The Hear of Evolution: Exploring the Hidden History and Untapped Potential of the Human Animal Bond

In this moving, at times paradigm-altering seminar, best- selling author Linda Kohanov shares some of her latest, and in many cases, surprising insights on the power of the human-animal bond. Through evocative images and moving case studies from around the world, she combines compelling historical, archeological, biochemical, and behavioral research to illuminate a process of mutual transformation that challenges all our previous notions of how and why our ancestors formed close partnerships with animals.

As she reveals in her new book The Five Roles of a Master Herder, growing evidence on the development of the human-animal bond “suggests that the tendency to seek connection, and to offer as well as request mutual aid across species lines, is a part of nature, that ‘life’ does in fact ‘favor and protect life.’ From this perspective, the human-animal bond is not a by-product of civilization or a contrived innovation; it is the heart of evolution in action.” 

The heart, and all it stands for, is not a human invention. It’s a force of nature.

Science prefers to dissect it and repair it. Religion alternately strives to promote it and control it. Art is unabashedly fueled by it. And yet leaders in all these disciplines have tried to hoard the heart’s legendary wisdom by spreading, throughout history, the incessant propaganda that our species is the only one that feels, cares, suffers, yearns, loves---and therefore deserves to thrive at the expense of all the others.

In the late-19th century, the concept of evolution emerged as yet another way to justify callous, opportunistic behavior. Co-opted by aggressive political and business factions that had previously used the Divine Right of Kings and other religious metaphors to control the masses, Darwin’s theory was reduced to slogans that promoted survival of the fittest and competition for limited resources as laws of nature.

The heart was missing in all these endeavors, reinforced by the notion that nature itself was an unfeeling, unintelligent, mechanical process. Darwin’s writings, however, explicitly contrasted with this premise. “There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties,” he wrote in his 1871 book The Descent of Man. As far as emotions were concerned, he also asserted that “the lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness and misery.”

In 2012, “The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness” confirmed this aspect of Darwin’s theory, stating that “non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of consciousness states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness.” The document acknowledged that “neural networks aroused during affective states in humans are also critically important for generating emotional behaviors in animals.” This includes “all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses.”

Research in the late-twentieth century also confirmed that sociability is an important factor in survival and in the ongoing evolution of multiple species. There’s even a bio-chemical basis for this inclination. The hormone oxytocin, present in all mammals, buffers the fight or flight response in favor of “tend and befriend” behavior. This powerful neuropeptide, once thought to be released only in females during labor and milk production, also appears in men when they engage in nurturing activities, including petting and caring for animals.

The wonders of oxytocin have spurred further research into the long- term transformational effects of the human-animal bond itself, leading to an unmistakable conclusion: Caring for others is a “survival principle” that has taken on a life of its own, moving far beyond incidents that occur in parenting direct offspring. Nature has a heart. It’s much more than a fleshy pump. We ignore its vast connecting wisdom at our peril. And we evolve in direct relation to how consciously we embrace it.