Healthy family bonds critical for animals, too

link Sharna Johnson

It’s all about the beginning. The first few months and years of a child’s life are well accepted as the foundation for the person they will become.

How much interaction they receive, the nurturing and care as well as the quality and types of relationships they experience in that formative period of their lives helps to shape and direct everything that comes later, right down to their personality and how they approach life.

But the impact early social connections have on the formation of personality isn’t something exclusive to the human race and researchers continue to discover striking similarities between human dynamics and those of other species.

Highly social creatures by nature, scientists already know that rats raised in isolation exhibit higher levels of aggression and experience social anxiety when reintroduced to other rats — similar to the traits found in human children who are isolated or experience rocky childhoods.

However researchers still wondered if it was possible to reverse personality traits and behaviors formed by neglect and absence of nurturing and socialization.

Removing rat pups from their mothers and siblings three weeks after birth, scientists moved them to solitary cages where they were raised isolated from other rats.

After seven weeks of being raised alone, researchers reintroduced the rats into social settings — the un-socialized rats were placed into groups that consisted of rats who had been raised in social groups but did not know each other — and observed their behavior.

Initially the isolated rats kept to themselves, their behavior withdrawn, but after a few days they began joining the others in sleep huddles, a typical rat behavior.

However, even though they adapted to some of the group dynamics and even joined in to a degree, they continued to be different.

While all of the rats showed what might be considered aggressive tendencies when intruder rats were placed in their cages, the rats that had been isolated were aggressive in non-appropriate scenarios, showing offensive or defensive behavior in response to normal social interactions from the other rats.

The socialized rats also reacted more aggressively toward them than they did to each other, the only known difference and possible explanation being that they were responding to cues and absent social skills in the rats who had been raised in isolation.

Scientists acknowledged that things might have gone better for the isolated rats if they had been placed in colonies which had greater experience in living as a group, rather than being placed in a colony of strangers who — though raised in a socialized setting and having attained social skills — were each navigating their own challenges in forming a community.

However the differences between the un-socialized rats and their socialized counterparts were still distinct enough to exemplify the impact of upbringing on future social interactions.

Similar case studies of children raised in isolation have yielded nearly identical results — social anxiety, difficulties in fitting in and higher levels of aggression.

Likewise, reversing the affects of isolation has a similar outcome in humans. Social anxiety and integration issues ease with time, however aggressive behavior is usually only addressed with extensive therapy and social issues tend to continue long after an upbringing is left behind.

It’s not necessarily new information. Other studies on social species — monkeys and rabbits among them — have repeatedly shown the importance of early family experiences and the impact that nurturing, or lack thereof, has on personality development.

So, not only are healthy family bonds critical from birth to adulthood, it turns out elements of the human experience just might not be so human after all.

Sharna Johnson is a writer who is always searching for ponies. You can reach her at: [email protected].