The question then becomes whether animals and people possess the knowledge to act selfishly. In nature, the future is mostly hidden behind a veil of ignorance. The spider builds her web in order to catch flies and the squirrel hides nuts to get through the winter, but it is unlikely that spiders and squirrels do so knowingly. This would require previous experience, whereas even the youngest, most nave spiders and squirrels weave webs and store nuts. They have no clue how useful their actions will turn out to be. Both species would have become extinct long ago if it were otherwise. And these are only the simplest examples I can think of. Many behavioral functions are much,harder to recognize. The stallion fights at great risk against other stallions so as to claim a harem of mares and sire offspring with them, but it would be ridiculous to suggest that the stallion himself knows how a victory might affect his reproductive chances. For this, he would need to know the relation between sex and procreation, an understanding yet to be demonstrated in any nonhuman animal.
Even human behavior doesn't necessarily depend on awareness of its results. The healthy appetites of children and pregnant women, for instance, serve their need for growth. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that these individuals eat out of a desire to grow: hunger does the trick. Motivations follow their own rules, fulfill their own goals, and require their own set of explanations.
Instead of the piecemeal evolution of individual acts-such as bite, scratch, flee, lick, or nurse-natural selection has produced entire psychologies that orchestrate a species' whole repertoire of behavior. Animals weigh choices, absorb information, learn which behavior yields rewards, and solve problems intelligently, and they do all of this within a framework of natural tendencies that have proven their value over the ages. Genes are definitely part of the equation, but to say that animals are nothing but machines controlled by genes is like saying that a Rembrandt is nothing but fabric and paint, or that a brain is a mere collection of neurons. While not incorrect, such statements miss by a mile the higher levels of organization.
Returning to our mother dog, it is easy to recognize in her behavior a complex psychology shaped by a long history of reliance on maternal care. The tendency to feed and clean dependent young is well established for excellent reasons. At the same time, the entrenched nature of the tendency makes it vulnerable to exploitation, as when people gave the dog tiger cubs to raise. Not that this matters much to the mother. From an evolutionary perspective, care for non-offspring may be maladaptive, but from a psychological perspective, it remains entirely authentic and fitting behavior for the species. Another dog, at Beijing Zoo, recently acted as wet nurse for three snowleopard cubs whose mother had abandoned them."'
And so, the dog at the Thai zoo really hadn't done anything unusual, nothing that a good canine wouldn't or shouldn't do. Her behavior did provide a stark reminder, though, of how narrow a portrayal of nature the nearby statue offered. The statue was intended to show selection at work, but could not begin to convey the variety of outcomes evolution has produced. Paradoxically, harsh selection processes have led to some amazingly cooperative species with character traits such as loyalty, trust, sympathy, and generosity.
The Midwife Bat
Before we now conclude that animals and people can be truly unselfish, we need to subject the terms "altruism" and "kindness" to the same scrutiny as was just applied to "selfishness." Here, too, we risk confusion: functional altruism-in which one individual gains from another's actions-does not necessarily rest on intended kindness, in which someone else's wellbeing is the goal.
When a blue jay gives alarm shrieks for a red-tailed hawk gliding around the corner, does he do so in order to warn others? All potential prey of the hawk take immediate action, and thus profit from the jay's alert, whereas the jay takes enormous risks, telling the hawk, in effect: "Here I am!" On the surface, this seems an act of unmitigated altruism. The critical question remains, however, whether the jay cared about the others: did he even realize the wider impact of his calls?
There exist many examples of altruism in which awareness of what the behavior means to others is questionable. This is especially true for social insects, which sacrifice themselves on a massive scale for their colony and queen. Many other animals help each other find food and water, avoid predation, raise offspring, and so on. Only a few of the largest-brained animals, however, seem to operate with a solid understanding of how their behavior affects others. When these animals go out of their way to help others without any clear benefits for themselves, it is possible that the other's welfare is their goal. I am thinking, for example, of how Binti Jua, the lowland gorilla at Chicago's Brookfield Zoo, scooped up and gently transported an unconscious boy who had fallen into her enclosure. Binti followed a chain of action no one had taught her, resulting in the boy's rescue.239
In another incident, a British tourist was protected by dolphins in the Gulf of Akaba off the Red Sea. While cavorting with dolphins, the man was attacked by sharks. When his companions on the vessel heard his screams, they thought at first it was a joke, until they saw blood stain the water. Three dolphins surrounded the injured victim, leaping up and smacking the water with their tails and flippers, and successfully kept the sharks at bay.240
In my work on the evolution of morality, I have found many instances of animals caring for one another and responding to others' distress. For example, chimpanzees will approach a victim of attack, put an arm around her and gently pat her back, or groom her. These reassuring encounters, termed consolations, are so predictable that my students and I have recorded hundreds of instances.241 In monkeys, on the other hand, consolation has never been demonstrated. On the contrary, monkeys often avoid victims of aggression. Our closest relatives, the anthropoid apes, thus seem more empathic than monkeys. Apes may be able to perceive the world from someone else's perspective, and hence understand what is wrong with the other, or what the other needs.
