Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

by Robert M. Sapolsky

  66.The original research cited by Pinker and Fry: K. Hill and A. Hurtado, Ache Life History: The Ecology and Demography of a Foraging People (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1996).

  67.S. Corry, “The Case of the ‘Brutal Savage’: Poirot or Clouseau? Why Steven Pinker, Like Jared Diamond, Is Wrong,” London: Survival International website, 2013.

  68.K. Lorenz, On Aggression (MFJ Books, 1997); R. Ardrey, The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations (Delta Books, 1966); R. Wrangham and D. Peterson, Demonic Males: Apes and the Origin of Human Violence (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996).

  69.C. H. Boehm, Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999); K. Hawkes et al., “Hunting Income Patterns Among the Hadza: Big Game, Common Goods, Foraging Goals, and the Evolution of the Human Diet,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Soc of London B 334 (1991): 243; B. Chapais, “The Deep Social Structure of Humankind,” Sci 331 (2011): 1276; K. Hill et al., “Co-residence Patterns in Hunter-Gatherer Societies Show Unique Human Social Structure,” Sci 331 (2011): 1286; K. Endicott, “Peace Foragers: The Significance of the Batek and Moriori for the Question of Innate Human Violence,” in Fry, War, Peace, and Human Nature, p. 243; M. Butovskaya, “Aggression and Conflict Resolution Among the Nomadic Hadza of Tanzania as Compared with Their Pastoralist Neighbors,” in Fry, War, Peace, and Human Nature, p. 278.

  70.C. Apicella et al., “Social Networks and Cooperation in Hunter-Gatherers,” Nat 481 (2012): 497; J. Henrich, “Hunter-Gatherer Cooperation,” Nat 481 (2012): 449.

  71.E. Thomas, The Harmless People (New York: Vintage Books, 1959); M. Shostak Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); R. Lee, The !Kung San: Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).

  72.C. Ember, “Myths About Hunter-Gatherers,” Ethnology 17 (1978): 439.

  73.Ferguson 1995, op cit; Fry 2009, op cit; R. B. Lee, “Hunter-Gatherers on the Best-Seller List: Steven Pinker and the ‘Bellicose School’s’ Treatment of Forager Violence,” J Aggression, Conflict and Peace Res 6 (2014): 216; M. Guenther, “War and Peace Among Kalahari San,” J Aggression, Conflict and Peace Res 6 (2014): 229; D. P. Fry and P. Soderberg, “Myths About Hunter-Gatherers Redux: Nomadic Forager War and Peace,” J Aggression, Conflict and Peace Res 6 (2014): 255; R. Kelley, Warless Societies and the Evolution of War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000).

  74.M. M. Lahr et al., “Inter-group Violence Among Early Holocene Hunter-Gatherers of West Turkana, Kenya,” Nat 529 (2016): 394.

  75.C. Boehm, Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame (New York: Basic Books, 2012).

  76.M. C. Stiner et al., “Cooperative Hunting and Meat Sharing 400–200 kya at Qesem Cave, Israel,” PNAS 106 (2009): 13207.

  77.P. Wiessner, “The Embers of Society: Firelight Talk Among the Ju/’hoansi Bushmen,” PNAS 111 (2014): 14013; P. Wiessner, “Norm Enforcement Among the Ju/’hoansi Bushmen: A Case of Strong Reciprocity?” Hum Nat 16 (2004): 115.

  Chapter 10: The Evolution of Behavior

  1.T. Dobzhansky, “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution,” Am Biol Teacher 35 (1973): 125.

  2.A. J. Carter and A. Q. Nguyen, “Antagonistic Pleiotropy as a Widespread Mechanism for the Maintenance of Polymorphic Disease Alleles,” BMC Med Genetics 12 (2011): 160.

  3.J. Gratten et al., “Life History Trade-offs at a Single Locus Maintain Sexually Selected Genetic Variation,” Nat 502 (2013): 93.

  4.A. Brown, The Darwin Wars: The Scientific Battle for the Soul of Man (New York: Touchstone/Simon and Schuster, 1999).

  5.V. C. Wynne-Edwards, Evolution Through Group Selection (London: Blackwell Science, 1986).

