We’ve all noticed and experienced the phenomenon that when we’re hurt, we yell. When we stub our toe, hit our thumb with a hammer, or burn ourselves, we often let out a bloodcurdling scream. People who are pushed off buildings do it, too—at least in the movies.
Yet when we experience intense pleasure, we don’t let out such vociferous yells. Yes, some people make loud noises during orgasm, but you don’t scream when you drink a delicious wine, have a bite of a wonderful meal, see a great painting, or suddenly come across a beautiful landscape or sunset. In other words, yelling is asymmetrical with the nature of feeling: it comes with pain but not with pleasure. And we also yell when we’re startled: notice what kids do when someone jumps out behind a chair and says “boo”, or we suddenly spot a big tarantula close by.
I was wondering about all this after I recently stubbed my foot on a chair in the dark, and uttered a loud “OUCH.” And of course I began speculating whether this response might be evolutionary. I’m not an evolutionary psychologist, and I’ve been a critic of its more facile forms—including unsupported “adaptive story telling”—but it exercises my mind to devise evolutionary explanations for behaviors. What I’m about to suggest is thus largely tongue in cheek, but I proffer it nonetheless.
My hypothesis (which is mine): Humans yell when they’re hurt or surprised because they want to call attention to their plight in hopes that nearby humans could help them.
Before anybody calls me a rampant and unthinking adaptationist, let me add that I thought at first this might be a reasonable hypothesis, but upon reflection don’t think it’s very good. Here are some arguments against it:
- Humans yell when there’s no hope for them, as when falling off cliffs or they’re alone. (But this, of course, could just be an automatic response from genes that say “yell when you’re in trouble, for sometimes it helps”).
- Other animals that aren’t social yell when they’re hurt, as with squirrels or rabbits when caught by a predator. There’s no evolutionary advantage I can see to this—with the possible exception that uttering a loud cry might startle the predator and induce it to temporary loosen its hold, giving you a second chance to live and pass on your genes.
- But animals that have no predators, like dogs, also yell when they’re hurt. Everybody’s seen a dog yelp when it’s hurt. But do elephants do something similar?
I’m sure readers can come up lots of other counterevidence.
These ideas make two predictions: social animals will make more noise than nonsocial relatives when they’re in trouble or in pain. Or, if screaming when caught is an adaptation to startle your predator (after all, lots of animals have physical adaptations to do this), then animals that are less susceptible to predators would make less noise.
In the end, it’s likely that, given the ubiquity of shrieking among animals that have voices, I think that yells of surprise or pain may simply be an epiphenomenon: a nonadaptive reaction that may somehow be a byproduct of our neural wiring. But still . . . .maybe there’s something to it.
What it goes to show, too, is that you can concoct an adaptive story for almost any behavior. And I’m pretty sure that someone has written about this before, though I’m just guessing.
Startle defenses– when the prey does something off-putting to distract or annoy the predator– are well known. Urinating, defecating, and releasing water (not urine) from the bladder are among the forms. I’m most familiar with toads, which, when grabbed, can release a fairly copious amount of liquid. If I had grabbed a toad with my mouth, I would have surely let it go. Yelling could be another form of startle defense.
Dogs and other large predators do have predators– bigger cats (lions go after hyenas). Plus many dog species are social, and a yelping dog can attract other members of its pack.
Ah, I see you’re what Steve Gould once called me: “a hidebound adaptationist”.
And don’t forget that large predators, solitary species, & other species like elephants w/o enemies were, in every case, once young and under care from mama. Vocalizing then when in distress would be adaptive.
Actually, this might be the general reason: we yell ‘ouch’ now b/c it was evolutionarily adaptive to do so when we were young and needed help from a parent.
Ah, you beat me to it. Ignore my later comment.
Just what I was going to suggest.
Yes- I’m reminded of the fact that a 10-lb largemouth bass will exhibit many of the “hiding” behaviors as an adult (when it may have no enemies big enough in the pond to endanger it) as it does as a fry; in that case it benefits in two ways, as these behaviors lend themselves to “ambush predation”.
A ‘left over’ from the infant stage where crying out garners attention from a parent?
