Why are animals more able to do nothing than we are?
June 21, 2023 5:30 PM Subscribe
I've lived with lots of dogs and cats, and they've all spent a fair portion of their day sitting and doing nothing. I've also lived with lots of people, and they tend to occupy themselves with something whenever they're sitting down.
Why are animals capable of doing this, but not us? Are we giving our pets horribly boring lives? Lions in the wild seem to spend hours lounging too. Does it have something to do with having language, and knowing we're going to die?
Why are animals capable of doing this, but not us? Are we giving our pets horribly boring lives? Lions in the wild seem to spend hours lounging too. Does it have something to do with having language, and knowing we're going to die?
Zen monks regularly sit quietly and without boredom for fourteen hours straight, so humans do have the capacity to do it.
It is something you need to train for however. Stimulation/sensation seeking is an easy mode to fall into and I think is where most of us live.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:01 PM on June 21, 2023 [7 favorites]
It is something you need to train for however. Stimulation/sensation seeking is an easy mode to fall into and I think is where most of us live.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:01 PM on June 21, 2023 [7 favorites]
I do tend to keep something to read or listen to near to hand to occupy my thoughts, but I can sit on the deck with a cup of coffee and watch the trees, too, for quite a while.
Nobody's telling animals they need to achieve more, either. (Maybe somebody is, but they're wrong)
posted by Mister Moofoo at 6:04 PM on June 21, 2023 [4 favorites]
Nobody's telling animals they need to achieve more, either. (Maybe somebody is, but they're wrong)
posted by Mister Moofoo at 6:04 PM on June 21, 2023 [4 favorites]
Best answer: I think we specialized in cooperative child-rearing as a species, so we get much more stimulation from social situations than lions or dogs and cats do. A cat can live just fine as a solitary being, only encountering other cats when they mate. Human beings however care if other people like them and if other people are trying to cheat them, and spend a whole lot of time running analysis of social interactions as a result.
Conversations like this, on the internet is something that cats and dogs and lions would get no reward from. It's a lot less work and time to establish dominance as to who gets first dibs on the carcass they are scavenging, than it is to negotiate that if you put the groceries away when I get home, I will buy the snacks you like, but you better not drink up the last of the milk. This conversation is the result of our enjoyment of social analysis.
Animals conserve their calories, because if you expend 'em carelessly you can end up too weak to forage. So if you don't need to be out there doing stuff, you might as well just laze around. There is a story about some researchers who were tracking lions at night with infrared, chasing them around the savannah in jeeps in the dark. In the evening a bunch of tourists were filing into the hotel and there was a pride of lions sleeping under a tree. That night the lions roamed an average of forty miles and made six or seven attempts to get prey, sending gazelles and such hurtling through the dark, circling and trying again until they got one. By dawn the jeeps had busted tires and the researchers were exhausted. The lions returned to their favourite spots and collapsed at dawn. The tourists came out and complained that for the next sixteen hours they barely budged. Those lazy lions! They barely raised their head until it was dusk again...
Then there is the fact that if I sniff the breeze I might - might - be able to tell by the smell that my neighbour had mowed her grass. My cat however, can tell that raccoons were in the trash again, that the tom next door lost a fight and has an infected sore, that the sparrow fledglings in the tree have hatched, and so on, all while simply lolling on the porch railing in the sun and inhaling. So the cat could be taking in as much fascinating info as you are when you sit on the porch doom scrolling, all while her eyes are closed and she appears asleep.
But I think it is mainly because we can seek stimulation without any risk to ourselves and with very little expenditure of calories, and that we are fascinated by doing social analysis and pattern seeking and problem solving. The same brain that lets us figure out that if we pretend we are fast asleep when the baby is howling our partner will feel sorry for us and get up and deal it, but we can't risk doing it more than twice a week or they will know we are faking, also makes us capable of doing mathematics and enjoying logic puzzles. Our ability to make nice warm nests to keep our babies safe, also gave us the brains and tools to make other stuff. If there is no baby around, we still have the instinct to be making and doing.
