What Pets Actually Want & Need | Dr. Karolina Westlund

**Andrew Huberman** (0:00)
Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Karolina Westlund. Dr. Karolina Westlund is an animal ethologist and expert in animal behavior. Dr. Westlund and I discussed the relationship between humans and domesticated animals, with a focus on the evidence-based protocols for optimizing the mental and physical health of our pets. Dr. Westlund explains the best way to interact with our animals. We may assume that the way we pet our animals and exercise them and feed them makes them truly happy. But as she points out, many of the things that people assume turn out to be when it comes to our pets and their fundamental drives. She teaches us the very basic but powerful things that we can do to satisfy those drives, both for the animal's sake, of course, and to better our relationship with them. We also discuss the unique neurological and physiological requirements of different dog breeds. That's a fascinating conversation that stems from their lineage from wolves. And we'll tell you whether or not your particular breed, even if it's a mutt, should be exercised in a particular way, whether or not it needs additional forms of stimulation that you're not currently giving it, and so on. And because we both realize there are also cat owners out there too, we discuss the often misunderstood communication signals and social needs of cats. As you may know, there is a tremendous amount of debate out there about the best training and practices for taking care of our dogs and other animals. And so much of that is grounded in speculation and training outcomes, which of course are important. The conversation today with Dr. Westlund approaches animal health and welfare through the lens of ethology and the species that our pets evolved from to provide actionable protocols that are grounded in science and that you can implement right away to improve your pet's wellbeing. So if you're a pet owner, this episode is going to be of immense value to you. If you're not a pet owner, you'll still learn a ton about animal biology and psychology, including yours. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Karolina Westlund. Dr. Karolina Westlund, welcome.

**Karolina Westlund** (2:21)
Thank you.

**Andrew Huberman** (2:22)
I'm super excited for this conversation.

**Karolina Westlund** (2:24)
Yeah, me too.

**Andrew Huberman** (2:25)
I can barely contain myself. I think we have so much to learn from animals. And I think we have so much to learn from our relationship to animals. I also believe that we have all sorts of ideas about what animals experience, what they think about us, the relationship that we think we have with them.

**Karolina Westlund** (2:42)
Oh, yeah.

**Andrew Huberman** (2:43)
Today, you're going to set the record straight. To start off, could you just briefly list off some of the species of animals that you're students have worked with and studied?

**Karolina Westlund** (2:54)
Most of my students are like guardians of animals. So they're like dog owners or horse trainers, or they might be veterinarians. Some of them work in a zoo as a zookeeper or animal trainer and so on. So my students are really diverse, and their knowledge levels is also really diverse from the sort of person who has their first dog at the age of 40, to somebody who's been training animals for 30 years.

**Andrew Huberman** (3:25)
I grew up around a few horse people. My first girlfriend had a horse, and it was remarkable to me to see and to get some just external understanding of the relationship between human and animal through observing that. I think of all the relationships between animals and humans, the horse-human relationship seems to be the one where there's the most amount of physical contact, right? You ride a horse, you learn to read the horse's intentions, it learns to read yours through these subtle, you know, squeezing of the legs, or you're kicking, not kicking hard, but you know, just like a nudge of the heel, just a slight tug on the reins, it's really remarkable.
What does the horse experience the world as? We, I've heard before that, you know, they sort of have these orbs of awareness around them and that they're paying attention to things on the horizon, that they're clearly paying attention to things very up close to their body. But if you were to put us into the mind of a horse as best you can, how does the horse experience the world as a wild horse and with a rider on its back trying to steer it in a particular direction at a particular speed?