  6.W. D. Hamilton, “The Genetical Evolution of Social Behavior,” J Theoretical Biol 7 (1964): 1; G. C. Williams, Adaptation and Natural Selection (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966). See also: E. O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975); and R. Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976).

  7.S. B. Hrdy, The Langurs of Abu: Female and Male Strategies of Reproduction (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977).

  8.Pathology argument: P. Dolhinow, “Normal Monkeys?” Am Scientist 65 (1977): 266. Just overflow of male aggression: R. Sussman et al., “Infant Killing as an Evolutionary Strategy: Reality or Myth?” Evolutionary Anthropology 3 (1995): 149.

  9.Primates: G. Hausfater and S. Hrdy, Infanticide: Comparative and Evolutionary Perspectives (New York: Aldine, 1984); M. Hiraiwa-Hasegawa, “Infanticide in Primates and a Possible Case of Male-Biased Infanticide in Chimpanzees,” in Animal Societies: Theories and Facts, ed. J. L. Brown and J. Kikkawa (Tokyo: Japan Scientific Societies Press, 1988), pp. 125–39; S. Hrdy, “Infanticide Among Mammals: A Review, Classification, and Examination of the Implications for the Reproductive Strategies of Females,” Ethology and Sociobiology 1 (1979): 13. Rodents, lions: G. Perrigo et al., “Social Inhibition of Infanticide in Male House Mice,” Ecology Ethology and Evolution 5 (1993): 181; A. Pusey and C. Packer, 1984, “Infanticide in Carnivores,” in Hausfater and Hrdy, Infanticide; S. Gursky-Doyen, “Infanticide by a Male Spectral Tarsier (Tarsius spectrum),” Primates 52 (2011): 385. See also: D. Lukas and E. Huchard, “The Evolution of Infanticide by Males in Mammalian Societies,” Sci 346 (2014): 841.

  10.J. Berger, “Induced Abortion and Social Factors in Wild Horses,” Nat 303 (1983): 59; E. Roberts et al., “A Bruce Effect in Wild Geladas,” Sci 335 (2012): 1222; H. Bruce, “An Exteroceptive Block to Pregnancy in the Mouse,” Nat 184 (1959): 105.

  11.A. Pusey and K. Schroepfer-Walker, “Female Competition in Chimpanzees,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Soc of London B 368 (2013): 1471.

  12.D. Fossey, “Infanticide in Mountain Gorillas (Gorilla gorilla beringei) with Comparative Notes on Chimpanzees,” in Hausfater and Hrdy, Infanticide.

  13.L. Fairbanks, “Reciprocal Benefits of Allomothering for Female Vervet Monkeys,” Animal Behav 40 (1990): 553.

  14.V. Baglione et al., “Kin Selection in Cooperative Alliances of Carrion Crows,” Sci 300 (2003): 1947.

  15.J. Buchan et al., “True Paternal Care in a Multi-male Primate Society,” Nat 425 (2003): 179.

  16.D. Cheney and R. Seyfarth, How Monkeys See the World: Inside the Mind of Another Species (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

  17.D. Cheney and R. Seyfarth, “Recognition of Other Individuals’ Social Relationships by Female Baboons,” Animal Behav 58 (1999): 67; R. Wittig et al., “Kin-Mediated Reconciliation Substitutes for Direct Reconciliation in Female Baboons,” Proc Royal Soc B 274 (2007): 1109.

  18.T. Bergman et al., “Hierarchical Classification by Rank and Kinship in Baboons,” Sci 203 (2003): 1234.

  19.H. Fisher and H. Hoekstra, “Competition Drives Cooperation Among Closely Related Sperm of Deer Mice,” Nat 463 (2010): 801.

  20.J. Hoogland, “Nepotism and Alarm Calling in the Black-Tailed Prairie Dog (Cynomys ludovicianus),” Animal Behav 31 (1983): 472; G. Schaller, The Serengeti Lion: A Study of Predator-Prey Relations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972); P. Sherman, “Recognition Systems,” in Behavioural Ecology, ed. J. R. Krebs and N. B. Davies (Oxford: Blackwell Scientific, 1997); C. Packer et al., “A Molecular Genetic Analysis of Kinship and Cooperation in African Lions,” Nat 351 (1991): 6327; A. Pusey and C. Packer, “Non-offspring Nursing in Social Carnivores: Minimizing the Costs,” Behav Ecology 5 (1994): 362.