It's also worth noting that people do a lot more stuff in our culture than some others because we have a lot of nervous energy. We live in a hustle culture, where you are supposed to have a hobby AND monetize it. Failure to do so could result in homelessness. People are almost frantic a lot of the time. I think they are so anxious that, for many of us doing nothing is painful because we can't turn our brains and our worries off. If I stop and sit and daydream, I might start to think about climate change, or the stupid thing I said in grade four, or I might start to really consider where I stand in terms of dominance challenges compared to the neighbours.... So I would MUCH rather divert my energies to watching episodes of Succession and see where THEY stand in terms of dominance challenges, than ruminate about how un-cool I am, and if I would get more money if I spoke up at work, or if I would be the next one out in the coming round of lay-offs.
But if you have no worries, and no pressure, you might stroll down to the backyard and just kick back and listen to the bird song and let your mind go blank. Being in the moment is something most people struggle to do. I think you have to be very happy and calm and confident to do. I've seen people go into a rage when told to meditate - that to me looks very like a panic reaction.
posted by Jane the Brown at 6:07 PM on June 21, 2023 [46 favorites]
Conversations like this, on the internet is something that cats and dogs and lions would get no reward from. It's a lot less work and time to establish dominance as to who gets first dibs on the carcass they are scavenging, than it is to negotiate that if you put the groceries away when I get home, I will buy the snacks you like, but you better not drink up the last of the milk. This conversation is the result of our enjoyment of social analysis.
Animals conserve their calories, because if you expend 'em carelessly you can end up too weak to forage. So if you don't need to be out there doing stuff, you might as well just laze around. There is a story about some researchers who were tracking lions at night with infrared, chasing them around the savannah in jeeps in the dark. In the evening a bunch of tourists were filing into the hotel and there was a pride of lions sleeping under a tree. That night the lions roamed an average of forty miles and made six or seven attempts to get prey, sending gazelles and such hurtling through the dark, circling and trying again until they got one. By dawn the jeeps had busted tires and the researchers were exhausted. The lions returned to their favourite spots and collapsed at dawn. The tourists came out and complained that for the next sixteen hours they barely budged. Those lazy lions! They barely raised their head until it was dusk again...
Then there is the fact that if I sniff the breeze I might - might - be able to tell by the smell that my neighbour had mowed her grass. My cat however, can tell that raccoons were in the trash again, that the tom next door lost a fight and has an infected sore, that the sparrow fledglings in the tree have hatched, and so on, all while simply lolling on the porch railing in the sun and inhaling. So the cat could be taking in as much fascinating info as you are when you sit on the porch doom scrolling, all while her eyes are closed and she appears asleep.
But I think it is mainly because we can seek stimulation without any risk to ourselves and with very little expenditure of calories, and that we are fascinated by doing social analysis and pattern seeking and problem solving. The same brain that lets us figure out that if we pretend we are fast asleep when the baby is howling our partner will feel sorry for us and get up and deal it, but we can't risk doing it more than twice a week or they will know we are faking, also makes us capable of doing mathematics and enjoying logic puzzles. Our ability to make nice warm nests to keep our babies safe, also gave us the brains and tools to make other stuff. If there is no baby around, we still have the instinct to be making and doing.
It's also worth noting that people do a lot more stuff in our culture than some others because we have a lot of nervous energy. We live in a hustle culture, where you are supposed to have a hobby AND monetize it. Failure to do so could result in homelessness. People are almost frantic a lot of the time. I think they are so anxious that, for many of us doing nothing is painful because we can't turn our brains and our worries off. If I stop and sit and daydream, I might start to think about climate change, or the stupid thing I said in grade four, or I might start to really consider where I stand in terms of dominance challenges compared to the neighbours.... So I would MUCH rather divert my energies to watching episodes of Succession and see where THEY stand in terms of dominance challenges, than ruminate about how un-cool I am, and if I would get more money if I spoke up at work, or if I would be the next one out in the coming round of lay-offs.
