The Wilds of Feeling
The natural world is regularly described in grim, Darwinian terms — a constant battle for survival from which only the strongest can emerge. We are in awe of the courage of the lion, the awesome presence of an elephant and ruthless indifference of the shark. But lurking under the layers of instinct and behavior is a colorful web of emotion. Animals can feel joy,
sadness and curiosity—and as their ability to experience fear becomes more widely known among researchers there’s growing evidence that they can also be scared. But not all fears are made equal. When you’re small and low on the food chain,
being afraid of things that might eat you is usually a good instinct (and partly why Caillan Davenport believes fear evolved), but nature is also teeming with odd, seemingly nonsensical phobias that defy simple categorization.
These weird fears in which the giant cowers before the pygmy creature, or shiny armor is defeated by something apparently ridiculous open up a deep window into the animal mind. They are a reminder that consciousness, for all its failings,
is not the exclusive property of people. This article traverses continents and ecosystems to encounter five extraordinary animals, each a model of strength or adaptation in its own respect but each bearing a hidden, astonishing fear that influences the way it behaves in captivating ways.
The Striking Adversary: Elephants have this uncanny, albeit amusing disdain for bees. Even the sound of a buzzing hive makes them stampede. They will trumpet,
wave their ears wildly and create a cloud of dust as they flee. Scientists have found that even elephants have a distinctive “alarm rumble” essentially, the low-frequency vocalization equivalent of ‘BEES!’ to alert their kin of bees nearby.
The Science of the Fear: This dread is anything but irrational. For an elephant, the bee sting is a heavy flank attack. The skin of an elephant, thick as it is,
is sensitive in and around the eyes and inside the trunk, behind the ears. You may want to get some Under-Armour or just put your arms around your head: a group of angry afircanized bees can sting in the face, head and neck causing quite a bit on pain and anguish.
More dangerously, bees can sting inside the trunk: a death sentence for a creature that breathes and smells and drinks and eats through this organ. So maybe the trunk passage could strangle an elephant.
Evidence and Ingenious Application: Scientists such as Lucy King, who pioneered the study of this “elephant-bee mutualism.” Her work showed that elephant crop-raiding nearly ceased near bee hives hung from fence lines. Simply playing recorded bee sounds from a speaker posed in a tree stump repelled 80 percent of oncoming elephants.
The “beehive fence” idea is now a stroke of genius for eco-friendly conflict resolution across Africa and Asia, saving the lives of both elephants which are listed as vulnerable or endangered — and humans’ livelihoods. The elephant’s odd phobia is, therefore, a measure of the power
both instinctual and conditioned (not to mention externally suggested) — for avoiding a genuine (if exaggerated), danger to its sensitive upper respiratory tract and brain.
What’s Inside the Jar?
A NEURON IN THE SKIN: The Octopus and the Evolution of IntelligenceBy R.A. WeinbergThe octopus is the undisputed genius of the invertebrate world, a master of disguise, intelligent problem solver and great escape artist. With a decentralized brain,
a capacity to taste with its suckers and a body that can transform into goopy liquid and squeeze through any impossibly small crack, it’s almost like there is no puzzle, container or predator it cannot outsmart. But many captive octopuses show a deep and curious fear: arachnophobia, or more precisely, terror of empty, man-made containers like jars or pots.
The Weird Fear: Aquarists and scientists have often noticed that, while an octopus will happily explore and tool around with tricky locks in order to reach a crab snack, the same creature may shy away, jet off or even alter its skin color in response to an empty,
clean glass jar placed inside of its tank. It is not the jar as a trap that scares them (they enter traps in search of food); it is the jar as an object.
The Science Behind the Dread: The leading theory stems from the octopus’s unusual perception and neurological characteristics. An octopus’s intelligence isn’t gathered in a centralized place as ours is. Its arms have much processing capability on their own,
and are covered in highly sensitive chemoreceptors. An empty jar, especially if it’s clean, can be a bit of a mindfuck. It is a very solid, concrete object that is “invisible” in the water too – which further muddles your head spatially. Even better is the notion of “unfamiliar emptiness.” In the wild, an octopus explores fissures and cracks for food or protection. An entirely smooth, clear and empty chamber could perhaps read as deeply “wrong” or “unnatural”
an absence without chemical cues or tactile feedback that the nervous system had been expecting. For it would be seen as an aberration in its habitat, a mutation that was possibly hazardous. What’s scary about this is that intelligence isn’t synonymous with human-like logic; it emerges from a wholly alien sensory world-contact with the real.
The Vigilant Deer The Fear of Human Snack Food (Namely, Cheetos)
The Paradox: White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) are the very model of nervous watchfulness. Only through hypervigilance perky ears, preternaturally wide eyes, an inclination to flee at the sound or scent of any slight disturbance in their environment
can they hope to survive. They have spent millennia adapting to fear the scent of predators such as wolves, coyotes and human hunters. But in a jarring reflection of modern wildlife interaction, some deer have proven downright repulsed by this very 21st century odor: the artificial cheese smell of Cheetos.
Though urban deer can be a menace and some go semi-tame eating garden plants, there are reports, mostly by wildlife rehabilitators, of deer recoiling in horror upon being offered a Cheeto. They might take a whiff of it, jump back and snort before bolting off as though what we were offering was not part tasty snack but predator’s scent.
