Why it’s OK for teens to act like animals
If you think your children have gone a bit wild, you might not be wrong. The authors of a new book about adolescence explain the reasons to LISA SALMON
EXASPERATED parents struggling with their teen’s behaviour may wonder if their adolescent is alone in acting so erratically. The answer, say researchers, is that not only do all human teenagers share similar characteristics, but their typical adolescent behaviour is reflected throughout the animal kingdom.
Now the way human adolescent behaviour is mirrored in animals has been recorded in the new book Wildhood, written after years of research by Harvard University evolutionary biologist Professor Barbara Natterson-Horowitz and science journalist Kathryn Bowers.
The pair studied the four universal challenges every adolescent of every species faces: safety, status, sex, and survival.
“While every individual’s adolescent experience will differ in its details... when we started looking at adolescence across species, a universality presented itself,” they say.
Here, Prof NattersonHorowitz and Kathryn outline four of the behavioural traits human and animal adolescents share.
1. RISK-TAKING
HUMAN teens aren’t the only ones who take more risks and underestimate danger. The ‘problematic’ teenage brain – specifically the late maturation of the prefrontal cortex which by adulthood is able to contain impulses – is often used to explain higher adolescent rates of accidents, injuries and worse.
Strikingly similar brain biology during adolescence in other species pushes young wolves, possums, bears, and birds to take the risks needed to leave their dens, burrows and nests.
But this comes at a cost. Adolescent animals are disproportionately road-killed. Adolescent whales are more likely to be struck by shipping. And adolescent animals have some of the highest rates of becoming prey.
Consider the fledgling king penguins on South Georgia Island. After 15 months of care from parents, these adolescent penguins begin a crucial but hugely risky journey. Predatornaive, pushed by their adolescent brain biology and the presence of their peers, they enter the icy water. They’re easy prey for leopard seals and orcas.
The statistics for fledglings aren’t good. But with experience they do become safer. In several species, adolescent animals exhibit behaviours
which look risky but are actually adaptations to help them stay safer in the long run. Adolescent stickleback fish, bats, Thomson gazelles, and meerkats approach predators. This behaviour, called ‘predator inspection’, is dangerous, but the experience is crucial. The key is finding a way to gain experience while staying safe.
2. SOCIAL STATUS
POPULARITY, Instagram followers,
‘likes’ – today’s teenagers seem obsessed with status. But they aren’t alone. For animal species who live in groups, status is a matter of life or death. In animal hierarchies, high status individuals eat more, live in safer places and reproduce more. They even have stronger immune systems. Animal brains have evolved to signal when status is gained or lost. Like the physical pleasure which rewards animals for actions which increase survival and reproduction – eating and having sex – ‘status pleasure’ rewards animals when they rise up the ladder. The building blocks of the emotional centres in the human brain can be found in the brain status networks in fish, reptiles, birds and other mammals.
3. ROMANCE
AFTER young humans go through puberty, their bodies are capable of creating babies. However, they are many years away from being ready for parenthood. Remarkably, when wild animals go through puberty many will not have sex for years. In some cases, they must learn complex courtship steps, songs, and sequences before they breed. Laysan albatross adolescents practise their courtship for four to five years for example. Novice sexual encounters between moths, horses, elephants and more have been characterised as fumbling and even awkward by wildlife biologists. Humpback whale adolescent males are invited to join choruses of males who loudly croon complex music that draws females to them. In the beginning, the adolescent males don’t sing properly. The songs and sequences of animal courtship are a complex language that takes time to learn. Studies of the sexual lives of young wild animals confirm a species-spanning reality: sex is easy, courtship is hard. Our own adolescents need help too. For them too, learning about the mechanics of sex is relatively easy. Mastering romance is much harder.
4. SELF-RELIANCE
LEAVING home is dangerous for young birds and mammals. While predators are a significant threat, finding enough food is challenging at first. In many species, parents provide preparation – cheetah mothers disable gazelles for young hunters-in-training. But some learning can only happen when a young animal is hungry – literally a do-or-die situation.
In humans and animals, preparation, practice, and hunger transform dependent young animals into selfreliant adults.