That’s a good epiphenomenal explanation, and it’s pretty certain that babies are selected to cry (and cry loudly and annoyingly) to get the attention of their parents when they’re hungry (just as little kids cry when they’re hurt).
I like this hypothesis. Cry-babies everywhere thank you.
That was my hypothesis also. However, I think it would be a mal-adaptive trait in adults (alerting predators to an injured adult). But in the long run, if the pros out weighed the cons, it very well could be an adaptive trait. I’m no biologist, but it seems to me empirical data could be gathered comparing species who “cry out” when injured and those that don’t comparing infant and adult mortality rates involving injuries and predation.
If an animal that is being mauled or swallowed yells, it may attract predators of whatever is swallowing it. The resulting agitations may allow the victim to escape.
Somewhere I read some evidence that this actually works.
I remember finding a tropical snake by tracking down the screaming frog it was swallowing. This has happened to me several times.
Frogs can scream surprising loud. One day my kids anxiously insisted I follow them out into the backyard and over the berm into the brush where there was a loud, persistent screaming. The kids where too unnerved to investigate by themselves. After searching I finally found a rat snake working on swallowing a frog. I was astounded by the sound and volume of the frogs screaming.
I was just thinking of animals that do not receive parental care as young and can vocalize well – thank you for the frogs!
My hypotheses:
1. Kin selection by alerting other members of the population for a predator or another mortal danger.
2. Not adaptive but rather a by-product of a massive, quick stream of air pushed by the overwhelmed nervous system through the vocal apparatus.
Unfortunately, I cannot think of an experimental setting to check either hypothesis.
I was thinking the alerting others was plausible as well. Lots of animals emit sounds when they spot danger that can just alert the predator to their location (squirrels and chipmunks, birds).
This was my first thought too. Perhaps it hints at a methodology for teasing apart multiple contributing motivations: do social animals vocalize more often or more loudly than solitary animals when bitten by a snake?
I don’t think it has to do with alerting others. First, I don’t think it helps another frog to be warned about a snake that just had a meal and may not eat again for a week. There is too much delay between the warning and the possible benefit. Second, the frog’s call when being eaten is at a very different frequency that the frog’s own mating calls to others of its species, suggesting that it is not optimized for frogs’ ears. The experiences described above suggest that it really is optimized to draw the attention of big vertebrates. I am pretty sure this is to draw predators.
The only problem I have with “left over” idea is why would it continue with greater degree in the female than the male? Only an observation and nothing scientific here but this continuation with noise when suddenly scared or hurt seems much more prevalent in the female.
Well, you obviously have not met my big, strong, muscular male dog who is a total crybaby b/c sometimes we do not want him to sit on us when we are on the couch.
I should have specified Human. However, I can say the same about my male cat. I stepped on his tail once and I have never heard anything like that.
With humans, it could very well be a matter of socializing. Men are often taught from a young age to hide pain and fear, that it is “unmanly” or “makes you a pussy” to cry or seek help.
Yeah and I was slapped for crying so don’t do it very often (seriously, slapping a child for crying only makes it cry harder).
Interesting. I, too, was slapped for crying. It’s a vivid memory, one I’ve recently shared with a few people, and may be a defining moment from childhood. I’ve never thought about how it may have conditioned my subsequent responses to pain, nor the reflex to yelp. I know I tend to downplay the seriousness of physical injuries. I don’t think I cried out in pain when hit by a car, for example, and, despite wounds, turned away help in favor of dealing with my situation when I could handle it–alone. Though, just a few minutes ago, a cursed under my breath when I whacked my hand accidentally on a table during a meeting. The curse evoked a sympathetic facial expression. So, crying with tears may be different from reflex yelping. . .
Then what about this:
Tennis Grunts
I don’t grunt, but I make the face of anguish when biking or running hard.
I firmly believe that a lot of tennis grunts are about putting off the other player. There are one or two who don’t even grunt in rhythm with their own stroke, but a bit off kilter, which is even more annoying.
Some of it is attributable to physical exertion, but most of it is learned behavior. It seems to have started in the Jimmy Connors era; then was raised to a high art form by Monica Seles. The Monica-wannabees in junior tennis then adopted it, and it has now become ubiquitous.
