Gentling and NLP

[southboca]

"Gentling" is really exciting because it involves trans-generational change. The term originally referred to the gentle handling of rats by their human caretakers. The gentle handling appeared to cause positive behavior changes in rats that are passed on to the next generations of rats. (The phenomenon was discovered inadvertently by animal behaviorists doing experiments with rats.) But, eeeeeewww, rats. Yuck!

Gentling has also turned up in rabbit experiments where it had an impact on the animals' health. In a key example, six groups of rabbits in different locations were fed extremely high fat diets to see if they would develop heart disease. As expected, five of the six groups became ill. One group remained healthy. Researchers ruled out differences in diet and exercise. The only difference? The researcher responsible for feeding the group six rabbits liked rabbits, so the researcher picked them up and petted them at feeding time.