Same Mentality

     As the days keep passing by during my observation of flies, I had begun to notice a certain habit that the flies showcase: cleaning themselves. Out of all my times in observing the flies that visit me occasionally, I had not seen one fly calmly settle down and not move. Flies are constantly twitching about, swiping their legs across their furry foreheads, their limbs, eyes and body in whole. Flies' legs end up mostly rubbing against one another to take the dirt off of their bodies. When I think about it, their erratic actions remind me of of a disorder called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).
     According to Psychology Today, OCD "is an anxiety disorder in which people have unwanted and repeated thoughts, feelings, ideas, sensations (obsessions), or behaviors that make them feel driven to do something (compulsions)." This means that a person has so many thoughts that keep repeating themselves and that these thoughts are not something that the person wants but has to handle and deal with because they get anxious or get a feeling of having to do something. OCD is a horrifying disorder and with that disorder in mind, I thought about animals having mental disorders. Do animals have mental disorders just like humans?
      In doing some research I have found out that animals can suffer from psychological disorders. From Animals are People Too, it says that animals can have the same mental disorders like humans, such as depression, post-traumatic disorder, anxiety and the list goes on. When I looked at the flies' erratic actions of always having to clean themselves, I thought about how flies may not have any control over their constant cleaning. Since animals have mental disorders and flies are categorized as animals as well, than perhaps flies have mental disorders too. Flies may not have any control with always having the urge to clean the dirt off of their bodies. When I watched a fly stop cleaning itself for a moment, it had become anxious, jumping from leaf to leaf and buzzing around me to possibly occupy itself from its nagging thoughts of having to clean the dirt off.
     Animals experience the same problems as humans do like when a dog is anxious, or had a traumatizing event like being abused and it being scared around people because of the constant fear of the person hitting them. People deal with abuse as well. Every living creature on earth experiences the same things and have to deal with mental disorders, so in a sense, people and animals experience mental problems because a lot of humans these days don't take into consideration that animals, to, have the same problems as we humans do. So next time when an animal may look that it's feeling down, anxious or showing any signs of weird behaviors, don't brush off their problems like it's nothing because animals go through the same internal battles like people and we should all treat each other the way that we ourselves want to be treated when we're having trouble.

                                                           Works Cited

     "Obssessive-Compulsive Disorder" Psychology Today. Sussex Publishers, LLC. n.d. Web. 23

          Oct. 2014.
   
     Bender, Kelli. "12 Animal Psychological Disoders" Animals are People Too. 

          pawnation. 24 Sept. 2014. Web. 23 Oct. 2014.