It may have been Jewel’s song, Standing Still, where I first had an inkling that a fight or flight response might be too simplistic. Here’s her relevant lyrics, “Between fight and flight is the blind man’s sight and a choice that’s right.”
What does she suggest is the blind man’s choice? Why the title of the song is Standing Still. Now I couldn’t come up with a third rhyming word to keep the fight or flight response as cute as could be. However I did keep the word starting with an F and one syllable. I say that it is a fight, flight or freeze response to dangerous stimuli.
Of course a blind man shouldn’t fight, because he is likely to lose. And he shouldn’t run because he is likely to trip, run into a tree or run off a cliff. So freezing is right for the blind man. How can that be right for the rest of us?
Fight or flight is more like an army’s response to things or possibly even the police’s response to things. So what job would be better suited by freezing? Why a reporter or a security guard where the most important things are to observe and report.
Also, I’m not talking normal freezing. Like fight or flight I mean doing it with adrenaline. That means that things seem to slow down, the memory seems to work better and in general you are just a better observer of the situation.
How would we evolve to have adrenaline help us better in observing while freezing?
Say a big creature kills one of your small group while going somewhere. The freezer could come back to the village cave and draw a picture of the creature that did it on the wall. Or if it is a locally known and thus named species, the freezer could just say its name and how all the events unfolded.
Also freeze is good for baby creatures. When the mom or parent is killed, it is not smart for the little ones to attack the bigger killer. They might not be fast enough to outrun the killer. If the killer leaves them alone, the freezer will grow up to have a better handle on danger.
So its not just fight or flight. It is fight, flight, or freeze. In this case, it is a rock star that made it obvious to many.
