Seed Magazine reports on new research indicating that some psychological phenomena transcend species, including post-traumatic stress disorder:
Elephant psychopathology, chimpanzee infanticide and other un-animal-like behaviors are part of a growing body of research that suggests science is building toward a radical paradigm shift. Streams of new data and theories, critically from neuroscience, are converging into a new, trans-species model of the psyche. Humans are being reinstated back into the species continuum that Darwin articulated, a continuum that includes laughing rats, octopuses with personalities, sheep who read emotions from the faces of their family members and tool-wielding crows.
Both the scientific and ethical implications of having a trans-species model of the mind are likely to be staggering. I’m not sure where all this is going, but it sounds like soon scientists will be doing more with elephants than just killing them in increasingly bizarre ways, and that can only be a good thing…
(via BoingBoing. )