Weight-lifters grunt. I grunt carrying out the garbage, but that’s more to let my wife know I’m doing something around the house.
Yeah, I don’t do much around the house, but I let out a random grunt every once in a while to give the impression I do.
Not sure if it counts as an evolutionary advantage, but it might’ve helped me get my genes into the next generation.
I whine, out loud “ohhhhhh I hate this hill!”
That reminded me of this recent work @ my alma mater:
“In a pioneering study, researchers from Uppsala University, Sweden and James Cook University in Australia and have found that small prey fish caught by predators release chemical cues that acts as a ‘distress call’, dramatically boosting their chances for survival.
Fish harbour a chemical substance in their skin that is released upon injury. It triggers fearful and escape behaviour in nearby fish, but until now scientists hadn’t identified the benefits to the sender.
‘For decades, scientists have debated the evolutionary origin of chemical alarm cues in fish,’ says study lead author, Dr. Oona Lönnstedt, fish ecology researcher at Uppsala University.
Although fright responses to alarm cues provide obvious benefits to surrounding individuals, benefits to senders of alarm signals have been unclear, according to Dr. Lönnstedt.
But the new study found that the chemical cue attracts additional predators to the capture site.
‘Chemical alarm cues in fish seem to function in a similar way to the distress calls emitted by many birds and mammals following capture,’ says study co-author Professor Mark McCormick from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University.”
“‘When caught by a predator, small damselfish have almost no chance of escaping their fate as the predator’s next meal. However, when another fish predator is attracted to the capture site, prey will escape about 40 percent of the time’ Professor McCormick says.
This is dramatic proof that chemical alarm cues are beneficial to senders – and give small prey fish a hugely increased chance of not ending up as dinner.
‘These findings are the first to demonstrate an evolutionary mechanism by which fish may benefit from the production and release of chemical alarm cues, and highlight the complex and important role chemical cues play in predator-prey interactions on coral reefs. It all goes to show that coral reef fish have evolved quite a range of clever strategies for survival which are deployed when a threatening situation demands,’ Dr. Lönnstedt says.
The study is being published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Lönnstedt OM and McCormick MI (2015) Damsel in distress: captured damselfish prey emit chemical cues that attract secondary predators and improve escape chances, Proc. R. Soc. B. 20152038, http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2015.2038”
[ http://www.uu.se/en/media/news/article/?id=5466&area=2,5,10,16&typ=artikel&lang=en ]
If you hurt yourself, do you yell in Swedish, or English?
Learning to swear in a foreign language can be valuable. One summer I worked as a house painter. While climbing a ladder on a beautiful Sunday morning , I dropped an open can of paint onto the paved driveway below me. Fortunately, my involuntary exclamation came out in Italian, for after I yelled, I noticed the neighbors enjoying their coffee on their patio.
Yep. I may not be exactly multilingual, but I can curse up a storm in several languages.
Cursing in a foreign language has many benefits. It does not feel as vulgar, but it can have the sincerity of wanting to say something bad. It is also inherently less offensive to most people. This is especially true if I curse at my undisciplined kids in public, something I would never do in English.
Yeah, I wouldn’t curse out loud at my undisciplined kids in public either. I’d snarl it under my breath, accompanied by the slit-throat semaphore, when I was sure nobody was looking.
I think cursing is better in German.
$@?! if I know!
More seriously that depends on the context, if I am thinking in Swedish or English at the moment or if I am otherwise prompted to articulate in English. Else cursing in Italian or German sounds fun, so that happens too… =D
Amphibians are in on the act, too. This one came out after I retired.
Very nice, another source for #TIP project http://www.tortucan.wordpress.com (which is on the methodology of creationism and how it is distinguished from sound analytical method) as it illustrates how the scientific imagination works, seeking explanations for data (as contrasting to the lack of such curiosity and gumption in the antievolution field). Will keep track of related material on this theme.
Two thoughts:
1)Young animals often have a distress call so that their mother (typically) will come and comfort them. An adult distress call might just be ‘left over’ from an earlier time. Have you noticed how a young child’s cry in a shop has many adults heads turning?