Nadie Ladygina-Kohts noticed similar empathic tendencies in her young chimpanzee, Yoni, whom she raised in Moscow at the beginning of the twentieth century. Kohts, who analyzed Yoni's behavior in the minutest detail, discovered that the only way to get him off the roof of her house (much more effectively than by holding out a reward) was to appeal to his feelings of concern for her:
If I pretend to be crying, close my eyes and weep, Yoni immediately stops his plays or any other activities, quickly runs over to me, all excited and shagged, from the most remote places in the house, such as the roof or the ceiling of his cage, from where I could not drive him down despite my persistent calls and entreaties. He hastily runs around me, as if looking for the offender; looking at my face, he tenderly takes my chin in his palm, lightly touches my face with his finger, as though trying to understand what is happening, and turns around, clenching his toes into firm fists.242
In previous books, such as Good Natured (1996), I have amassed other examples in support of this empathic capacity in the chimpanzee and its closest relative, the bonobo. For instance, an adult daughter brought fruit down from a tree to her aging mother, who was too old to climb. In another instance, juveniles interrupted their rambunctious play each time they got close to a terminally sick companion. There is also the report of an old male leading a blind female around by the hand, and of an ape who released a damaged bird by climbing to the highest point of a tree, spreading the bird's wings, and sending it off through the air. This individual seemed to have an idea of what kind of assistance might be best for an injured bird. There exist ample stories of this sort about apes that suggest a capacity to assist others insightfully.
But even though apes may be special in this regard, we cannot exclude similar capacities in other animals. A well-documented instance of possible altruism concerns a very different species: Rodrigues fruit bats in a breeding colony in Florida, studied by Thomas Kunz, a biologist at the University of Boston.243 By chance, Kunz witnessed an exceptionally difficult birthing process in which a mother bat failed to adopt the required feet-down positio
n. Instead, she continued to hang upside-down. Taking on a midwife role, another female spent no less than two and a half hours assisting the inexperienced mother. She licked and groomed her behind, and wrapped her wings around her, perhaps so as to prevent the emerging pup from falling. She also repeatedly fanned the exhausted mother with her wings. But what amazed the biologist most was that the helper seemed to be instructing the mother: the mother adopted the correct feet-down position only after the helper had done so right in front of her. On four separate occasions the helper adopted the correct position in full view of the mother-a position normally used only for urination or defecation, which the helper didn't engage in-and each time the mother followed the helper's example.
A Rodrigues fruit bat is giving birth, hanging in the correct feet-down position, perhaps mimicking the helper female, on the left, who adopted this position several times in front of her when the pregnant female failed to do so on her own. (Drawing by Thomas Kunz, with kind permission).
It looked very much as if the midwife bat was aware of the difficulties the mother's unorthodox position was causing, and that she tutored the mother to do the right thing. If she indeed monitored the effects of her actions and deliberately strove for a successful delivery, the helper's behavior was not just functionally but also intentionally altruistic. When the pup was finally born, it climbed onto its mother's back assisted by headnuzzling from the helper female.
We easily recognize such helping tendencies, because they are prominent in our own species. This is abundantly clear when people crawl into smoking ruins to save others, such as during earthquakes and fires. Given our talent for risk assessment, there can be nothing inadvertent about such behavior. When Lenny Skutnik dove into the icy Potomac River in Washington, D.C., to rescue a plane-crash victim, or when European civilians sheltered Jewish families during World War II, incredible risks were taken on behalf of complete strangers. Even if reward comes afterward in the form of a medal or a moment on the evening news, this is of course never the motive. No sane person would willingly risk his life for a piece of metal or five minutes of televised glory. The decision to help is instantaneous and impulsive, without much time to think. When fugitives knock on the door, one determines there and then whether to take them in.
But even if many heroic acts escape traditional biological explanations in terms of "short-sighted selfishness," this doesn't make the underlying tendencies counterevolutionary. More than likely, the helping responses of dolphins, gorillas, or people toward strangers in need evolved in the context of a close-knit group life in which most of the time such actions benefited relatives and companions able to repay the favor. The impulse to help was therefore never totally without survival value to the one showing the impulse. But, as so often, the impulse became dissociated from the consequences that shaped its evolution, which permitted it to be expressed even when payoffs were unlikely. The impulse thus was emancipated to the point where it became genuinely unselfish.
Depressed Rescue Dogs
The animal literature is filled with examples of normal behavior under unusual circumstances. Followed by a single file of goslings, Konrad Lorenz demonstrated the tendency of these birds to imprint on the first moving object they lay their eyes on. He thus permanently confused their sense of speciesbelonging. Niko Tinbergen saw stickleback fish in a row of tanks in front of his laboratory window, in Leiden, make furious territorial displays at the mail delivery van in the street below. At the time, Dutch mail vans were bright red, the same color as the male stickleback's underbelly during the breeding season, and the fish mistook the van for an intruder of their own species.
