I am listening to "The Well-Dressed Ape" by Hannah Holmes. I read her "Secret Life of Dust" and got all kinds of fun and insight. Well dressed Ape compares and contrasts the humans with other species. Holmes is the daughter of a pair of biologists and has had many experiences with other animals: farm, pet and exotic. She is careful not to get too adulatory about us but even she says what Robert Sapolsky says in "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers": our minds comprehend more and make up stories that scare us more. She says and he says that when animals are under threat, such as when a group of hungry female lions is chasing a zebra, they kick into flight or fight response but drop the excited state when they aren't in danger.
What I want to know is how sure we can be that other animals don't have nightmares, unfounded and purely mind fears, and such difficulties. Franz de Waal has that book "Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?" I am interested that for many primitive peoples, the idea is that we, whoever we are, are THE people and humans probably began with us. Another way of looking at similar ideas is to see our arts and language and communications as the height of skill and development and assume that nuthatches and voles and coyotes are simpler, less-stressed organisms. They may indeed be, but I wonder.
When I watch squirrels and crows at the bird feeder, I think I see caution, tentative touching, nervous exploration and fear. Chipmunks seem physically unable to move slowly. I would not be at all surprised if further evidence revealed that we humans have more moments of relaxed feelings of warmth, safety and well-being that most of the other animals ever have.
We know about stress but the concept has been medically important for a fairly short time. We can get all worked up over marks on a paper that say we are overdrawn or about to be evicted. I can get all kinds of nervous when I get an anonymous letter that threatens me. But I have funds, police, locks, physicians and aspirin. The animals out there don't and I wonder how calm and peaceful their lives are. I read in The Covenant of the Animals that cattle and sheep have better lives as domesticated beasts than they had out in the forest and plains.