2) Even if screaming when being seized by a predator has little use to the individual other family members might benefit from the warning… this is not ‘group selection’ but gene selection of those genes that work together to increase the overall numbers of those particular genes in the population.
Perhaps it is part of a general fight or flight type response. Usually when I have been hurt or scared enough to yell out spontaneously, fight or flight response seems like a pretty good description of what I am experiencing. Increased heart and breathing rates, adrenaline spike and everything that goes with that.
Even if it is one part of a general fight or flight response, was the audible outburst directly selected for or is it a byproduct? Perhaps it is merely a non-adaptive consequence of a complex meat machine being suddenly jolted into overdrive?
Interestingly, I do often yell something when I am suddenly and unexpectedly subjected to a high level of pain, but I don’t ever yell when I am startled / scared. I am instantly amped, but I don’t yell out.
I don’t make a noise when I’m startled or scared either, although all the adrenaline, heightened awareness etc occurs.
As for pain, it depends on the type of pain, but I rarely make a noise then either. Most of the pain I suffer no one can do anything about anyway, so even if anyone was around, I’d feel like I was just being annoying and attention seeking.
I’m mostly alone, and have been for a long time, so my brain has probably learned noise is a waste of energy. I have noticed though that when pain is particularly bad and occurs suddenly, I can’t help but make a noise.
I was thinking mostly of involuntary reactions. I do sometimes, maybe even often, make voluntary noises after a sudden, unexpected painful incident. Typically noises like ##!@@$^&@^^!@! that includes lots of Ss, Fs and Us. My wife usually laughs at me.
I mainly meant involuntary reactions too. But I swear out loud when I do stupid stuff, and that’s entirely voluntary.
I like the sound of your wife. 🙂
Me too. 🙂
I’ve often found yelling out spontaneously to be the better part of valor in fight-or-flight situations …
Even if yelling when hurt started as merely an inevitable result of having the breath squeezed out of you, this yelling does useful things and could easily (I think) be made a consistent reaction to hurt or fear by selection.
Cries by baby mammals or birds alert parents to potentially dangerous situations and can bring them running, especially if the parents can harm predators. Cries can also, for example, cause a sow that’s lying on her piglets to shift, often giving them the chance to get out of the way.
Cries by adults may bring help (e.g. people) but may also contribute to inclusive fitness by causing the flock to scatter and flee the danger. A sudden cry may cause a conspecific to step back, ending some hurt due to crowding. It may startle a predator.
On the down side, the cry may attract a predator. That could set up selection for silence. (For what it’s worth, I find that though I cry out when startled with a frequency that amuses my colleagues, but when really afraid I go silent and still, almost paralyzed. Strange but potentially useful, I think.)
It would be interesting but difficult (and perhaps ethically questionable) to study the context of crying out in animals of different sociality, dangerousness vs vulnerability, and age, but I suppose that’s how one would best get at whether this behavior is likely to be selected.
“…and uttered a loud ‘OUCH.’ ”
Really? Or is this the Bowdlerized version, a la Huck Finn? Be honest now….
Asterisks, ampersands & exclamation points omitted. (Like “expletive deleted” in Nixon’s Watergate transcripts.)
Is there an evolutionary explanation for the fact that you usually scream, shout and/or swear when a micros**t machine/package crashes?
Actually it reduces the pain –
On the Importance of Being Vocal: Saying “Ow” Improves Pain Tolerance
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1526590015000322
Mythbusters did a show on this. Seemed to show that the more explicit the exclamation the better it did in reducing the perception of pain. So saying “shit” instead of “crap” would be more effective.
I am vindicated!
Does the palliative effect hold if the curse is administered preventatively?
I many never experience pain again.
Its anecdotal, but…I’m a counter-example. I don’t yell when hurt. What I do is babble at a regular decibel level. Now I’ve never undergone torture or anything like that, so I haven’t tested the full extent of my non-yelling (nor do I intend to). But during my life I’ve had two sudden painful injuries, separated by about 7-8 years, and I didn’t reflexively yell during/in response to either one.
