The Ape And The Sushi Master Reflections Of A Primatologist

by Franz De Waal

  Most scientists know the fertile interchange between theory and observation: the first inspires the second as often as the second the first. Charles Darwin is a case in point. He developed his grand theory only after having sailed halfway around the globe, collecting information, sitting on it, rearranging it in his head, until all of it seemed to fall into place. Darwin was a naturalist long before he turned theorist.

  What a contrast with a young scientist I once encountered who had decided to become a theoretician. He had never done any actual research on either animals or people, but told me with astonishing aplomb that his ambition was to develop theories that would revolutionize the behavioral sciences. "I want to give other scientists something to work with," he said, evidently viewing those of us who do the nitty-gritty of data collection much as the queen bee views her workers. Every day, he sat behind his computer, never leaving his desk, a superhuman effort comparable to a novelist who has never set foot outside the house, never lived a life, but aspires to write as richly as Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky.

  I am still waiting for his egg to hatch.

  Noble Savages

  Having explained that Western approaches to animal and human behavior are not nearly as theory-driven as advertised, it is interesting to look eastward. By this I do not mean all of Eastern science, but just the little corner that I know best. Off the record, Western colleagues used to complain about the "lack of theory" in Japanese primatology. The emphasis was on data gathering-for example, about what monkeys eat or whom they groom-without mention of the idea behind it. Data without a framework to put them in seemed pointless.

  Looking beyond the surface, however, there can be little doubt that Japanese primatologists had plenty of assumptions. They may not have advanced these as formal theories, but their observations were never made in a vacuum. And what is more, their assumptions eventually triumphed. They are now shared to such a degree by everyone else that we consider them conventional wisdom!

  Until well into the 1960s, chimpanzees were seen as Rousseau's noble savages: they traveled autonomously and self-sufficiently around the forest in haphazard combinations. The ever-changing parties gave the impression that, except for the mother-child relation, these primates lacked any enduring ties. Thus, Jane Goodall called females and their dependent offspring the only stable social units. Working only 130 kilometers south from her site, also in Tanzania, a Japanese team under Jun'ichiro Itani and Toshisada Nishida had the same trouble getting a good overview of chimpanzee society. From the outset, however, they assumed that they were dealing with highly social beings. Familiar with the tightly organized macaque troops of their native country and guided by a cultural emphasis on collectivity rather than individuality, they recognized the survival value of group life, the role of social transmission, and the need for each individual to belong. They believed in social connectedness. How could a species that is supposed to fill the gap between the monkey and us have no society to speak of?

  Eventually, through persistent observation, they cracked the puzzle and showed that chimpanzees live in large communities, the membership of which is stable, especially for males. As opposed to many other primate species, in which males migrate between groups, they discovered it was the females. The male-philopatric society of the chimpanzee is now taken for granted-we all have heard about territorial wars between different communities and about group-specific traditions-but the initial discovery came out of a firm conviction that chimpanzees could not be nearly as individualistic as Western science had made them out to be.

  In a revealing passage, Nishida describes how he greeted his mentor, Itani, when the latter came to visit Africa in 1966. There had been much debate among Japanese scientists about the social life of gorillas, which live in harems of one or two males with a couple of females. Could these family units, which they dubbed " familoids," be the ancestral type of human soci ety? If so, chimpanzee society should follow the same model. Nishida, who stood onboard a steamship, couldn't wait to give Itani, who was waiting on land, the verdict from the field. He shouted: "No familoid in a large-sized group!" Itani countered, "It cannot possibly be the case!""29 This is hardly the sort of exchange expected between people without a theory.

  The Individual in Society

  Plato's Great Chain of Being, which places humans above all other animals, is alien to Eastern philosophy, according to which reincarnation of the human soul can occur in many shapes and forms. This means that all living things are spiritually connected. A man can become a fish, and a fish can become God.

  The presence of monkeys in India, China, and japan-in contrast to the Middle East and Europe-may have strengthened people's closeness to nature: seeing other primates makes it hard for us to deny that we are part of nature. In the same way that Western fairy tales feature animals such as foxes, rabbits, and ravens, Eastern folk tales and poetry are laced with references to the monkey as a mirror of ourselves. Monkeys are held in the highest esteem. The three wise men, or magi, of the bible are matched in the East by the three wise macaques of Tendai Buddhism ("See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil"). The Japanese language has a special honorific affix for the monkey: o-Baru-san, or "mister monkey."

  Humility in the face of our close relatives has obvious implications for the way we study them. Without a religion that grants souls to only one species, neither anthropomorphism nor evolution stirs up controversy. If the soul can move from monkey to human, and back, there is no ground to resist the idea that our species are historically linked. On the contrary, evolution seems a logical and welcome thought.130

  Given this background, Japanese primatology had from the start its own unique set of attitudes and concepts. For one thing, animals were considered as individually different as people. Many great advances can be traced to the habit of giving each individual a name. And not only were the individuals told apart by external markers such as face, size, and color, but there was the clear implication that they had personalities just like people, and that each should be understood on its own terms. Needless to say, the naming habit was frowned upon by Western scientists, who felt that it unduly humanized animals.