Artificial situations sometimes help us see more clearly how behavior is regulated. When goslings do the normal thing, following their mom around all day, one might think that they share our exalted view of motherhood. We are quickly disabused of this notion, however, when they follow a bearded zoologist with equal devotion. And when sticklebacks defend their territory, we might think that they want to keep competitors out, whereas in reality they are only reacting to a speciestypical red flag. What animals really are after is not always evident, and tinkering with conditions is a way to find out.
For altruistic behavior, an informative context is that of rescue dogs. Trainers tap into the inborn tendency of these cooperative hunters to come to each other's aid. Time and again, dogs demonstrate this ability spontaneously towards their human "pack members." An example is the occasion on which a rottweiler and a golden retriever crawled side by side on their bellies toward their master, who had broken through the ice on a frozen lake. The heavy man managed to grab their collars, one in each hand, upon which both dogs inched backward, pulling him oUt.244
Rescue dogs are trained to perform such responses on command, often in repulsive situations, such as fires, that they would normally avoid unless the entrapped individuals are familiar. Training is accomplished with the usual carrot-and stick method. One might think, therefore, that the dogs perform like Skinnerian rats, doing what has been reinforced in the past, partly out of instinct, partly out of a desire for tidbits. If they save human lives, one could argue, they do so for purely selfish reasons.
The image of the rescue dog as a well-behaved robot is hard to maintain, however, in the face of their attitude under trying circumstances with few survivors, such as in the aftermath of the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. When rescue dogs encounter too many dead people, they lose interest in their job regardless of how much praise and goodies they get.
This was discovered by Caroline Hebard, the U.S. pioneer of canine search and rescue, during the Mexico City earthquake of 1985. Hebard recounts how her German shepherd, Aly, reacted to finding corpse after corpse and few survivors. Aly would be all excited and joyful if he detected human life in the rubble, but became depressed by all the death. In Hebard's words, Aly regarded humans as his friends, and he could not stand to be surrounded by so many dead friends: "Aly fervently wanted his stick reward, and equally wanted to please Caroline, but as long as he was uncertain about whether he had found someone alive, he would not even reward himself. Here in this gray area, rules of logic no longer applied."245
The logic referred to is that a reward is just a reward: there is no reason for a trained dog to care about the victim's condition. Yet, all dogs on the team became depressed. They rc quired longer and longer resting periods, and their eagerness for the job dropped off dramatically. After a couple of days, Aly clearly had had enough. His big brown eyes were mournful, and he hid behind the bed when Hehard wanted to take him out again. He also refused to eat. All other dogs on the team had lost their appetites as well.
The solution to this motivational problem says a lot about what the dogs wanted. A Mexican veterinarian was invited to act as stand-in survivor. The rescuers hid the volunteer somewhere in a wreckage and let the dogs find him. One after another the dogs were sent in, picked up the man's scent, and happily alerted, thus "saving" his life. Refreshed by this exercise, the dogs were ready to work again.246
What this means is that trained dogs rescue people only partly for approval and food rewards. Instead of performing a cheap circus trick, they are emotionally invested. They relish the opportunity to find and save a live person. Doing so also constitutes some sort of reward, but one more in line with what Adam Smith, the Scottish philosopher and father of economics, thought to underlie human sympathy: all that we derive from sympathy, he said, is the pleasure of seeing someone else's fortune. Perhaps this doesn't seem like much, but it means a lot to many people, and apparently also to some bighearted canines.
Under certain conditions and for certain species, therefore, we can drop the customary quotation marks around "altruism." At least in some cases, we seem to be dealing with the genuine article: a good deed done and intended.
Apples and Oranges
It is not hard to see why biologists call the problems they deal with multilayered. At the evolutionary level a behavior may be self-s
erving; at the psychological level it may be kind and unselfish; and at yet another level it may be best understood by the effect of hormones on certain brain areas. Similarly, from the performer's perspective a behavior may be a mere reflex or fully deliberate, yet this matters little to the recipient, who mainly cares about whether the behavior helps or harms him.
When we freely jump from one level or perspective to another we run the risk of forgetting to keep our language straight. For example, nature documentaries now customarily discuss animal behavior in the shorthand of evolutionary biology ("The croaking frog advertises his genetic superiority to potential mates"), making us forget that animals know nothing about the genetic story. Even worse is that scientists who operate on one level sometimes can't stand another level's idiom, and vice versa. This explains why some flinch at a behavior being called altruistic, whereas others flinch at the same behavior being called selfish. In fact, both may be right within their respective frameworks.
If one biologist's apples are another's oranges, this obviously creates a communication problem. We usually resolve the difficulty by asking whether someone is talking at the "proximate" (direct causation) or "ultimate" (adaptive value) level, but this distinction has never caught on outside of biology. The tension between the two is forever there, however. The mother dog who raises tiger cubs is at once extraordinarily generous and doing what her genes, based on millions of years of self-service, nudge her to do. By following her natural irrnpulses, she illustrates the contradictions that lend so much richness to evolutionary accounts that we will never be done mining their meaning.
The Ape And The Sushi Master Reflections Of A Primatologist Page 25