I have a friend who is a businessman in southern California who is fascinated by applications of biological principles to society. In fact, he runs his very successful business based on his own interpretations of biological, physical and chemical properties (more on that in a later post). Though he prefers to remain anonymous, he occasionally sends me some fantastic linkages between the natural world and society. Here, I’m passing along an article he sent on “stable vices”, the strange behaviors sometimes exhibited by horses (as well as zoo animals) when held under certain (not necessarily inhumane) conditions:
http://www.usask.ca/wcvm/herdmed/applied-ethology/articles/flannigan.html
My friend raised the interesting point – “can you substitute humans for horses in this article?” In other words, is our increasing physical isolation from nature, and from one another, causing us to exhibit “stable vices”?