  All of this happened in the early 1950s, at a time when European ethologists were interested in instincts and speciestypical behavior. For this purpose, one doesn't need to recognize individuals; it is sufficient to watch how animals of a particular species respond to particular situations. American behaviorists, on the other hand, stressed general laws of learning that were supposed to hold for all animals, including humans: not even the species was a significant entity, let alone the individual. One can see the enormous contrast with Eastern scientists, for whom everything revolved around the society and the place of the individual in it. They set themselves the task of documenting each individual's kinship relations, friendships, rivalries, and rank position. Connectedness was the key: connectedness among all living things, including ourselves, and connectedness among all members of society.

  Unity with nature led to another staple of the Japanese approach: food provisioning. Shintoistic nature worship expresses itself in the feeding of animals, both tame and wild, such as carp, birds, deer, and monkeys. Shinto priests leave offerings of fruits, rice, and drinks at their shrines for the kami (spirits of the natural world); monkeys are believed to come as intermediaries to pick up the food.

  The food provisioning adopted by scientists as a way of getting close to their study objects thus derives from an age-old tradition. For Japanese scientists, provisioning served their research, but it also created a bond. As explained by Pamela Asquith, a Canadian anthropologist specializing in the comparison of Western and Japanese primatology:

  Historically, there was another aspect to provisioning the macaques for some Japanese researchers. Through feeding, a relationship of natural empathy was created between observer and monkeys. Masao Kawai considered it another part of their methodology, and termed it the kyokan (sympathetic or responsive) method. By feeding, the researcher positively
entered the group and made contact with the monkeys. At the time when most Western re searchers advocated strict neutrality with study animals, this was indeed unique.... Artificial feeding in Japan was never done with the sole purpose of "making friends" with the monkeys, but for some, it lent another, psychological, dimension to provisioning. 131

  In 1958, Kinji Imanishi, whom I discussed in Chapter 2 as the father of Japanese primatology and defender of a harmonious world view, toured American universities together with some of his students to report the first findings from their detailed research. They encountered much admiration but also a great deal of skepticism about their ability to distinguish all those monkeys and track them over time. The greatest American primatologist of those days, Ray Carpenter, became a staunch supporter of Japanese primatology, however, visiting Japan three times in the years to come. Whereas he himself had assigned a much less prominent place to individuality and personality in his work, the advantages of such an approach were immediately obvious to him.

  Within a decade, both individual identification and food provisioning were adopted at Western field sites, from Golnbe Stream to Cayo Santiago. And even though the second part of the method has fallen out of favor, the first remains firmly embedded. The concept of the individual in its society amounts to a momentous theoretical contribution by Japanese primatology to the study of social animals. The ideas that individuals matter, that their identities are linked to their place in the whole, that they need to be followed over time, and that human empathy helps us understand them, are so obviously correct that armies of scientists now apply this perspective, often without knowing where it came from.

  The Prepared Mind

  I saw Fuji-San for the last time on my way from Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island, to Kyushu, in the south. I boarded the plane in Sapporo, where the arrival of a long and cold winter could be felt. The climate, landscape, and flora (not to mention the so-called "Bier Gartens") reminded me of Germany. I flew a distance equivalent to that from Hamburg to Rome toward a balmy climate, palm trees, and spicier food. Somewhere midway, the lonely, snow-covered top of Mount Fuji appeared on the left of our plane while its base remained under the cloud layer-a rare sight, and a magical birthday treat. Without friends and family to remind me of my aging process, I was sort of hiding from the big Five-O.

  I was on my way to Koshima, the tiny island off the coast of southern Kyushu where monkey research began around the day of my birth. A couple of years later, in 1953, the cultural revolution of primatology was set off by a major discovery on the island: the spontaneous occurrence of potato washing by macaques. Here again, observation was preceded by expectation. In a book that criticized the Western view of animals as automatons driven by instinct, Imanishi had inserted an enlightening discussion between a wasp, a monkey, an evolu tionist, and a layman, in which the possibility was raised that animals other than ourselves might have cultural transmission.132

  This is really all that is needed: a certain preparedness to interpret reality one way or another, and to recognize which findings fit or don't fit prevailing views. Free from hang-ups about human uniqueness and the primacy of the individual, Japanese primatologists were mentally primed for a simple observation that forever changed our field.

  Koshima

  Macaques have a special call to announce a welcome change in circumstances-when the rain stops after a storm, for instance, or when, on a cold day at the zoo, they hear the door to their indoor quarters being unlocked. They give this happy "coo" call also when they anticipate food, but I had never heard it so loudly.

  Walking to our boat on the pier, on the way to Koshima island,l"3 monkey calls reached us over the noise of the Pacific. The shrill sounds came from above, from lookout places on the tall, forested rock of Koshima. The island is so close to the coast that we were within sight. The monkeys must have recognized the field assistants and noticed the two heavy bags they were carrying. They are also said to recognize by ear the research boat's engine. Given their noisy advertisement, it wasn't surprising that most of the one hundred monkeys on the island had gathered when we landed on the beach.