But if you have no worries, and no pressure, you might stroll down to the backyard and just kick back and listen to the bird song and let your mind go blank. Being in the moment is something most people struggle to do. I think you have to be very happy and calm and confident to do. I've seen people go into a rage when told to meditate - that to me looks very like a panic reaction.
posted by Jane the Brown at 6:07 PM on June 21, 2023 [46 favorites]
Best answer: Apparently humans are definitely capable of doing nothing, so I think a lot of it is cultural/societal rather than biologically intrinsic.
posted by foxfirefey at 6:14 PM on June 21, 2023 [14 favorites]
posted by foxfirefey at 6:14 PM on June 21, 2023 [14 favorites]
Best answer: More info on the lines of foxfirefey's link.
posted by bricoleur at 7:04 PM on June 21, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by bricoleur at 7:04 PM on June 21, 2023 [3 favorites]
We have enormous prefrontal cortexes that other animals don't. Our big brains want to be occupied with something.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 7:46 PM on June 21, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 7:46 PM on June 21, 2023 [5 favorites]
The amount of time spent doing nothing in the preindustrial West was substantial, it was just distributed oddly to our eyes (after dark and during agricultural off-seasons).
posted by praemunire at 7:55 PM on June 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 7:55 PM on June 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
pretty sure it's learned behavior in both cases
our cats are definitely not content to sit around doing nothing and will wake us up in the middle of the night to put on another Paul Dinning video if their TV goes off
posted by Jacqueline at 9:28 PM on June 21, 2023 [3 favorites]
our cats are definitely not content to sit around doing nothing and will wake us up in the middle of the night to put on another Paul Dinning video if their TV goes off
posted by Jacqueline at 9:28 PM on June 21, 2023 [3 favorites]
We have eaten of the fruit of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which has granted us understanding of Time. Animals live in something closer to an Eternal Now. They understand that seasons change, it's time to mate or bulk up or conserve food during the winter. But they don't really understand time like we do, with a past, present and future that will, someday end.
Time means we can and should plan for more than a season. That we understand death will come and it limits our options. We have a complex society and all things require maintenance in one form or another. We have lists, goals, dreams, needs for the future. There's always that subtle voice that says, this too shall pass.
Animals take in what they need to thrive in the Now. And they can learn and memorize things. Who feeds them, who is safe, and so on. But they have significantly less cognitive and emotional and physical drives to be doing something quite like humans do.
posted by Jacen at 11:40 PM on June 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
Time means we can and should plan for more than a season. That we understand death will come and it limits our options. We have a complex society and all things require maintenance in one form or another. We have lists, goals, dreams, needs for the future. There's always that subtle voice that says, this too shall pass.
Animals take in what they need to thrive in the Now. And they can learn and memorize things. Who feeds them, who is safe, and so on. But they have significantly less cognitive and emotional and physical drives to be doing something quite like humans do.
posted by Jacen at 11:40 PM on June 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
bricoleur’s link was really fascinating. Leisure (your cat resting, or a modern hunter-gatherer hanging out at camp) can be an energetic requirement.
In lions, rest time allows recovery from the higher level of energy required to hunt at other times. In human hunter-gatherers, same thing. The article bricoleur posted is by a researcher who has done the metabolic research with modern hunter-gatherers to measure actual energy usage to back this up.
(Also the accounting that hunter-gatherer societies had very low amounts of work is off in several ways; it did not count at-camp work nor did it account for high-labor periods; according to the article, a more correct accounting gives a 40-45 hr work week.)
posted by nat at 12:00 AM on June 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
In lions, rest time allows recovery from the higher level of energy required to hunt at other times. In human hunter-gatherers, same thing. The article bricoleur posted is by a researcher who has done the metabolic research with modern hunter-gatherers to measure actual energy usage to back this up.
