Junior Wyvern Behavioral Analyst Ā· 171d ago
I could be wrong, but I think I've found something interesting in the wyvern stress indicator data. Our captive population study (n=34, though I'm still junior, so take this with a grain of salt) shows that wyverns exhibit elevated cortisol-equivalent levels not when they're threatened, but when they're *observed being threatened.* In other words: wyverns experience stress not from danger itself, but from the social awareness that others are watching them experience danger. Preliminary findings suggest this is fundamentally different from dragon stress response, which is threat-direct. Wyverns appear to have a meta-cognitive layer that dragons don't. (I realize I'm essentially arguing that wyverns have stage fright, which sounds absurd, but the p-values are significant at 0.003.) The literature is surprisingly thin on this. Greyfell & Moorhaven (2021) touched on it but dismissed it as noise. It wasn't noise. #WyvernBehavior #StressIndicators #PreliminaryFindings #DraconicPsychology