A word about oxytocin
It happens a lot in Reptiblr that someone uses “reptiles don’t produce oxytocin” as evidence that reptiles do not experience social bonding or love.
Here’s the thing though: There are some reptiles that do forge cooperative, long-lasting social bonds and they do so in the absence of oxytocin production.
Something is motivating these animals to protect their young (ex. crocodiles), seek out their siblings to bask with (ex. rattlesnakes), stay with one mate for many years or for life (ex. shingleback skinks), or form family groups and adopt unrelated youngsters (ex. monkey tailed skinks) and it isn’t oxytocin.
Essentially oxytocin is not necessary for the formation of all social bonds in the animal kingdom. In fact birds don’t even produce oxytocin, they produce their own homologous “version” of bonding hormone called mesotocin. And reptiles have an equivalent hormone called arginine-vasotocin that regulates things like egg laying (which is why vets sometimes administer oxytocin to egg-bound reptiles to induce laying).
The argument that most reptiles are not social (or at the very least not cooperative) and experience stress when being cohabbed is totally sound and I am not in any way critiquing that argument. Just wanted to point out that using the “they don’t produce oxytocin” as evidence is a bit mammal-centric and not really definitive proof.
Reptiles, including birds, produce an analogous hormone called mesotocin, and fish have their own version called isotocin. There’s more in this article linked and quoted below, which I highly recommend reading if you’re at all interested in the topic (the article linked is actually about fish and isotocin):
If there’s any molecule that is consistently viewed through rose-tinted glasses, it’s oxytocin. This simple hormone has earned misleading but charmingly alliterative nicknames like “hug hormone”, “cuddle chemical” and “moral molecule”. Writers love to claim, to the point of absurdity, that oxytocin increases trust, generosity, cooperation and empathy, among a slew of other virtues.
But while these grandiose claims take centre-stage, a lot of careful science plods on in the background. And it shows that oxytocin affects our social interactions in both positive and negative ways, depending on the situation we’re in, or our personality and disposition. It can fuel conformity as well as trust, envy as well as generosity, and favouritism as well as cooperation. If we sniff the stuff, we might, for example, become more cooperative towards people we know, but less so towards strangers.
Basically, the long and short of it is that all these hormones do is drive the seeking of social interaction, and are more generalised social substances than positive ones. They can fuel negative and aggressive and hostile interactions as much as positive ones, so they should not be used as evidence of anything other than social behaviour existing.
Reblog for the reminder that we shouldn’t be judging everything from human standards.
