Geophysical variables and behavior: LXXXIV. Quantitative increases in group aggression in male epileptic rats during increases in geomagnetic activity

Wars and increased solar-geomagnetic activity: aggression or change in intraspecies dominance?

Human beings are extremely aggressive animals who are emersed within a steady-state geomagnetic field. A small component of this field displays periodic changes in amplitude. Symmetrical lag/lead analysis (-6 years to +6 years) in the present study, involving annual global geomagnetic activity, inferences of solar activity, and the release of the total, global seismic energy indicated that the numbers of armed conflicts (wars) for the first half of the twentieth century were moderately associated (rs approximately .50; 25% of the variance) only with the global geomagnetic activity of the same year. When the residuals between the predicted annual geomagnetic activity from the solar cycle and the observed geomagnetic activity were allowed to enter the equations, a comparable proportion of the variance in numbers of wars was accommodated. A factor associated with geomagnetic activity might, it is speculated, modulate changes within emergent processes that control the relative dominance of large aggregates of humans. Wars may have been the more obvious manifestations of these changes.

Experimental induction of intermale aggressive behavior in limbic epileptic rats by weak, complex magnetic fields: implications for geomagnetic activity and the modern habitat?

In three separate experiments, groups (4/group) of male rats with limbic epilepsy were exposed for 80 min every 24 hr during the midscotophase for 24 successive days to sham-field conditions or to one of four complex patterns of magnetic fields whose average intensities ranged between 20 nT to 500 nT. The numbers of episodes of boxing, biting, mounting, eating, drinking and grooming were then recorded each night during the latter 20 min. Moderately strong statistically significant interactions occurred between the presence or absence of the field and the pattern of the field explained 25% and 50% of the variance in the numbers of biting and boxing responses, respectively. Other behaviors were not affected. The results suggest that group aggression can be increased or decreased as a function of the temporal characteristics and morphology (shape) of the applied magnetic field.