Please, I was not talking about the finger incident. But you can include it. I am talking about STRESS.

Your finger incident brought out that each keeper has their own idea as to what stress is.

You made it clear the have opinions on what is and what is not stressful. I will add, what happens when the hog realizes, its your finger and not a mouse??

I will say, the first step is understanding that stress to them is not the same as it is to us. Not anymore. In the past, any thing new was of danger. When we were primitive peoples, so we reacted in a much greater way. Stress can be live or death. Not that it causes it, but that it often causes it, naturally. And we are still dealing with wild natural animals.

I was hoping that someone would break it down to Behavioral stress, physical stress, I would bring up emotional stress, and most likely I should. Which could be anything of a non physical contact that supports a physical response. Fear is an emotion, etc. Adrenalin release is a physical response to fear, an emotion. etc.

With animals, stress is like a computer, its either 1 or 0, positive or negative. Maybe this will start off a conversation.

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