  21.Footnote: G. Alvarez et al., “The Role of Inbreeding in the Extinction of a Europrean Royal Dynasty,” PLoS ONE 4 (2009): e5174.

  22.Theoretical model: B. Bengtsson, “Avoiding Inbreeding: At What Cost?” J Theoretical Biol 73 (1978): 439.

>   23.Insects: S. Robinson et al., “Preference for Related Mates in the Fruit Fly, Drosophila melanogaster,” Animal Behav 84 (2012): 1169. Lizards: M. Richard et al., “Optimal Level of Inbreeding in the Common Lizard,” Proc Royal Soc of London B 276 (2009): 2779. Fish, and related parents invested more in rearing: T. Thünken et al., “Active Inbreeding in a Cichlid Fish and Its Adaptive Significance,” Curr Biol 17 (2007): 225. Numerous birds: P. Bateson, “Preferences for Cousins in Japanese Quail,” Nat 295 (1982): 236; L. Cohen and D. Dearborn, “Great Frigatebirds, Fregata minor, Choose Mates That Are Genetically Similar,” Animal Behav 68 (2004): 1129; N. Burley et al., “Social Preference of Zebra Finches for Siblings, Cousins and Non-kin,” Animal Behav 39 (1990): 775. Birds sneaking outside monogamy: O. Kleven et al., “Extrapair Mating Between Relatives in the Barn Swallow: A Role for Kin Selection?” Biol Lett 1 (2005): 389; C. Wang and X. Lu, “Female Ground Tits Prefer Relatives as Extra-pair Partners: Driven by Kin-Selection?” Mol Ecology 20 (2011): 2851. I assume that no one on earth is ever going to read this sentence, so if you do, I’d love to hear from you, in order to congratulate you on your extraordinarily thorough reading habits—sapolsky@stanford.edu. Rodents: S. Sommer, “Major Histocompatibility Complex and Mate Choice in a Monogamous Rodent,” Behav Ecology and Sociobiology 58 (2005): 181; C. Barnard and J. Fitzsimons, “Kin Recognition and Mate Choice in Mice: The Effects of Kinship, Familiarity and Interference on Intersexual Selection,” Animal Behav 36 (1988): 1078; M. Peacock and A. Smith, “Nonrandom Mating in Pikas Ochotona princeps: Evidence for Inbreeding Between Individuals of Intermediate Relatedness,” Mol Ecology 6 (1997): 801.

  24.A. Helgason et al., “An Association Between the Kinship and Fertility of Human Couples,” Sci 319 (2008): 813: S. Jacob et al., “Paternally Inherited HLA Alleles Are Associated with Women’s Choice of Male Odor,” Nat Genetics 30 (2002): 175.

  25.T. Shingo et al., “Pregnancy-Stimulated Neurogenesis in the Adult Female Forebrain Mediated by Prolactin,” Sci 299 (2003): 117; C. Larsen and D. Grattan, “Prolactin, Neurogenesis, and Maternal Behaviors,” Brain, Behav and Immunity 26 (2012): 201.

  26.W. D. Hamilton, “The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour,” J Theoretical Biol 7 (1964): 1.

  27.S. West and A. Gardner, “Altruism, Spite and Greenbeards,” Sci 327 (2010): 1341.

  28.S. Smukalla et al., “FLO1 Is a Variable Green Beard Gene That Drives Biofilm-like Cooperation in Budding Yeast,” Cell 135 (2008): 726; E. Queller et al., “Single-Gene Greenbeard Effects in the Social Amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum,” Sci 299 (2003): 105.

  29.B. Kerr et al., “Local Dispersal Promotes Biodiversity in a Real-Life Game of Rock-Paper-Scissors,” Nat 418 (2002): 171; J. Nahum et al., “Evolution of Restraint in a Structured Rock-Paper-Scissors Community,” PNAS 108 (2011): 10831.

