Author Temple Grandin is a highly-functioning person with autism - she has a PhD in Animal Science and has revolutionized systems for more humane treatment of animals raised for food. Her book "Animals in Translation" is simply amazing and it's a favorite of Pat Parelli.
I cheated and got the audio version and have listened to it at least three times. One of her other books, "Thinking in Pictures" is also very much worth the time! Check them out.
Here's an excerpt from Chapter Five.
"
"The single worst thing you can do to an animal emotionally is to make
it feel afraid. Fear is so bad for animals I think it's worse than
pain. I always get surprised looks when I say this. If you gave most
people a choice between intense pain and intense fear, they'd probably
pick fear.
I think that's because humans have a lot more power to control
fear than animals do. My guess is that animals and normal humans are
opposites when it comes to fear and pain, and for roughly the same
reason: different levels of frontal lobe functioning. This idea first
popped out at me when I read two studies back-to-back on the frontal
lobes in pain and in fear. What struck me was that while an active
prefrontal cortex was associated with increased pain, it was also
associated with reduced fear (though not with reduced anxiety). Pain
and fear, at least in these studies, were opposites.
"The story isn't that simple, of course, but it's close enough that, until we learn more, I believe animals have lower pain and higher fear than people do. My other reason for believing this at least provisionally is that it's the same with autistic people. As a general rule, we have lower pain, higher fear, and lower frontal lobe control of the rest of our brain than nonautistic people. Those three things go together. (I'm not saying that autistic people have no pain at all and don't need painkillers. I don't want to give that impression.)
"You almost have to work with animals to see what a terrible emotion fear is for them. From the outside, fear seems much more punishing than pain. Even an animal who's completely alone and giving full expression to severe pain acts less incapacitated than an animal who's scared half out of his wits. Animals in terrible pain can still function; they can function so well they can act as if nothing in the world is wrong. An animal in a state of panic can't function at all."
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