Humans, Dogs and oxytocin (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, September 19, 2015, 18:36 (3352 days ago)

We stimulate the production of oxytocin in our interaction with each other:-http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-hormone-that-bonds-humans-to-dogs-1442503702-"The discovery concerns the mammalian hormone oxytocin, which evolved around 500 million years ago from an ancestral version still found in fish and amphibians. The hormone evolved to play a key role in what makes mammals mammalian. -"Other newborn animals typically fend for themselves: Crocodiles, for example, are catching insects soon after birth. But mammals develop slowly, and mothers have to feed their newborns. Oxytocin evolved to make this possible, prompting mothers who are nursing to produce more milk as their babies demand it. -"Evolving the means to nurse the young was only half the battle. You also have to want to take care of them and to invest zillions of calories in generating milk and fending off predators. And you need to be able to recognize your offspring in a crowd, so you don't waste your energy helping others to leave behind copies of their genes. -***-"Oxytocin helped to solve both problems. Around the time of birth, female mammals release oxytocin in some brain regions, and the hormone allows them to register and recall their offspring's smell, appearance or voice. Oxytocin rewards such maternal behavior with feelings of well-being.-"More oxytocin innovations emerged. In the eons since mammals proliferated on earth, some primate and rodent species independently evolved pair-bonding (that is, sexual and/or social monogamy). In the brain, oxytocin is heavily involved in this as well. And as primates developed complex you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch yours relations, evolution adapted oxytocin to mediate the formation of trust and altruistic feelings toward fellow members of one's group.-***- "Miho Nagasawa of Azabu University in Japan and colleagues observed that modern dogs and their owners secrete oxytocin when they interact with each other. Remarkably, dogs who gaze the most at their humans during interactions had the biggest oxytocin rise—as did their humans. -"The scientists then spritzed oxytocin (or saline, as a control treatment) up the dogs' noses. The oxytocin caused female dogs to gaze more at their humans…whose own oxytocin levels rose as a result. All of this only affected dogs and their owners. Hand-reared wolves and their owners didn't react in the same way to the treatment, and dogs administered oxytocin didn't gaze any longer at humans who weren't familiar to them. In other words, dog and human brains seem to have evolved at lightning speed to co-opt oxytocin for bonding between our species."-Comment: dhw will ask, did God dabble and cause all of this? I doubt it. I think the evolutionary mechanism God gave life did it all by itself.