One of the frustrating things about researching this disorder is that the scientific community currently lacks an accurate vocabulary to properly discuss Reverse Animalism. Because of a certain dogmatism and mental ossification among researchers, developing politically neutral and accurate terminology has been difficult. We believe that adopting the term Reverse Animalism is a small but crucial positive step toward creating a precise language around the disorder. Readers more familiar with the term Reverse Evolution are reminded that Reverse Animalism and Reverse Evolution are synonymous. Also, it is good to keep in mind that we are discussing a psychological disorder and not the proposed scientific phenomenon that posits a reversal of the so-called evolutionary timeline or a literal reversal of evolutionary biology.
2. The subject’s real name and some identifying details have been changed to protect his identity. He is an African American male who resided on the Northside of Cross River, Maryland (with the exception of his brief time at River Run Mental Health Facility and his days in the Wildlands of Cross River), in the years covered by this study, which runs roughly from his tenth to his nineteenth year. All other names have been either omitted or changed.
3. The symptoms of Reverse Animalism can vary but often include taking excessive pleasure in excretory functions; a lack of interest in traditional basic hygiene, including bathing, shaving, and combing of the hair; an abnormal, sometime prurient, interest in domesticated and, later, wild animals, particularly mammals, including but not limited to dogs, wolves, bears, horses, monkeys, and apes; and a gradual loss of language functions, beginning with a slow shedding of vocabulary and ending with grunts, howls, and gestures substituted for speech.
4. Louis Smith earned the sobriquet “erudite” as a child. He had a stellar academic career up until high school, where he experienced a sudden and shocking decline. We now know that this decline can be attributed to his condition, but at the time, to his family, it was quite puzzling. Louis had once won awards for public speaking and for a time studied French and Spanish alongside his native language. Here was a boy who received all As and positive reports throughout his elementary school career, a boy who once placed first in the school’s spelling bee and did well in the regional competitions. Suddenly he began failing classes and incurring suspensions for fights. These fights, placed in their proper context, were really, to Louis at least, challenges for male dominance over his peers, who to his devolving mind were really a herd or a pack.
5. Approximately 1 million people in the United States alone suffer from some form of Reverse Animalism. Most cases are very mild. The vast majority of BEPs are never diagnosed and never know that they are living with Reverse Animalism. In this report we discuss, for the most part, the symptoms and stages of the harsher manifestations of the disorder.
By some estimates, there has been an almost 1,000 % increase in the number of diagnosed cases in the past ten years. This shocking increase has inspired many theories, but no definitive one as yet. Extreme cases, such as the one discussed in this study, are, for reasons not yet fully understood, becoming more common.
6. R. Burns et al., “Undoing the Descent of Man: New Effective Approaches in Treating Reverse Evolution,” American Pharmacological Concerns Quarterly, Fall 2014, 1–14. We find the Meratti report to be a self-serving piece of corporate propaganda that only aims to absolve Meratti of any responsibility toward Smith. After his capture, he was treated with a cocktail of medications and briefly became part of an ill-conceived study of Panofil, an untested Meratti Pharmaceuticals product. This medication, we believe, likely accelerated the progress of the disorder and should not be administered to anyone who suffers from Reverse Animalism without further study. Meratti, Inc., predictably disagrees.
7. The subject admitted to grabbing the young woman’s backside but claimed it was an unfortunate accident. Never having much coordination, he told school officials at the time of the incident, he lost balance during a game of basketball and fell. His arms went flailing about and landed on the young woman’s “butt cheeks.” Later he changed his story, claiming that his fall was the result of “horsing around” with other males in the class. In other words, he was pushed. His alternative explanation was that there was a second groper, who took advantage of his fall to stealthily fondle the woman and place the blame on him. These interpretations of the day in question are much disputed by the young woman and eyewitnesses. Several close acquaintances have said that Louis, before he stopped speaking, claimed that he accosted the young woman out of boredom. After a lengthy investigation, a second malefactor was never discovered, and school officials determined that no one else was involved in his fall. Having examined the record and interviewed hundreds of people, both intimately and tangentially connected to young Louis Smith, the authors of this study have concluded that the boredom motive is the most persuasive.
8. The speaker, who served as a gym teacher while the subject attended District Central Senior High School, is the only DCSHS official who admitted to knowing Louis well, and even he said that their interactions became rare once Louis began to withdraw.
“He seemed like he wanted to be left alone,” the gym teacher recalled. “So I left him alone.”
9. After some debate, the authors have decided to leave Frank’s vulgarities uncensored. We believe that, while potentially offensive, they serve to evoke the world that was slipping from young Smith’s comprehension.
10. Carson has a different memory of the occasion and insists, rather angrily, that it was actually Frank who made the “fondle any girls’ butts lately” quip. The authors are not interested in determining who said what on that day. Based on interviews we have conducted, we are satisfied that it occurred in some form and feel that it is a good example of the isolation that Louis Smith felt at District Central after his return. We use Frank’s description of this particular incident because it is the most evocative, not because we feel it is more true than Carson’s or, for that matter, anyone else’s description.
11. This description is not ours. Like everything else in this study, it is derived from interviews and a careful perusal of available public records.
12. One of the key differences between animals and humans is that animals seem to lack declarative memory, the memory of facts. There are two types of declarative memory: semantic and episodic. Semantic memory comprises facts that exist independent of time and place — when a person recalls that the Earth is round, she is using this type of memory — while episodic memory comprises facts dependent on time and place; when a person recalls the moment he learned that the Earth is round, he is using this type of memory.
Declarative memory is distinct from procedural memory, the memory required to do things that feel relatively automatic, such as walking, sitting, or riding a bicycle. This is the way an animal learns to stay away from a hot stove after a burn, even if that animal lacks the language to describe pain or the understanding of time and space that would allow it to create a narrative out of being burnt.
These separate types of memory reside in different parts of the brain. BEPs appear to completely lose their declarative memory, and their procedural memory also appears to devolve. How or why this happens is not fully understood.
Animals call on procedural memory when performing simple tricks. In fact, we managed to teach Louis, while he was in captivity, to knock twice on the floor to signal his pleasure with a meal and three times to signal his displeasure. Attempts to teach Louis simple sign language, however, failed, as did attempts to have him relearn basic words such as da-da.