Why does RAMP work?

RAMP is a whole animal quantitative measure of health and vitality. It integrates several reflex actions that are combinations of neural and muscle function which are immediately responsive to the effects of stressors.  When an animal is exposed to stressors and becomes stressed, various physiological, organ, and behavioral systems respond in adaptive ways to compensate for the disturbance of stress. Initially these stress responses are beneficial, helping the animal avoid stressful situations and stimulating metabolism to support these adaptations. However if stress is prolonged, the animal begins to exhibit metabolic deficits and its health and vitality degrade.

An animal with disturbed states and degraded vitality can quickly become sick, moribund, and eventually die if stress persists at high enough levels. Prediction of animal death or recovery from stress requires measuring whole animal stress disturbances. Measuring disturbances of separate systems that make up the animal does not predict vitality and mortality because the whole animal is what dies, not the separate systems.

RAMP is a combination of several reflex actions that is an ideal predictor of whole animal vitality and mortality because it integrates the immediate effects of stress for the whole animal into involuntary fixed patterns of response that vary only with the vitality of the animal. If voluntary behavior is used as a predictor, other factors not related to animal vitality can control responses, making prediction of vitality difficult.  For example feeding and other social interactions can be controlled by motivation, resource availability, avoidance, and attraction. If component metabolic and organ systems are used as a measure, these do not reflect the whole animal vitality state because they exhibit peak responses to stressor intensities that are not related to stress levels in the whole animal.