  Compared to the "snow monkeys" of the north, the monkeys here had thinner and darker coats. They were also smaller than any Japanese monkeys I had seen. It is estimated that this island can support only around thirty monkeys with natural foods, such as acorns and leaf buds. Due to human provisioning, since the 1950s the population had kept growing and growing until the researchers, in 1972, decided to seriously curb feeding. Small handouts of wheat are still being given several times per week, but sweet potatoes are now fed less than five times per year.

  I was lucky to be present for one of these rare potato feedings. Potato washing on Koshima has reached textbook status as an example of animal culture, but in some circles its implications have become suspect. I needed to see it with my own eyes.

  It is strange to think that research on Japan's native monkeys, which started at this very spot, was only a second choice, a felicitous outcome of boredom with hoofed mammals. The history goes back to Cape Toi, a peninsula of southeastern Kyushu, where Kinji Imanishi and his students from Kyoto University were observing "wild" horses. I put "wild" between quotation marks because when I went to Cape Toi, the horses let themselves be patted on their heads. Before the Japanese had the means to travel to Hawaii or Australia, this subtropical place with its beautiful view of the mountainous coast was the honeymoon destination. The horses are completely used to tourists, who undoubtedly represent a great improvement over the heavily harnessed samurai whom their ancestors had to carry into battle.

  According to Imanishi's most prominent student, Jun'ichiro Itani, the horses of Cape Toi were totally uninspiring: about all they did was graze, sleep, and move about. At the same time, another student, Shunzo Kawamura, studied the famous deer of Nara. Nara is the old capital of Japan, from before Kyoto, and well before the present capital. Having roamed Nara's temple grounds for over a thousand years, mingling with visitors as they please, the deer, too, are terribly tame. I experienced this firsthand in an embarrassing incident resulting from a tempting childhood image.

  The Todai-ji temple in Nara is an enormous wooden building devoted to the world's largest bronze statue, known as the Daibutsu, or Great Buddha. During a visit, I noticed a stand near the temple that sold stacks of flat, round cookies exactly the same color, size, and shape of Dutch stroopwafels (syrup wafers), which are sweet and delicious. For all I knew, given the ancient Dutch influence on Japan, they might have derived from the real ones. I couldn't resist buying these cookies, but before I had even handed money to the woman behind the stand, a deer found me among the crowd and pulled with her teeth at my shirt. Another gently poked me with his antlers in the back. Both clearly wanted the pastries, and they were so insistent that I had to run holding my prize aloft. After escaping this way-to the amusement of onlookers, no doubt-I finally managed to take a bite. My taste buds immediately sent me the news: these cookies were not for human consumption! Apparently, every soul in Japan knows that they are for the deer, as do the animals themselves.

  Kawamura's deer weren't thrilling study objects either. Hence the little wordplay of Itani, who likes to point out that since the Japanese word for horse is ba, and for deer ka, scientists were bound to find out one day that to study these animals was baka-rashi, which means "foolish." This profound insight reached Itani and Kawamura when, while taking a break from horse watching at Cape Toi, they saw a procession of monkeys far away in the sunset. They were mightily impressed by the apparent organization of the moving troop and by the monkey's exchange of calls, which indicated a refined communication system. In the evening, in their old inn, the students discussed with their master how it would be to work with monkeys. Wouldn't it be a lot more fun than working with horses? Their excitement won, and the decision was made to visit Koshima. Already at the time, this island had the status of National Treasure, which meant that the monkeys there were protected. There was a
lso less tourist disturbance.

  The next day, they began their journey. Nowadays, with cars and highways, it is only a short distance to Koshima, but it took them a full day by foot. To get to the island, they needed a boat that would be available the next day. They stayed overnight with a farmer who had strapped the arm of a monkey over his horse stable to ward off evil spirits. Following this pointer, they traveled on to the island, which they crisscrossed in all directions-getting lost and all-without seeing any primates except for each other.

  But they did notice monkey droppings.

  Imo's Innovations

  This first exploration took place on December 5, 1948. Soon thereafter, provisioning with wheat and sweet potatoes began so as to habituate the extremely shy monkeys to people. This technique, which has the same Shintoist roots as the feeding of Nara's sacred deer, allowed the daughter of the farmer with whom they had stayed, Satsue Mito, to begin the arduous task of identifying individual monkeys, giving them names, and describing their social network.

  Half a century later, Mrs. Mito is nationally famous as the author of books about her work. During my stay, in the fall of 1998, I discussed monkey matters with the eighty-four-year-old through an interpreter in her own minshuku, a traditional simple inn. Mito's minshuku is in the village of Ichiki, close to the ocean. It is popular for its bath house, which draws water from a natural hot spring. Over delicious homemade dinners, she talked with me about her monkeys with great love, like a grandmother about her grandchildren, remembering every face and name, a glint in her eye for some, a sad look for others. 114