Depression in Animals | Gernot Wieland | TEDxGhent

I would like to start my talk with a quiz in this image you see four paintings two of them were painted by contemporary artists and two by monkeys I want you to take a close look to those four paintings and see if you can find a distinction between them now I need your participation those who think that the top right painting the black and white one was painted by a monkey please raise your hand and now the top left one if you think it was painted by a monkey raise your hand again and bottom right and bottom left ok well the solution is all four were painted by monkeys I had my first experience with depression in animals when I was 14 there was this schoolmate of mine and he was considered a bit weird not least because he brought his dog a German Shepherd to school and two classes even sports and one day we had biology class we learned about sodomy and all of a sudden the schoolmate raised his hand and said but sir my dog likes that did I mention I'm from Austria here's a drawing of our classroom I tried to reconstruct the moment he said that a few months later he killed himself and his German Shepherd with sleeping pills he always told me how sad and depressed they both were I was told that he listened to music by Bach when he committed suicide and back then I already thought what music does the animal listen to when a human commits suicide it's the music of the human I even remembered when making the drawing that everywhere everyone was sitting and I remembered that the dog always was walking slowly around in the classroom always the precise same walk I remembered when making that drawing the stuffed animals in the back of the classroom being laced on prints like an art exhibition our teacher had stuffed them and because that was his hobby his only hobby as he often said depression derives from the latin word de première to press down symptoms can be sadness anxiety sleeping disorder or suicide attempts depressed animals shows similar symptoms as depressed human beings in wild animals depression is hard to diagnose but compared with pets the depression rates are extremely low animals kept as pets have a much higher rate of depression diagnosis and are often treated with psychopharmacologist in the economists estimates the overall rate of the antidepressant market at an annual one billion dollar depression in animals is almost only caused by humans the construction of human identity can also be determined by the exclusion and control of the other namely the animal this history is largely a history of control and power historically as you can see the relationship between humans and animals has been dualistic both humans and animals were autonomous and related the significant break came with Rene Descartes who made a separation between body and soul in his perceptions animals did not have a soul and the animal was reduced to the principle of physics and therefore nothing but a machine the animal became an object and disappeared the cart defined the human by excluding the animal and excluding the end the wildness of the humans because the mind should rule Karl Marx mentioned that Descartes so the animals already with the eyes of the manufacturing period he saw them as a product and the product serve the human beings this significant break is still obvious when we talk about nature we always mean an area without human beings because we the humans we became a disturbing factor a stranger in the progress of civilization they often quoted humanization of the animal shows the desire of humans for an animal which must not be autonomous and independent and therefore has to be humanized in form of a pet a toy a comic figure or in a suit that for instance also leads us to protect certain qualities on an animal according to how it looks keeping an animal as a pet is also a symbol of control and power humans buy an animal name it tame it feed it castrated walk with it on a leash keep it at home often in a cage and what is most important we define their space if you look at caged animals in a zoo this becomes obviously often in this particular order defining space can be interpreted as a symbol of the victory of the mind over the body a victory of control depression in animals can lead to suicide and is often documented during my childhood there was this Animal Park you know where you drive with your car through the park and you look at the wild animals here is a still from a super 8 film taken out from our car window one zebra often tried to escape but got caught every time and according to a member of the staff was obviously depressed every time they caught it after its 7th attempt at escape they caught the zebra and took it back on a truck and the zebra jumped off the truck with its head outstretched and its legs pressed tightly to its body as a result of it when it jumped off the truck it broke its neck and died immediately the park workers the vets and the doctors they were certain that it had committed suicide when I was a child we visited at the park and this is where I heard a story it left me sleepless moved me so much that for a long while I constantly drew severs these are two pictures my parents have kept I couldn't stop making drawings of zebras it became an obsession at one point my parents motivated me to do potato prints instead of a drawing of a zebra because it takes so much longer to do a potato print than a drawing and because of my obsession we constantly ran out of paper and I think my parents without ever telling me regret it to have introduced potato prints to me because now we not only had no paper but also no potatoes left and if they were full of colors I stole potatoes from our neighbors from the land of the farmers there were literally no potatoes left in my village and of course I got caught and I remember sitting there with this child psychiatrist and I remember his room full of pictures of like you know Mickey Mouse and flipper and Donald Duck and nice but stupid looking dogs and he said how did you end up here why did you steal half a million of potatoes and I remember it was not my voice but something in me said because the zebra was so sad I want to go back to the first picture with the paintings by monkeys there are many artists who painted with monkeys in order to acquire free kind of the mind painting and some monkeys actually got quite famous through that and the most famous was a monkey called Congo Kongo made more than 400 drawings and painting and amongst others Pablo Picasso bought paintings by Congo Congo belonged to the natural scientist Desmond Morris this is the language you find everywhere he belonged Desmond Morris experimented with Congo in order to find out his motivation for doing paintings which led to Congo just draw some lines quickly in order to get a banana Desmond Morris said it's the sickest way of commercial artistic expression and he also said the motivation of a monkey for making a painting has hardly any other reasons than an artist the painting a painting we are constructing our human identity by the exclusion and the control of the other and we're building societies nations and governments on that exclusion Karl Marx wrote in 1847 in proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another will be put to an end the exploitation of one nation by another will be put to an end this code can be read in a psychoanalytical way and be used to study our relationship to animals today the exploitation of the other of any other is so enormous we don't even know what a banana tastes like anymore thank you for listening you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 32,880

Rating: 4.849741 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Belgium, Humanities, Animals, Art, Control, Depression, Monkeys, Psychology

Id: 9j5Pyf1RDiY

Length: 12min 35sec (755 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 16 2016