Keep Your Lizard Brain Away from My Rat Brain
Perhaps we can learn about human behavior by examining other animals in the past.
There was a TV commercial where the actor complained, “you spilled peanut butter in my chocolate!”
In a similar way I think we are stuck with very confused human brains because of all the mixed baggage from our past. I decided to tell the story of why we act the way we do based on our ancient genetic inheritance.
We all started as a lump of protoplasm (Prokaryotes) the contained the spark of life and sat motionless absorbing nutrients. This can explain why we sit like a lump on the couch watching a show like our spineless ancestors.
Eventually, our predecessors (Eukaryota) developed the ability to wave their flagella and move to where the food was. So, today we constantly head to the kitchen and raid the refrigerator. But, if there’s just a little left in the jar we avoid emptying it, because we don’t want to take it to the sink and rinse it out.
By the time we developed fins (Chordata) to guide us more accurately when traveling around, we evolved what we needed to get us out of the house to seek employment and entertainment.
Crawling out of the ooze (Tetrapoda) was a difficult transition. We still aren’t comfortable in the sun. We have to wrap ourselves in clothing, put hats on, shoes, and suntan lotion to protect our soft coverings. Our lizard brain lead us to snap at others and react to sensory input emotionally. We laugh when someone trips on a TV show or movie pratfall. We cry when Harry doesn’t get Sally.
Our herd animal (Boreoeutheria) phase has led us to follow a leader like sheep. We can’t help listening to the loudest bleat/tweet we hear.
From our rat (Euarchontoglires) ancestors we learned to throw our weight around. Rats determine who is alpha by displays of aggression. Also the next time you meet a hoarder, you can remember they are acting out ancient behaviors like our bewhiskered friends, and besides you can never have enough cheese.
Our monkey (Haplorrhini) phase was a scary time for us. Everything was trying to eat us. We had to be on the lookout for colors and movements. Ever since then, we have been easily distracted by shiny, jingly keys.
When we were chimp-like (Hominidae) we spent our time hooting at each other. Jane Goodall described chimps as making facial expressions including lip flips, pouts, sneers, and compressed-lips face. So, now you know why teens need lots of emoticons on their phones.
Remember, each day, when you are trying to understand why your friends are acting kooky, they are just channeling the strange lessons they’ve learned over the eons since we crawled out of the ooze.
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