“I often learn about myself or humans from closely observing animals. Today, I was witness to a situation within a clade of around 23 Canada Geese. What I learned was simple: stress and aggression can easily become contagious in groups.

One gander usually begins the process. This one appears to have ‘taken offense’ at the proximity or behavior of another bird, often also a gander. So the offended party initiates a display of aggression/territoriality.

The results may differ according to the context and composition of the group. For example, sometimes, other birds, usually males, will make similar ‘display attacks’ on the first victim. More often, however, a complex process of contagion ensues where, over a brief period of time, the group experiences something analogous to lightning generation. The stress is communicated into ‘sub-pods’ within the group, with specific birds either stepping it down, or reiterating the aggression. So there is, for a time, a ‘little storm’ of aggressions and display-attacks, which travels through the subgroups.

It appears to me that the emotional and context status of the group greatly informs the situation. If all are relatively calm, the storm either never gets started or dies quickly. If there are nearby threats or … for example… food is being provided by visiting humans… this increases the general agitation of the group.

While watching this process this morning I realized that our clades are extremely similar, and that ‘news’ (something I consider extremely toxic) almost always feeds and even attempts to generate these processes… for the simple reason that the more storms there are, the more money and attention media companies (and their shareholders) can acquire rapidly. They can even ‘establish the pulse’ of fear, outrage and aggression in our cultures, and ‘quicken’ that pulse simply by ‘triggering’ the persons or clades most easily affected.”

— an intelligence agent