. But could relax and play when he felt secure. Saddest cat ever. Always had a bit of a stressed, hunted look. Tended to stay ground level instead of climb high.
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We never did figure out why. We got him from the shelter at age 1, but he’d apparently lived outdoors before. Maybe he was abused or got bullied by other cats.
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