  30.G. Wilkinson, “Reciprocal Altruism in Bats and Other Mammals,” Ethology and Sociobiology 9 (1988): 85; G. Wilkinson, “Reciprocal Food Sharing in the Vampire Bat,” Nat 308 (1984): 181.

  31.W. D. Hamilton, “Geometry for the Selfish Herd,” J Theoretical Biol 31 (1971): 295.

  32.R. Trivers, “The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism,” Quarterly Rev of Biol 46 (1971): 35.

  33.R. Seyfarth and D. Cheney, “Grooming, Alliances and Reciprocal Altruism in Vervet Monkeys,” Nat 308 (1984): 541.

  34.R. Axelrod and W. D. Hamilton, “The Evolution of Cooperation,” Sci 211 (1981): 1390.

  35.M. Nowak and K. Sigmund, “Tit for Tat in Heterogeneous Populations,” Nat 355 (1992): 250; R. Boyd, “Mistakes Allow Evolutionary Stability in the Repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma Game,” J Theoretical Biol 136 (1989): 4756.

  36.Nowak and R. Highfield, SuperCooperators: Altruism, Evolution, and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012). Footnote: Nowak and K. Sigmund, “A Strategy of Win-Stay, Lose-Shift that Outperforms Tit-for-Tat in the Prisoner’s Dilemma Game,” Nat 364 (1993): 56.

  37.E. Fischer, “The Relationship Between Mating System and Simultaneous Hermaphroditism in the Coral Reef Fish, Hypoplectrus nigricans (Serranidae),” Animal Behav 28 (1980): 620.

  38.M. Milinski, “Tit for Tat in Sticklebacks and the Evolution of Cooperation,” Nat 325 (1987): 433.

  39.C. Packer et al., “Egalitarianism in Female African Lions,” Sci 293 (2001): 690; M. Scantlebury et al., “Energetics Reveals Physiologically Distinct Castes in a Eusocial Mammal,” Nat 440 (2006): 795; R. Heinsohn and C. Packer, “Complex Cooperative Strategies in Group-Territorial African Lions,” Sci 269 (1995): 1260.

  40.R. Trivers, “Parent-Offspring Conflict,” Am Zoologist 14 (1974): 249.

  41.D. Maestripieri, “Parent-Offspring Conflict in Primates,” Int J Primat 23 (2002): 923.

  42.D. Haig, “Genetic Conflicts in Human Pregnancy,” Quartery Rev of Biol 68 (1993): 495; R. Sapolsky, “The War Between Men and Women,” Discover, May 1999, p. 56.

  43.S. J. Gould, “Caring Groups and Selfish Genes,” in The Panda’s Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History (London: Penguin Books, 1990), p. 72.

  44.S. Okasha, Evolution and the Levels of Selection (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).

  45.P. Bijma et al., “Multilevel Selection 1: Quantitative Genetics of Inheritance and Response to Selection,” Genetics 175 (2007): 277. A similar example to the chickens, in spiders: J. Pruitt and C. Goodnight, “Site-Specific Group Selection Drives Locally Adapted Group Compositions,” Nat 514 (2014): 359.

  46.S. Bowles, “Conflict: Altruism’s Midwife,” Nat 456 (2008): 326.

  47.D. S. Wilson and E. O. Wilson, “Rethinking the Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiology,” Quarterly Rev of Biol 82 (2008): 327.

  48.F. de Waal, Our Inner Ape (NY: Penguin, 2005); I. Parker, “Swingers: Bonobos Are Celebrated as Peace-Loving, Matriarchal, and Sexually Liberated. Are They?” New Yorker, July 30, 2007, p. 48; R. Wrangham and D. Peterson, Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence (NY: Houghton Mifflin, 1996); R. Wrangham et al., “Comparative Rates of Violence in Chimpanzees and Humans,” Primates 47 (2006): 14.

  49.D. Falk et al., “Brain Shape in Human Microcephalics and Homo floresiensis,” PNAS 104 (2007): 2513. The opposite view: M. Henneberg et al., “Evolved Developmental Homeostasis Disturbed in LB1 from Flores, Indonesia, Denotes Down Syndrome and Not Diagnostic Traits of the Invalid Species Homo floresiensis,” PNAS 111 (2014): 11967.

