More "vibes" stuff:

Because these are common mammal behaviors, we can "read" other species' behavior to some extent even without knowing much about them otherwise. The angry bear, moose, or squirrel is usually pretty obvious to even a first-time human observer.

The two contrasting behavior sets above are, of course, only two of many clusters of behaviors. Most of us could describe victim-come-prey-on-me and puzzled-intrigued-what-the-heck-is-this behaviors, for example.

There are other typical behavior clues for each set, such as how the individual treats any object tht catches their attention. Because we do the same, we pretty much know what it means about an individual's attitude at the moment when they play with a small stick for a while, or stomp-break-destroy it, or just mildly kick it once in passing without further attention, for example.

More on point for this thread, we can identify in others and mimic to others various human behaviors: angery-don't-mess-with-me, crazy-let's-talk-about-weird-stuff-forever, busy-no-time-for-you, bored-lazy-darn-more-work, and so on. Think: acting!

So we have a Swiss army knife set of behaviors we can use to project different messages to help us fit into and essentially disappear from notice in various urban scenarios, or to stand out as someone to avoid rather than victimize. Pretty hard to do while sleeping though!


Edited by dweste (10/26/10 09:47 AM)