Animals are not truely animals...learn this

A question was asked as why the parental care instinct is not that well pronounced among domestic animals when compared to their respective counterparts in the jungle. The question has its meaning and answer very deep. One has to look at the situation and understand it from the management perspective and not from the point of view of evolution; only then such quarry would benefit the corporate at large.

All domestic animals have lost their 'originality', 'purity' and 'sacredness' of their creation when man had intervened in their life. It is widely believed that the innate or instinct behaviour succumbs to the learned traits and man being one best example.

Human behaviour is presumed to be dominated by the learned traits than his instinct traits. On the contrary, animals are said to be driven largely by their instincts than the learned traits. Although animals may use learned traits but never allow such traits to forbid their instincts.

Man may simply say a street dog or the cats in the backyard as animals. Of course the cow, buffalo, horse and pig in the farm are also called as animals. But one need to ask how true is the statement that they are all animals.

Procreation and parental care are the two basic instincts of all life forms on earth. How such instinct can get modified or changed? The parental care instincts of all domestic animals in general are 'weak', 'vague' and 'indifferent' when compared to their wild counterparts. How such change is possible?

The above phenomena indicates two possibilities viz.,

1. Animal life is not truly dominated by instinct behaviour as thought to be

2. The learned behaviour may compel the innate behaviour not to function when its necessity is not there

The threat from other animals are almost absent in the case of these domestic animals and hence a strong parental care behaviour is not seen in these animals. Perhaps, the learned behaviour may be redefining and modifying the innate behaviour to an extent not to express as such expression carry no significance or need. Example, the strong parental care is not required for animals in the domestic surroundings. But the situation is different for the animals in the jungle.

Remember the corporate conditioning can change and modify the creative talents of the employees. HR must be very vigilant to know what extent the corporate culture interferes in the creative potential of the employees. The employees also need to do introspection as what extent their inborn talents and urges are killed or malnourished by the corporate conditioning. If you allow such conditioning to affect you, you will become like an animal that has lost its instincts.

When the basic instincts are changed, the domestic animals may still be taking care of young ones but with least commitment and care. Similarly, in most corporate, the talented people will be doing their job with least creativity or innovativeness. Corporate should inculcate the culture that should nurture and not negate the talents and creativity.

Any observation from nature can teach you a lot. All you need is passion and openness to include and involve nature education into the mainstream of corporate management.

Ref: Management book - Jungle wisdom for corporate management – lessons from university of nature by Swami Sukhabodhananda and Dr S Ranganathan

Dr S Ranganathan, ClinRise Derma Pvt., Ltd.