Re: Optimism. Humans have really only been on the top of the food chain for this most recent little sliver of our evolution. Our ancestors were the gawky, geeky, socially awkward kids in the table by themselves in the great evolutionary cafeteria of life, and it took us a long, long, long time to drag ourselves to the point where we were hiring the popular kids, like lions and leopards and wolves, to do the grunt work in our vast techonological companies.
I think a specie's social structure is as important as its position in the food chain as to determining its instinctual attitudes towards life. A tiger isn't likely to be happy or carefree because it has no one to help it if it breaks a leg or misses one too many kills or loses its territory to another tiger. Apex predator, but missing the security of strong, individualized social ties. Critters with complex social ties, whose group will protect it, feed it and care for it (ala dolphins, humans, elephants, vampire bats, wolves, hyenas and Andalites) are more likely to come across as less skittish, and more... well, happy, even compared to the sharks/leopards/hawks/cougars that may prey on them. (Granted, there's a gulf between complex social groups and horse herds/flocks of ducks/schools of fish. If a goose is injured, the flock flies on. If a vampire bat is injured, it's brothers/sisters care for it until it's good to go. As someone who's vollunteered with wildlife rehabilitation, allow me to broadly point out that one of these critters is a lot more likely to be chill and easy to deal with than the other.) ...Ahem. Rambling.
What I'm trying to say is that Andalites could have started off skittish and flighty and easily panicked, but as their bodies developed (stalk eyes, tail blades, ect) to allow them to have individual security, and their social group developed to give them interpersonal security, so did their most base and instinctual emotional states, over however many milinea it took for Andalites to become the big blue dorks we know and love today.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2010-03-02 07:00 pm (UTC)Humans have really only been on the top of the food chain for this most recent little sliver of our evolution. Our ancestors were the gawky, geeky, socially awkward kids in the table by themselves in the great evolutionary cafeteria of life, and it took us a long, long, long time to drag ourselves to the point where we were hiring the popular kids, like lions and leopards and wolves, to do the grunt work in our vast techonological companies.
I think a specie's social structure is as important as its position in the food chain as to determining its instinctual attitudes towards life. A tiger isn't likely to be happy or carefree because it has no one to help it if it breaks a leg or misses one too many kills or loses its territory to another tiger. Apex predator, but missing the security of strong, individualized social ties.
Critters with complex social ties, whose group will protect it, feed it and care for it (ala dolphins, humans, elephants, vampire bats, wolves, hyenas and Andalites) are more likely to come across as less skittish, and more... well, happy, even compared to the sharks/leopards/hawks/cougars that may prey on them. (Granted, there's a gulf between complex social groups and horse herds/flocks of ducks/schools of fish. If a goose is injured, the flock flies on. If a vampire bat is injured, it's brothers/sisters care for it until it's good to go. As someone who's vollunteered with wildlife rehabilitation, allow me to broadly point out that one of these critters is a lot more likely to be chill and easy to deal with than the other.)
...Ahem.
Rambling.
What I'm trying to say is that Andalites could have started off skittish and flighty and easily panicked, but as their bodies developed (stalk eyes, tail blades, ect) to allow them to have individual security, and their social group developed to give them interpersonal security, so did their most base and instinctual emotional states, over however many milinea it took for Andalites to become the big blue dorks we know and love today.