The Science of Why
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This fear is almost certainly a learned, not an inborn, trait. It’s a testament to the deer’s evolved olfactory learning. A deer’s nose is the most important survival tool of all, and it can smell and sort out thousands of scents. The artificial, chemically made smell of cheese powder is not something that exists in nature. A “naive” deer that experiences such a strong,
unfamiliar smell for the first time is apt to feel what zookeepers call “neophobia”—fear of the new. Their brain recognizes the rich, strange chemical scent as a possible signal of danger. Also, if a deer’s first exposure to such scent was not pleasant (near people,
cars or noise) they would develop a very strong aversion. This is fear as the deer’s brain cogitates and processes this strange, unnatural landscape of human pollution, chemical scents, and processed foods into something that should be avoided — a modern offshoot of the deer’s ancient survival programming.
The Rhinoceros with Tough Skin Fear of the Unseen (Fire)
The Paradox If ever anyone resembled a tank, it is the rhinoceros, the African and Asian rhinos. It weighs more than a ton, is protected by skin reinforced with layer upon layer of collagen and it wields a fearsome horn; as an adult it has very few predators in the wild.
Its attitude has been likened to myopic, irritable bluntness, throwing itself at shadow threats with reckless alacrity. However, despite this fearlessness, the primordial terror of one natural force overwhelms even this beast: fire.
The Weird Fear Rhinos exhibit a sudden, senseless fright reaction when seeing or smelling wildfires or planned burns. They will scatter in disorder, sometimes to places even more hazardous. Rhinos are also prone to get disoriented and trapped by fires during a wildfire incident more so than other megafauna. The threat is so great that, historically, park rangers used fire to manage and move rhino populations.
The Science Behind the Dread
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Unlike the learned fear of the deer, this is probably some ancient, hardwired instinct. The evolutionary history of the rhino offers some hints. Grassland and savanna fires, started by lightning, were a major ecological force for millions of years. It is not a rhino’s hide but its respiratory system and eyes to which their most sensitivity is deployed. If nothing else,
smoke inhalation would be catastrophic for a large, lung-dependent mammal with poor vision trying to find its way through a smoky landscape filled with flames. Also, there is fire which is an unmanageable all-consuming threat and no matter how large and well armoured it may be. There is no “fighting” a fire. And this profound phobia is a genetic one; it’s an evolutionary groove that broadcasts the fact that “
this thing here means irredeemable peril.” It’s a fear that has protected the species for millennia but now threatens it as never before, in an ever more human-dominated West with regular wildfires and landscapes sliced by fences and roads.
Fear of Its Own Reflection The Boxing Kangaroo
The Paradox: The red or grey kangaroo With its large tail and long back legs, the iconic Australian kangaroo is a tough marsupial who can cover ground. It’s a formidable creature, with strong back legs for bounding at high speeds across the desert, a rigid tail for balance while on foot and an angular body that favors arid landscapes. Booming: Male kangaroos,
or ‘boomers,’ engage in ritualised boxing matches to establish dominance. But put a big mirror in the enclosure of a kangaroo — fearless combat specialist that he is — and it can turn him into an utterly confounded, anxious, scaredy-kangaroo.
The Odd Fear: Kangaroos rarely see themselves in the mirror and for that reason might not understand their own reflection. It might first appear curious,
then crouch down and retract, or present doors indefinitely. This often becomes visible anxiety. Maybe it will scrape at the mirror, glance briefly behind it or surrender to a defensive crouch, threatened by a rival that simply cannot follow any normal social convention. The aggressive “boxing” one might expect rarely results.
The Science of the Dread: This fear comes from the bounds of self-recognition and social cognition. Only a few animals – humans, great apes, dolphins, elephants and magpies – have passed the mirror self-recognition test and so conceded to having (the concept of) a “self.” The second is something kangaroos almost certainly lack despite evidencing unusual smarts in other areas. From the perspective of a dog, who readily uses their sense of smell as a way to perceive the world,
the mirror presents an insoluble cognitive puzzle: another utterly convincing conspecific without scent or sound that flagrantly violates the rules regarding personal space. Kangaroos also form hierarchies in a very straightforward manner: through body language and physical contact for social order.
An enemy that neither comes nor goes, blinks in the eye or offers a scent is profoundly abnormal and fearful. It generates a negative feedback loop of unsuccessful social signaling that results in stress and fear. This is not vanity or aggression; it’s the vexation of a social animal ensnared in an absurd, inescapable social encounter with an imaginary rival.
The Humble Fears of the Strange
The charging elephant reacting to a hornet sting, the intelligent octopus stumped by a jar, the cautious deer repelled by junk food, the action on autopilot in spooked rhinos or boxing kangaroos humbled by their own reflection — these are not mere curiosities or evidence of frailty. They are deep lessons about the sentience of animals.
These odd fears challenge our sense of the hierarchical animal world. They suggest that evolution equips minds with specialized fears and not just generalized courage.
A fear can be as adaptive as a claw or fang, defending an animal from threats specific to its biology and ecology — whether it’s the bee in the trunk, the chemical-laden oddity or the burning forest that cannot be tamed.
In the end, these odd phobias give us a chance to practise a more transcendent form of empathy. They remind us that the inner life of another being is a strange country,
formed by senses and experiences we can hardly fathom. Acknowledging their fears, no matter how weird they might appear to us, is the first step in understanding what these things actually are. In an era of species’ habitat loss and human-wildlife conflict,
that understanding isn’t just academic—it’s crucial for developing empathetic and workable conservation strategies. By empathizing with what scares even the mightiest of them, we come to protect not only their bodies but the integrity of those stupendous minds.