Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers Insights

The must-read analysis of the key insights from "Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers" by Robert M. Sapolsky — presented by Athena.

Animals experience extreme stress — but only in short bursts. Humans tend to worry for months on end, triggering a chronic stress response that causes physical and mental fallout, from depression to heart disease.

Biologist and neuroscientist Robert M. Sapolsky spends his summers hanging out with baboons — a habit that dates back to his undergraduate days at Harvard, when he started following a troop of baboons in the Serengeti during school breaks.

What he discovered was that baboons have distinct personalities and, as with humans, some of them are better at coping with stress than others. Even though, as humans, we like to think of ourselves as separate from and superior to animals, in many ways we’re really just another mammal. Our natural stress response mirrors that of a zebra running from a lion or a lion hunting for its first meal in days.

Unfortunately, the physiological stress response that works so well for animals escaping a predator can’t tell the difference between a real, immediate stressor and phantom worries cooked up by the human brain. And when triggered chronically, the physiological reaction to those worries can have serious health repercussions.

In "Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers," Sapolsky explains how stress affects us and how we can handle it better.