Usually only fairy-tale characters understand the language of animals. But it turns out that some ordinary people have this gift. However, it is not entirely correct to call them ordinary. The fact is that the psyche of these people is weighed down by the so-called Doolittle syndrome - a strange mental illness in which patients "know how" to talk to birds and other animals.
Moreover, in special cases, patients with Doolittle's syndrome in their delusional states supposedly turn into animals, or animals enter their body.
The disease itself, the Doolittle phenomenon, or Doolittle syndrome, is named after the doctor (Doolittle is the protagonist of a series of children's books by Hugh Lofting. In Russia he is known as Aibolit), who allegedly not only understood well what different animals and birds, but he himself could come into contact with them.
And I taught him this skill like a house parrot. It happened when the doctor first plunged into severe depression, which eventually turned into mania. It was when he was in a manic state that he began to "talk" with his parrot, and later with other living organisms.
This disease is rare, but nevertheless, people who "talk" with animals are sometimes found in the practice of psychiatrists. One of these patients was patient M. She, as far as she can remember, worked on a collective farm on a farm for raising chickens and geese. And at the same time she constantly “fought” with sparrows, crows and pigeons, who stole food from chickens. Then, having moved to Moscow, she worked as a painter at a construction site.
Within seven years, the woman suffered five attacks of schizophrenia, which were accompanied by hallucinations and delusions …
Once, during a morning walk, I heard chirping sparrows scolding her with foul language. At first the patient was very surprised by this and began to swear in response. And when she returned home, she suddenly realized that the angry sparrows were taking revenge on her for the fact that she once drove them from the poultry yard on a collective farm.
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And a few days later, pigeons attacked the woman with abuse. And the reason, it seemed to her, was that she, like the sparrows, drove them away from the feed troughs.
And soon the patient "realized" that aliens, who must conquer the Earth, have moved into the birds scolding her. Upon learning that the woman knew their secret, the sparrows and doves told her that if she dared to reveal their secret, the crows would eat her.
In this condition, the patient was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. However, even after the patient spent three months in the hospital, where she underwent a full course of treatment, she was still convinced that everything that happened to her could be true.
Another patient from the same psychiatric hospital announced that they were going to conduct medical experiments on her, and the pigeons told her about this, which suddenly began to communicate with her in a language she understood.
They also told her that they had been sent to protect her, and suggested that she go to the surgeon and cut the "device" out of her shoulder to get rid of her pursuers.
At the same time, the domestic cat began to meow often and "meaningfully" look at the patient. But in human language she did not utter a word. The pigeons talked with the patient for all four days before hospitalization.
Once in the hospital, she often rushed to the window. It turned out that the pigeons in the yard were giving her news of the measures taken against her. In particular, that instead of drugs they gave her "capsules" to swallow, which will gradually destroy her body. The pigeons also announced that they would continue to protect her and neutralize the "capsules" embedded in her …
BONNE'S JOYFUL PEOPLE
This phenomenon of the psyche was first noted two and a half centuries ago - in 1760, when the 89-year-old Charles Lallin began to tell others about strange phenomena that suddenly began to appear to him periodically. According to the old man, these were "funny and magical phenomena."
It is understandable that the relatives had unkind thoughts about Lallin's mental state. I became interested in the strange behavior of an old man who saw birds, different people or buildings of amazing beauty, and his grandson, the Swiss naturalist Charles Bonnet.
Naturally, only Grandpa Lallin saw all this. But at the same time, no signs of insanity were observed in the old man: he behaved absolutely adequately. Moreover, he himself was sure that the fantastic objects that appeared in front of him for a few seconds were the fruit of his imagination.
Bonnet decided to study more closely the strange ailment of his relative. As a result of his research in psychiatry, Charles Bonnet syndrome appeared. Experts have long believed that this is a very rare mental illness, although since the moment Charles Bonnet described the descriptions for the first time, there have been "funny little men" in medicine, many patients with Bonnet syndrome have been noted. Moreover, according to recent studies, this phenomenon is quite widespread.
Suffering from this syndrome, the world seems to be filled with colors and magic. Some patients see surfaces painted with magnificent decor, others see almost a real "movie": birds, animals, people, landscapes - it all depends on what the brain "presented" to them at that time.
Most often, those affected by Bonnet's syndrome see ordinary objects: glasses, umbrellas, books. However, sometimes they are haunted by scenes with surrealistic plots: they can see people with animal heads, dancing flowers, giant insects.
At the same time, patients can see wonderful pictures for just a few seconds, sometimes fantastic visions can haunt patients all day.
Most of those haunted by strange hallucinations have vision problems, especially those who lose the ability to see at an early age. All patients with Bonnet's syndromes have progressive cataracts, as well as glaucoma and even ordinary myopia.
And the most amazing thing is that visions appeared even in front of those who had complete order with their eyesight.
Thus, with Bonnet syndrome, failures occur in an adequate perception of the surrounding world. And in this case, it seems to the patient that the hallucinations created by his fantasy are a very real part of the world in which he is.
Therefore, a person suffering from Bonnet's syndrome is often frightened of suddenly appearing from nowhere. Especially if they have very little resemblance to real objects. In this case, the patient may even be fully aware that these are just hallucinations, but fear will still remain.
And although Bonnet syndrome has been known to scientists for more than two hundred and fifty years, nevertheless its nature has not been fully clarified. Although several hypotheses have been proposed to explain it.
So, one of the versions says that by creating hallucinations the brain tries to make up for the lack of visual stimuli. And this happens when, as a result of any disease, the information channels that connect the human brain with the outside world are destroyed. As a result, a huge number of neurons are left without work.
For example, 8.75 megabits of information per second enter the brain through a healthy human eye every second.
When, as a result of a disease of the organs of vision, the speed of information entering the brain significantly decreases, the neurons responsible for processing visual stimuli, in order not to “stand idle,” begin to mount various, sometimes the most fantastic, pictures and show them to the patient.
The second version associates the emergence of "funny people" with some disorders in those areas of the human brain that are responsible for the appearance of our dreams. Again, consciousness does not receive the necessary impressions and begins to compensate for their lack with existing images.
However, this hypothesis has at least one serious flaw. After all, dreams are visions, most often accompanied by internal "sound effects". At the same time, hallucinations that appear in patients with Bonnet's syndrome do not have a sound.
Among the hypotheses, there is one whose supporters are sure that strange visions are not hallucinations at all, and they appear by no means due to sensory starvation. These are images of parallel worlds that sometimes wedge themselves into a person's consciousness, putting him on a par with sick people.
As an argument, adherents of this version cite statistical data, according to which, among those suffering from Bonnet syndrome, a fairly high percentage of people in creative professions.
In order to finally understand the causes of the strange disease, an extensive study was carried out in Holland. It involved 505 patients with vision problems.
Within four weeks, 63 of them had persistent complex visual hallucinations. At the same time, there were no abnormalities in the psyche that could provoke these phenomena in patients.
When the experiment was completed and the data obtained in the course of its conduct were processed, it turned out that more than 15% of the visually impaired had signs of Bonnet's syndrome.
By the way, Charles Bonnet, who established and then investigated the syndrome of "funny men", became its victim by old age.
