On Mar 13, 2004, Sandy wrote:
>A purely unprovoked attack, ...Most animals fear her, before she's
>done or said anything.
>
>I wonder if anyone else knows of anyone else that seems to have the
>same effect on animals?
 
HI -- many animals are very sensitive to scents.  For instance, banana
oil smells rather like isoamyl acetate, which is an alarm pheronome for
hymenoptera (bees and wasps).  If you have recently eaten bananas, bees
will act more agitated near you and are more likely to sting if they
are given cause.  (I did my Master's on aggression in honeybees).
 
One of my ferrets would often -- not always, but often -- attack my hand
when I reached into her cage in the morning.  I started paying more
attention to when she _didn't_ attack, and realized it was usually when
I let them out before taking a shower.  A little experimentation led me
to the conclusion that she will attack if I have used hand cream within
the last twenty minutes or so.  That's not the only factor; the cage
intrusion is part of it.  Without skin cream, she rushes my hand and
burrows her nose in my hand, and will even mouth my hand -- aggressive
moves, but playful too, and it stops short of biting.  If she has been
out awhile, and I put on skin cream, she will go into crazy play mode,
but not actually attack my hand.  It apparently took both factors to
cause a bite.
 
Usually when we say someone provokes an attack, we mean they did
something to scare or threathen the animal.  It's important to realize
that some 'provocation' may be unintentional and blameless, such as
wearing a skin cream.
 
The 'provocation' may also be completely passive - "I'm bored and you're
ignoring me so I'll chomp on your toe and then you'll pay attention to
me".  The only thing you did to get bitten was to ignore them.  Of
course, a bit of training is called for here ('you may climb up my leg
or drag a toy over my toe or even gently try to move my toe into your
hidey-hole but you may not ever ever bite me!')
 
I also once knew a girl who was trying to traiin a monkey.
Unfortunately, the girl couldn't keep from flinching when the monkey
jumped at her, and in primate body-talk, this gave her a low dominance
rank.  All the monkeys ranked lower than all the humans, so she was OK
when dealing one-on-one with the monkey, but as soon as another human
entered the room, the monkey would attack her, as if to say to the other
human 'see, I'm on your side, I'm not with her, I'll attack her for you'.
Anyone who has been through public junior high school is probably
familiar with that particular social dynamic.
 
Anyway, the moral here is that aggressive behavior is always triggered by
something, but what triggers it can be something internal to the animal
and not anything that we would recognize as 'provocation'.  So an attack
may occur that is apparently 'unprovoked', but still has a reason.  A
good way to prevent such incidents is to realize that aggressive behavior
will be triggered sometimes, so teach your ferrets acceptable outlets
for aggression (you may attack a sock but not a person; you may wrestle
another ferret but not bite them, etc.).  Another word for this is
'setting boundaries'.  It really is just like raising two-year olds.
 
TTFN -- Claire
(and Sam the Great White Alpha Weasel, who says '"yeah -- a well-timed
hiss will keep those youngsters in line!" --  the other four are silent
for the moment while the Great One speaks, but I think Louie is setting
up an ambush.
[Posted in FML issue 4451]