I’m not completely disputing that there’s a ‘nature’ component. I agree there is. But IMO there’s also a ‘nuture’ component to how you react to pain. You socially observe others while you’re a kid, and in doing so you learn how humans are ‘supposed to/expected to’ react to pain, and you ape (heh) the behavior that you see. Of course this might also put me in the ‘hidebound adaptationist’ camp, as there would be an adaptational value in learning to react to pain in a way that your social troup/clan/whatever interprets as ‘I need help.’
Hmm in the spirit of offering speculative hypotheses, I guess the prediction that separates mine from Jerry’s is: my hypothesis predicts you should be able to find groups of social animals (including possible human ‘tribes’ or cultures) that use some other signal for ‘I’m in pain.’ But that the choice of signal will be connected to culture. IOW the weirdoes should occur mostly in groups rather than being randomly scattered amongst a larger population. And no, I’m not going to hit my dad on the thumb with a hammer in order to test my ‘nurture/group learning’ hypothesis. 🙂
My response to pain is not to yell but to loudly mention some bad words. If the pain is bad enough I might repeat them again, as if no one heard the first time. Very primitive I’m afraid.
You missed your calling with the Stoics, eric.
“Does it sound anything like this?“
Apparently there is a “Institute for Screamscape Studies”. Dunno what the quality of their work is.
A counter to your second paragraph: The double rainbow guy – although I’m sure this went viral precisely because it was such an over the top reaction.
Either he’s on drugs or his experience level is log 0.
Do you know how to spell – LSD
A rainbow isn’t there…!
I mean, it is in the eye of the beholder…
I laugh when I hurt myself. Am I the only one? or I don’t react. I have to fake scream when my nieces or nephew jump, elbow or knee certain parts of my anatomy
Sometimes I do that. I also almost always sneeze silently. I have no idea why.
I also laugh when I’ve hurt myself seriously. I think it’s because you’re it a real state of shock. I remember giggling like a loon when I broke my spine and heels after a fall and couldn’t stand up. (I’m lucky, I’m still walking)
Lucky – thanks be to Ceiling Cat! I think you are right.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/snow-white-doesnt-live-here-anymore/201304/laughing-the-scary-stuff-humor-and-fear
With some herd animals, the scream might serve to summons other members of the herd to facilitate an escape — as it did with the African buffalo in this video. (And ain’t that the damnedest video you’ve ever seen?)
some animals go very quiet when hurt, maybe not from a sudden hurt,like a blow, but if , say, an ailment, broken bone, or dying. I think it is an attempt to not call attention to itself in a weakened condition, knowing it cannot evade predators.
The lack of smell of some newborn animals would be an interesting study…prbably already done! Do newborns offer limited smell to just its main predators? Or to all? Young puppies have a very specific smell to us but not for a couple of weeks. Is that an ID for mum? What does that mean to other animals, if they smell it, too. Does it cover the newborn smell – to predators?
So many indications of status….fascinating.
Mammals squeal when hurt because…
Mothers.
Just doesn’t go away with age.
Sound generated by an animal is generally meant to be heard. That’s my postulate. Who might hear a sound response to pain? A parent, others in the group, an attacker or enemy. I think it’s to call attention of a potential helper, as you suggest; it could also be a general indication to other group members that something is amiss and they should be on their guard. It’s a sudden change in the status quo.
The other side of the coin is curiosity. An animal hears a sound and is motivated to investigate. Some sounds are hard-wired, some learned, some unfamiliar. All deserve attention. Other sounds the animal learns to tune out. We also do that.
Just watch what happens when a kitten or puppy shrieks in pain.
I have a cat that was hit by a car as a kitten. He managed to drag himself through the cat door and up to my bed, where he let out a blood-curdling howl.
Worked for him.
It occurred to me while reading that there is another special case of yelling for help which occurs in non-social as well as social animals. When the young are hurt they alert the parent (or guardian). This phenomenon could be common for all mammals. It could also be that the call of the juvenile just lingers into adulthood where it’s utility might diminish, but it remains since it is not maladaptive.
Ignore. This was thoroughly discussed above.
The pattern is:
1. Read post when late to the party.
2. Post a brilliant insight.
3. Start reading comments and see you’ve been scooped.
4. Feel like an idiot.
I’ve done that more than once! (Absent the party step.)
