Alan Alda in Scientific American Frontier's Worried Sick
The Primates' Stress Club
It's
not easy being an antelope. You could be grazing peacefully
one minute, fleeing a hungry predator-literally running for
your life-the next. That's why mammals have evolved a physiological
response to stress that enables them to devote all their efforts
to running away from danger. Called the "fight or flight"
response, hormones released by a stressful situation increase
blood pressure, blood flow and heart rate while quickly mobilizing
extra energy. At the same time many of the body's other systems
are shut down.
Like humans, most of baboons' stress comes from social
interactions.
Sound familiar? Maybe you experienced a similar feeling the
last time you had to speak in public, go to the dentist or
take a challenging test. That's because social situations
can trigger the fight or flight response in primates-the biological
family that includes humans, apes and monkeys.
In
"The Primates' Stress Club," Alan meets Stanford
University researcher Robert Sapolsky, who has studied the
complex rules of baboon social life for thirty years. For
baboons-smart, successful primates with no real enemies- competing
for social position turns out to be a major source of stress.
Sapolsky uses blood samples to measure tress hormones.
In
Kenya's Masai Mara reserve, Sapolsky watches as two males
engage in a silent, psychological battle. Only someone with
a trained eye would even know the baboons had duked it out.
Sapolsky has spent decades observing baboon behavior and taking
blood samples to look for stress hormones. As a result of
such "psychological nonsense" as he calls it, baboons -- and
people -- experience extreme fight or flight stress responses.
But
while antelope physiology returns to normal as soon as the
danger has passed, primates can remained stressed out over
the long term.
"Those stress hormones can be a very good thing for that 10-second
sprint," says Sapolsky, "But do it chronically and they can
be very damaging." .
For
more on this topic at the PBS site see the feature: What's
Your Type