(Also the accounting that hunter-gatherer societies had very low amounts of work is off in several ways; it did not count at-camp work nor did it account for high-labor periods; according to the article, a more correct accounting gives a 40-45 hr work week.)
posted by nat at 12:00 AM on June 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
After many years of working at home with dogs, I think it boils down to two things:
1) metabolism - dogs are meant for short intense bursts of activity, otherwise sleeping significantly more than we do
2) sensory occupation - I think my dogs occupied a lot of their awake time listening (until they got so old their hearing went) and smelling. Like me sitting here at my computer with five social media platforms refreshing in the background, reading Metafilter, playing a youtube video about gardening, and vaguely thinking about work, I think my dogs occupied themselves listening and smelling, and watching when they could, all the stories going on around them.
When my girls were in their last months, in poor health, not highly mobile anymore, one of the things we'd treat them with was "sniffs" - trips out into the front yard where they had never spent any real time, sometimes walks just around the driveway to sniff our cars, down to the sidewalk where all the neighborhood animals pass. Sometimes they'd find a really fascinating spot and just stand there, nose twitching, until they were tired and wanted to go back in.
But all their lives (okay, post-adolescent lives, they were freaking troublemakers when they were young and bored), we did appreciate their ability to go into "power-saver mode" - if it was raining, if we weren't home, when they were unwell - sometimes for days on end, if that's just what needed to happen.
posted by Lyn Never at 6:28 AM on June 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
1) metabolism - dogs are meant for short intense bursts of activity, otherwise sleeping significantly more than we do
2) sensory occupation - I think my dogs occupied a lot of their awake time listening (until they got so old their hearing went) and smelling. Like me sitting here at my computer with five social media platforms refreshing in the background, reading Metafilter, playing a youtube video about gardening, and vaguely thinking about work, I think my dogs occupied themselves listening and smelling, and watching when they could, all the stories going on around them.
When my girls were in their last months, in poor health, not highly mobile anymore, one of the things we'd treat them with was "sniffs" - trips out into the front yard where they had never spent any real time, sometimes walks just around the driveway to sniff our cars, down to the sidewalk where all the neighborhood animals pass. Sometimes they'd find a really fascinating spot and just stand there, nose twitching, until they were tired and wanted to go back in.
But all their lives (okay, post-adolescent lives, they were freaking troublemakers when they were young and bored), we did appreciate their ability to go into "power-saver mode" - if it was raining, if we weren't home, when they were unwell - sometimes for days on end, if that's just what needed to happen.
posted by Lyn Never at 6:28 AM on June 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
Their brains are MUCH smaller and MUCH smoother than ours. And in the case of cats, they are also very very sleepy.
posted by tiny frying pan at 9:42 AM on June 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by tiny frying pan at 9:42 AM on June 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
I think higher sleep needs is a big part of it. My dog sleeps around 12 hours a day. When he's not sleeping, he's often grooming himself, chewing on a bone, watching me, sniffing around the house/yard, or socializing at the dog park/on walks. He's older - when he was a puppy/adolescent, he spent a lot more time playing but also more time sleeping. I'd say he's really only spacing out a few hours a day, if that? He's also a pretty high-energy herding dog mix so he may be less inclined to just doing nothing than other breeds. Even when he's "on idle" he seems to be on alert.
posted by lunasol at 12:32 PM on June 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by lunasol at 12:32 PM on June 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
Because we do so much for them. My dog can sleep 23 hours a day because I'm the one washing his blankets, preparing his food, carrying around his poop, and arranging his activities. It's like comparing a decadent french king to a peasant.
Cats out of doors are pretty active, so are animals like deer. Lots of animals don't spend all day just lying around doing absolutely nothing because they have to hunt their own food, work in their dens etc.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:20 AM on June 23, 2023
Cats out of doors are pretty active, so are animals like deer. Lots of animals don't spend all day just lying around doing absolutely nothing because they have to hunt their own food, work in their dens etc.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:20 AM on June 23, 2023
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posted by phunniemee at 5:53 PM on June 21, 2023 [45 favorites]