Maybe it’s not too much of a loss. I don’t think they server drinks.
I wonder whether wolves yelp when they’re hurt too. Domestic dogs may simply yelp because they learnt it from us.
This reminds me of an adaptive story to tell: A guy fell into an open sewer and starting yelling, “FIRE! FIRE!” which immediately caught peoples’ attention and they came running and rescued him. After they pulled him out he was asked “Why did you yell ‘FIRE?'” And he answered “Who would have rescued me if I had yelled ‘SHIT! SHIT!’?”.
While we’re speculating, I think it more likely that the yell of pain is more for intraspecific interaction than predator-prey interaction. If you spend the majority of your time in the company of fellow animals of various alliances, enmities, and conflicting factions which shift from moment to moment, someone is going to hurt your survival and reproductive chances, intentionally or not, directly or not. When that happens, you want to make it as clear to them as possible that you do not appreciate it and will jump straight into adrenaline mode. What better way than to scream at the top of your lungs in their ear?
It even explains why swear words are dragged in: taboo violation is now on the cards, so watch the **** out.
Calling in false distress can be manipulative Used by a baby chimp to get it’s mother to chase off and persuade a juvenile to drop it’s piece of fruit, making it look like the older had robbed the younger. If I remember correctly, the social standing was also preserved, happy baby of course.
So I would posit, calling is in order to bring attention to one self and help, stress release is very useful, a reward, alert a group to danger, deception or just after the injury, pain cursing plain embarrassment..just in case someone saw you, yeah that hurt and was stupid but I’m good.
Silent movies thrived on people hurting themselves for a laugh, very perverse but more real perhaps than people dying all over the place in thrillers or war movies. Blood and ugly injuries and I don’t know about you but I don’t feel a thing. Here, bite on this it will help with the pain.
People coming off rock (and ice) climbs frequently do much screaming too. Of course, they’re also cursing the idiot who suggested this route, today (often also the person undergoing 9.8m/s/s acelleration), the weather, anyone in the vicinity. Severe gibbering and sincere (if never answered) prayers for a temporary suspension of the Law of gravity. Indeed, falling off with style and wild vocalisation is one of the sub-sports of the genre.
I spent an entertaining winter season watching one friend accumulate nearly a thousand foot of freefall (in installmants). A few years ago I saw the beggar’s ugly fizzog adorning the telly screen in a programme about him and some deranged Kiwi planning to do a mid-winter direct on the Eigernordwand. Well, I’m moderately astonished that he’s still alive, but pleased to see that he has got over the “falling sickness”.
I just recently watched a film on those adrenaline junkies who walk slack rope across canyons. The climax has this guy walk a line of 130m long at an elevation of 250m above the rocky stream bed – without a safety rope.
My dreaming that night was full of shear cliffs and vast heights. I’m sorry for those guys and wonder how well their noggins are organized, but they absolutely love it. At least until they no longer can.
Adrenaline is a potent drug.
But I’m puzzled by your claim of there being no safety rope. The tensions in a tightrope are so ridiculously high that the there is no realistic chance of the rope itself failing just because someone starts to pogo-stick across it (does EN_US have “pogo stick” ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogo_stick – seems so?) At which point, the question of a “safety rope” devolves upon the user’s skills and reactions, not some passive safety device.
RElying on some passive safety device is like doing a parachute jump from an airplane (instead of one of B.A.S.E.) on a static line, while wearing a jetpack. From 50ft above the level of the water. Wearing breathing apparatus. With rescue-dolphins in the water.
What is the point in having a car if you wear a seatbelt and remove the driver-crash-spike from the middle of the steering wheel?
I couldn’t find the film I saw earlier with the “free” slack line walk. This is an example to give an idea. It shows a guy using a safety line – a short rope from body to line. Even with the safety rope it’s pretty frightening.