  50.K. Prufer et al., “The Bonobo Genome Compared with the Chimpanzee and Human Genomes,” Nat 486 (2012): 527; W. Enard et al., “Intra- and Interspecific Variation in Primate Gene Expression Patterns,” Sci 296 (2002): 340.

  51.D. Barash and J. Lipton, The Myth of Monogamy: Fidelity and Infidelity in Animals and People (New York: Henry Holt, 2002); B. Chapais, Primeval Kinship: How Pair-Bonding Gave Birth to Human Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).

  52.T. Zerjal et al., “The Genetic Legacy of the Mongols,” Am J Hum Genetics 72 (2003): 713.

  53.M. Daly and M. Wilson, “Evolutionary Social Psychology and Family Homicide,” Sci 242 (1988): 519. Replication: V. Weekes-Shackelford and T. K. Shackelford, “Methods of Filicide: Stepparents and Genetic Parents Kill Differently,” Violence and Victims 19 (2004): 75. Swedish failures of replication: H. Temrin et al., “Step-Parents and Infanticide: New Data Contradict Evolutionary Predictions,” Proc Royal Soc B 267 (2000): 943; M. Van Ijzendoorn et al., “Elevated Risk of Child Maltreatment in Families with Stepparents but Not with Adoptive Parents,” Child Maltreatment 14 (2009): 369.; J. Nordlund and H. Temrin, “Do Characteristics of Parental Child Homicide in Sweden Fit Evolutionary Predictions?” Ethology 113 (2007): 1029.

  54.K. Hill et al., “Co-residence Patterns in Hunter-Gatherer Societies Show Unique Human Social Structure,” Sci 331 (2011): 1286.

  55.R. Topolski et al., “Choosing Between the Emotional Dog and the Rational Pal: A Moral Dilemma with a Tail,” Anthrozo�
�s 26 (2013): 253.

  56.B. Thomas et al., “Harming Kin to Save Strangers: Further Evidence for Abnormally Utilitarian Moral Judgments After Ventromedial Prefrontal Damage,” J Cog Nsci 23 (2011): 2186.

  57.R. Sapolsky, “Would You Break That Law for Your Family?” Los Angeles Times, November 17, 2013.

  58.J. Persico, My Enemy, My Brother: Men and Days of Gettysburg (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1996).

  59.R. MacMahon, Homicide in Pre-famine and Famine Ireland (Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, 2014). Cheeseburger murder: J. Berlinger and T. Marco, “Man Kills Brother in Argument over Cheeseburger, Police Say,” CNN.com, May 9, 2016, www.cnn.com/2016/05/08/us/man-allegedly-kills-brother-over-cheeseburger/index.html.

  60.Footnote: “MP Comes to the Aid of 5 Year Old Girl at Risk of Being Sold,” Kenya Daily Nation, October 13, 2014, www.nation.co.ke/video/-/1951480/2484684/-/gditgq/-/index.html.

  61.S. Friedman and P. Resnick, “Child Murder by Mothers: Patterns and Prevention,” World Psychiatry 6 (2007): 137; S. West, et al., “Fathers Who Kill Their Children: An Analysis of the Literature,” J Forensic Sci 54 (2009): 463; S. B. Hrdy, Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants and Natural Selection (New York: Pantheon, 1999).

  62.J. Shepher, “Mate Selection Among Second Generation Kibbutz Adolescents and Adults: Incest Avoidance and Negative Imprinting,” Arch Sexual Behav 1 (1971): 293; A. Wolf, Sexual Attraction and Childhood Association: A Chinese Brief for Edward Westermarck (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995).

  63.K. Hill et al., “Co-residence Patterns in Hunter-Gatherer Societies Show Unique Human Social Structure,” Sci 331 (2011): 1286.

  64.N. Eldredge and S. J. Gould, “Punctuated Equilibria: An Alternative to Phyletic Gradualism,” in Models in Paleobiology, ed. T. J. M. Schopf (San Francisco: Freeman Cooper, 1972), p. 82.