The 'Self' in Dogs (and People): From Immunity to Defense Aggression – A New Perspective

Why does a dog/wolf/people defend its baby/bone/tribe like its own life? Let's explore the spectrum of the Self, a key to decoding canine aggressiveness.

Hello everyone,

In my project to reinvent the paradigm of aggression in dogs (and canids), I rely on the E(SEP-NEI-FSG) model – an integrated view of ethological-psycho-social (SEP), neuro-endocrino-immunological (NEI), and genetic-structure-function (GSF) aspects, as detailed in a previous Substack post. Instead of classifying aggressions by contexts or underlying emotions, I model behaviors as chains of polysemous motor-patterns-behaviors (MPB): the same MPB can mean individual defense or social regulation.

Before diving into defense MPBs, let’s ask: what is the “Self” being defended?

This notion, often metaphysical in humans, is biological in dogs – and it transforms our understanding of aggressiveness as an adaptive coping emerging from E(SEP-NEI-FSG).

Imagine: a puppy nips at its siblings without killing them but devours a dazed hare without hesitation. What distinguishes ‘Self’ from ‘Non-Self’?

Let’s explore this polysemous spectrum.

The Biological Self: Basis of NEI Homeostasis

The Self, before being a metaphysical concept, is first an identification of the Being vis-à-vis the Non-Being, established by the immune system, to reject the Non-Self when it invades the Self and threatens its integrity, its homeostasis, its vital balance.

The Non-Self can only integrate the Self when it is accepted by the Self, as described in Matzinger’s danger model, where the immune system reacts not to the “stranger” but to the “perceived danger” (Matzinger, 2002).

For example, foods are transformed, in the lumen of the digestive system (which is outside the body’s integrity), into absorbable molecules, which are acceptable and accepted by diffusion or selective pumps through the intestinal mucosa into the body’s interior (lymph, blood). Around this intestinal mucosa are concentrated the defense forces that are leukocytes, armed with munitions against potential-attacking-deleterious strangers (Non-Self). Around all entry or penetration routes into the organism, there are anti-stranger, anti-Non-Self defenses.

The differentiation Self/Non-Self extends logically from the cell to tissues, from tissues to the entire organism, and from the entire organism (Self) to the collection of organisms that is the family, the group, the tribe, the pack, the species, the friendly species, etc. up to where the concept of Self can be extended and generalized by the Being, as in kin selection in wolves (Hamilton, 1964; Silk & House, 2016). This idea of discontinuity between a Being and the exterior is anchored in the subconscious, and different for each species, even each individual.

As Jill Bolte Taylor experienced, by temporarily losing the use of her left cortex due to cerebral hemorrhage, the right cortex does not create discontinuity between Self and the exterior to Self. And Iain McGilchrist hypothesizes that the left cortex takes power over the right cortex, which allows rationalizing a discontinuity between Self and Non-Self (McGilchrist, 2009; observed in dogs via emotional lateralization, Siniscalchi et al., 2018, 2023).

I don’t know how far the sensation of discontinuity between Self and Non-Self goes in canids. I imagine there is less ideation of dichotomy in canids than in humans. Canids don’t need metaphysics of Self to express MPBs of defense of their physical integrity, of the physical integrity of their close ones, of defense of vital resources (food, drink, warmth, attachment) and of resources for the continuity of Self (of their DNA through sexual reproduction, and defense of children).

The MPBs of self-defense are activated upon perception/sensation of an attack on the body’s integrity, that is, by pain, hunger, thirst, cold, too hot, absence of security or secure being… or upon the belief of a threat to the attack on the body’s integrity, and are part of the coping reactions of stress rebalancing (allostasis/homeostasis).

These stress sensations in the body are called ‘emotions’, and they accompany the putting-into-action that are the coping-defense MPBs. The emotion-sensations are an awareness through selective attention to the threat and accompany in parallel the MPBs already put into action. All this is underpinned by neuroplasticity games that allow learnings (links with NEI in E(SEP-NEI-FSG), where the Self emerges as immune and endocrine homeostasis (Damasio, 2018).

Two ideas are to be retained from these reflections:

1- The defense of Self is involuntary and unconscious, and could become voluntary and conscious: the defense MPBs are algorithms programmed by GSF (Genetic-Structure-Function).

2- The distinction-dichotomy between Self, the Other, the world exterior to self, is probably a spectrum evolving with ontogeny, age, autonomy, evolution, cognition… and the situation on this Gaussian curve can vary following the contexts of life… A newborn baby is fused with its mother, and the mother is fused with her babies while being able to enumerate them, thus to differentiate them from herself.

The Predator Self: Olfactory and Genetic Polysemy

But we must go further in reflections on Self and Non-Self in carnivorous predators who must differentiate and dichotomize between Self and Prey, and Self-canid and Prey-non-canid, even if the prey resembles self.

How do wolf pups, who start brawling and biting each other – and it hurts, and they cry in pain – from the age of 4 weeks, manage not to kill and eat each other, and yet kill and eat the dazed hare that their wolf mom brings them? (innate inhibition, Miklósi, 2014; acquired via socialization, Cafazzo et al., 2022).

To what extent are puppies in partial fusion of the Self in the litter and in cleavage with the Non-Litter, which is the hare or other living, howling rodent, before being in a state of shock (stress coping) from multiple bites.

I hypothesize that genetic proximity has a specific odor (linked to the MHC system, Wedekind et al., 1995; observed in puppies via olfaction, Hepper, 1994; recent review in mammals, Boehm & Zufall, 2024). I think I read somewhere that, in humans, the HLA system is connected to body odor, that we choose our reproduction partners by odor to potentiate the (HLA) system of Self-defense.