If you do the geometry (and believe me, having spent a large part of the last 2 years sharing an office with a lifting, rigging and crane-work instructor, I’ve been through this time and again), then if you have a line that drops by 1m in a 50m span, and is supporting a 70kg man at it’s midpoint, the tension needed in each leg of your line is (counts fingers) 825kg. A metre of slack in a traverse line is a lot. (For reference, standard issue mountaineering gear is designed about a load of 1800kg. Loads much higher than that have long been shown to break the human pelvis and everything within it. This tends to be rapidly fatal. So there is no point in designing equipment much stronger than that – it’d kill the user.
Using a static line (what in the troglodyte world we’d call a “cow’s tail” or a “donkey’s dick”, for it’s habit of “hanging down, swinging free, oscillating merrily” is a very effective technique (you use the weakest line you can get away with, to reduce the shock loads). But real men (of any gender) rely on grabbing the line with their hands as it goes past them. It’s more ballsy.
Here’s the film I was talking about with the free solo. It is a very well made film using a lot of drone shots. The first part of the film is about practice walks and the strong camaraderie among the group of highliners.
The big attempt starts at 24:30.
If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you smack us in the thumb with a hammer, do we not scream like a banshee?
Animals, such as d*gs, learn to yelp when hurt, from the time they’re playing with their littermates. I understand from d*g experts that this alerts the other playmate(s) that “Hey, that hurts, so stop it!”. Mom usually intervenes too.
When dealing with/training nippy pups, for example, a dog owner might yelp if the puppy nips her, so as to signal hurt. The aim is to tell the aggressor to not be so rough.
So I can imagine that this (conditioned?) behaviour might be carried forward into adulthood, and it’s not hard to imagine that humans would behave like this too.
A quick “ouch” seems a bit different from a Wilhelm Scream, but both might have a similar function. They might be anticipation or terror, and could be about “bracing yourself” like atlethes and fighters do when they strike in tennis or karate abd then shout. It could have to do with muscle contraction, which happens when you shout something. It could also be that more “primitive” parts of the brain (which evolved earlier) break through as the pain momentarily distracts the later evolved members in the parliament of the mind, which might explain swear words that can also break through unfiltered.
Weeping or crying seem very different to me, and could be, as others suggested have to do with innate call for help and consolation in social species.
/speculation
All cultures display universal characteristics such as laughter, crying, crying out, tears, play . . .
. . . and some cultures suppress such “emotions.”
When no one is present to hear the cry, does it make a sound?
Subject the alternative hypotheses to the same analysis and compare.
Whatever other function[s], such cries are deeply based in our evolutionary history. And the emotional content is largely readable across species lines.
At least our Manxie Sierra very clearly differentiates between pain [*@#% when I stub my toe on the brick hearth in the middle of the night]; aggression against outsiders [same oaths when I’m chasing a stray dog or trying to clear a clogged drain– which she treats as an intruder from the drains] and disruption in the household [loud arguments..]She ignores less-fraught outbursts — loud conversation and laughter, and sportsball cheering.
Crying or yelling when hurt is a natural response most of us have from before birth and thereafter, but which increases or decreases due to experiences gained in the individual’s familial and cultural environment.
For example, orphan children raised in a neglectful institutional environment learn not to cry or expect responses to crying. They frequently are emotionally stunted for life.
Also,in some cultures young males are expected to be able to withstand pain without crying or yelling as a rite of passage into adulthood. For example, African tribes with scarification or mutilation rituals. Also, Spartan boys, were expected to be able to have a small animal gnawing their skin without displaying pain. Then, there are extreme examples in which individuals are alone without hope of help in in a deadly situation and must deal with extreme pain to survive, or try to.
For whatever reason, disposition or training, some of us do not cry when injured or in pain. I am one of those and have a lifetime of experience in numerous situations.
I am more vocal than my wife in response to pain, but then she is a lot smarter and tougher. Do you think that resistance to pain and intelligence are linked?
If your smart as I think you are…you won’t say a word about this to anyone.
A colleague reminded me of some recent research (sorry, no ref handy; but he saw it in New Scientist) that swearing when hurt can decrease the perception of pain. Perhaps the hollering is related to this?
If a Evolutionary Biologist falls off a Cliff and there is no-one around to hear him, does he Scream ?
Whether no one can hear anything is unlikely, otherwise it would depend on if the evolutionary biologist had already had children or not.