I don’t know the origin of this idea, but I find it singularly fascinating. A commenter at the LanguageLog blog by the handle of “Mark F.” writes (in a comment to a recent entry):
I have read that beavers can’t bear the sound of running water, so much so that they will cover speakers playing that sound with mud, sticks, and rocks until they can’t hear them any more; and that this is what induces them to build dams.
The implication is that what appears, objectively, to be evolved instinctive behavior is, in fact, subjectively experienced as a profound, even unbearable discomfort with some environmental condition – e.g. the sound of running water. Somehow this jibes quite well with my own subjective experiences with some aspects of my humanness – that things that are really evolved adaptive behaviors are only with immense difficulty perceived as such, because inside the own individual’s mind, they resonate more as various sorts of discomforts or dislikes.
Hmm. Thinking.