In E(SEP-NEI-FSG), this predator Self is polysemous: a MPB like biting serves to play (intratribal, social) or kill (intertribal, lethal). A NEI flaw (e.g., inflammation disrupting olfaction) could derail this distinction, amplifying (pathological) aggressiveness.

The Social and Tribal Self: Compromises and Emotional Contagion

My hypothesis throughout this work is:

1- The personal Self precedes and is priority over the collective/social Self;

2- In a social collaborative species the personal Self makes win-win compromises, to the benefit of the group without too much detriment to self: living together is more salutary than living alone; we depend on others and others depend on us; it is forbidden to damage the other because it’s risking damaging oneself by reducing one’s probabilities of survival and reproduction.

To deepen this idea of compromise between personal and collective Self, let’s examine how the individual integrates – or merges – into a collaborative group.

In social species like canids, the “Self” is not rigid: it can temporarily dilute in the group via NEI mechanisms, like emotional contagion, which synchronizes internal states (oxytocin, mirror neurons) to strengthen cohesion (via emotional contagion, e.g., yawning synchronization, Palagi et al., 2015; emotional empathy, Quervel-Chaumette et al., 2021).

This modulates defense MPBs, transforming them from individual reactions into polysemous social signals – for example, a growl becomes threat/appeasement rather than attack (rituals, Lorenz, 1966; Hare & Woods, 2020).

But this same contagion can exacerbate intertribal distinctions, leading to biases like xenophobia, racism, speciesism, sectism, religionism… – explaining the “fear of the stranger” in some dogs.

Fusion/undifferentiation of the individual in a collaborative group?

Emotional contagion in a gregarious and/or collaborative group?

Intratribal vs intertribal differentiation: xenophobia, racism, speciesism, sectism, religionism…

In E(SEP-NEI-FSG), this contagion optimizes group survival (SEP social) via GSF loops (genetics of collaborative talents), but an overload (e.g., chronic stress) can derail toward pathological aggression, where PMBs lose their adaptive polysemy.

The Sexual and Parental Self: Reproductive Fusion

An exception to the rejection and (authorization of) murder of the Other is reproduction. Reproduction is a side effect of the sexual drive.

The sexual drive is the conquest (hunt) of the sexual partner that leads to a capture (in the form) of copulation (penetration of a part of the male into an opening of the accepting female) with prohibition of murder of the spouses and obligation of mutual service and collaboration for the months/years to come in the education of children (50% genetic) until the age of success of their reproduction into grandchildren (25% genetic).

Writing it this way shows my hypothesis that sexuality would use predation MPBs, and that the female’s refusal of rape uses defense MPBs. And, contrary to what happens in some animals, like certain female spiders that consume their mate during conjunction, in canids (and humans) there is an inhibition of food consumption of the mate during (before and after) sexual consumption. The spectrum of the Sexual Self is fusional during interpenetration – there is no longer distance between the partners who fuse – : it engenders the parental Self which is rather fusional too on the Gaussian curve of the Self spectrum.

In nidicolous social collaborative species, where the baby is born unfinished and dependent on parental care, there is necessity of collaboration between parents (at minimum), or even the whole village/tribe (at maximum).

Necessity, without obligation, because the mother is functional by herself, but the probability of survival of her children is increased during collaboration of tribe members in the care of children and the nursing mother.

The spectrum of the Parental-Self is distributable on a Gaussian curve, with better survival of children when the parent is in the more fusional part of the curve.

This sexual/parental Self is polysemous in E(SEP-NEI-FSG): predation MPBs recycled into seduction (SEP social), modulated by NEI (hormones like oxytocin for fusion), anchored in GSF (phylogenetic cannibalism inhibition, e.g., Mech 2025 on wolves).

The Spectrum of Self and Its Implications: A Polysemous Gray

I found it important to say that the notion of Self and the differentiation of Self with Non-Self was not a simple and didactic representation of the ‘black-white’ type, binary of ‘0-1’ type, but was found like any biological criterion, inscribed on a Gaussian curve, and can vary following circumstances.

It would be better to speak of the ‘Spectrum of Self’.

In the spectrum of Self, the baby is fused to its mother, the mother is partly fused to her babies, the adolescent is defused and tends to hyper-differentiate from his parents and sometimes partly fused with his teen gang or tribe and sometimes differentiated from his siblings and tribe and emancipates and moves away, solitary for a time, before hooking up and coupling and creating – and fusing with – his own tribe.

To simplify, let’s visualize this curve: fusion on the left (mother-baby, couple), dissociation on the right (solitary, intertribal).

The few paragraphs above should make you reflect on this concept of Self which is variable following internal circumstances (hormonal, neuronal) and external (ecosystemic).

The Self is not definable by a dichotomous differentiation between Self (white) and Non-Self (black), but in the grays that separate and unite them. The Self is not black or white, it is gray. The Self is not unique, it is multiple. And all Selves are coexisting at the same time (quantum superposition) and express or not following circumstances (in a strange attractor).

This polysemous spectrum reinvents aggression as adaptive coping emerging from E(SEP-NEI-FSG). A flaw (e.g., NEI dysendocrinia) can shift the spectrum, transforming defense into pathological aggression – for example, a “xenophobic” dog amplifying an intertribal growl via derailed emotional contagion.

Conclusion

This polysemous ‘Self’ is pivotal for decoding aggression not as an isolated problem, but an emerging adaptation.

What do you think? Comments welcome!

Dr. Joël Dehasse