Strong emotional bonds between mothers and infants increase children's willingness to explore the world—an effect that has been observed across the animal kingdom, in people, monkeys and even spiders.

After such an experience an animal often remains passive even when it can effect change—a state they called learned helplessness.

To complete his research, Samson and a team of researchers at McGill used the same modeling techniques used to predict climate changes' effect on plant and animal populations.