But having said this, the overwhelming evidence that animals, at least some of the time, “wish each other well” is the proverbial elephant in the room during any debate about human nature. I love this English expression, which refers to an obvious truth of massive proportions that is ignored because of its inconvenience. People willfully suppress knowledge most have had since childhood, which is that animals do have feelings and do care about others. How and why half the world drops this conviction once they grow beards or breasts will always baffle me, but the result is the common fallacy that we are unique in this regard. Human we are, and humane as well, but the idea that the latter may be older than the former, that our kindness is part of a much larger picture, still has to catch on.
I am not even particularly interested in demonstrating animal empathy, because for me the critical issue is no longer whether they have it, but how it works. My suspicion is that it works exactly the same way in humans and other animals, even though humans may add a few complexities. It is the core mechanism that matters, and the circumstances that turn empathy on or off. I am irresistibly drawn, therefore, toward the great beast in the room, wanting to poke and prod it so as to determine what it is made of. Hopefully, not like the six blind men from Indostan, who couldn’t agree on any of its parts, but more like a scientist who recruits the knowledge of his day to come up with an account of how one member of a species gets to care about another.
Elephants are well known for this. They don’t need a genetic relationship to help one another, such as the aforementioned blind elephant and her friend, both of whom had come to the park from different sources. The same is true in the wild, where unrelated elephants sometimes help one another to their feet as in the description below of a dying matriarch, named Eleanor, on a Kenyan game reserve:
Eleanor was found with a swollen trunk which she was dragging on the ground. She stood still for a while, then took a few slow small steps before falling heavily to the ground. Two minutes later, Grace [matriarch of a different group], rapidly approached with tail raised and streaming with temporal gland secretion. She lifted Eleanor with her tusks back on to her feet. Eleanor stood for a short while, but was very shaky. Grace tried to get Eleanor to walk by pushing her, but Eleanor fell again facing the opposite direction to her first fall. Grace appeared very stressed, vocalizing, and continuing to nudge and push Eleanor with her tusks.
What fascinates me in these and other cases is how elephants manifest the two-lane path to targeted helping. First of all, there is the arousal, marked by stress signals, such as loud vocalizing, urination, streaming glands, raised tails, and spread ears, which indicates emotional contagion. Second, there is the insightful part, where appropriate assistance is being offered, such as lifting a three-thousand-kilogram fallen comrade to her feet. In a separate case, American wildlife biologist Cynthia Moss witnessed the response after a poacher’s bullet had entered the lungs of a young female, Tina. When her knees started to buckle, members of Tina’s family leaned into her so as to keep her upright. She died nonetheless, upon which one of the others “went off and collected a trunkfull of grass and tried to stuff it into her mouth.”
This last little detail is telling, since it suggests an attempted solution. It may not be the right solution, but isn’t it the thought that counts? Elephants normally don’t stuff food into one another’s mouths, so why start with one who has just died? And why not put it in Tina’s ear or, for that matter, her behind? It’s the correspondence problem again: The helper seemed aware which part of Tina’s body normally would accept food. There are similar observations, such as an older bull bringing water from a nearby spring to a dying companion, spraying it over the other bull’s head and ears, and trying to get him to drink. This is highly unusual behavior and suggests an insightful approach to the other’s problem.
Thousands of people watched a television nature program in which an adopted baby elephant had slid into a mud hole and couldn’t get out. The surrounding elephants became highly agitated. The noise of trumpeting and rumbling was overwhelming, with everyone going into high gear. The matriarch and another female started working on the problem, one of them climbing into the hole on her knees, while the mud was creating deadly suction on the calf. Both females worked together, placing their trunks and tusks underneath the calf until the suction was broken and the calf scrambled out of the hole. When this film clip is shown to a human audience, they clap as soon as the calf stands on dry land, shaking off the mud like a big floppy dog.
Most such observations concern African elephants, which are actually quite different from Asians—they’re not only a different species, but a separate genus. Asian elephants do the same, however. Here’s one of Josh’s e-mails from Thailand:
I saw an incredible act of targeted helping. An older female, perhaps close to 65, fell down in the middle of the night. It was a very rainy, muddy jungle environment, difficult for us to walk around, I can only imagine how difficult it was for a tired old female to get up. For hours, mahouts and volunteers alike tried to lift her. In the meantime, her close companion, Mae Mai, an unrelated female of about 45, refused to leave her side. I say refused because mahouts were trying to get her out of the way (tempting her with food). She may have sensed that they were trying to help, because after repeated tries to lift the fallen female with human hands and with another elephant tethered to her, Mae Mai, in a rather agitated state, got alongside the old female, and with her head, tried to push her up. She repeatedly tried to do so, ending each failed attempt with frustrated trunk smacks to the ground and rumbling. She seemed highly committed to staying with her friend.
When the old female died, a few days later, Mae Mai urinated uncontrollably, and started bellowing loudly. When the Mahouts tried to take down a large wooden frame to try and raise the old female, Mae Mai got in the way and wouldn’t let the wood anywhere near her dead friend. Mae Mai then spent the next two days wandering around the park bellowing at the top of her voice every few minutes, causing the rest of the herd to respond with similar sounds.
Unlike helping among primates, which has been studied from many angles, for elephants we only have stories. But then, those stories come from so many different sources and are internally so consistent that I have no doubt that being thick-skinned doesn’t keep these animals from being extraordinarily sensitive. In fact, Josh’s project in Thailand aims not only to measure how semi-free ranging elephants rally around distressed parties, such as a youngster freaked out by a snake, but also the arousal of the surrounding group. The mournful bellowing by Mae Mai that set off vocalizations by others is a case in point. This gets at emotional contagion, which may be more visible in elephants than most animals, such as when elephants around a frightened herd member stretch their tails and flap their ears. In extreme cases, they empty their bladders and bowels: an outward sign of emotional engagement that is hard to miss.
This also explains our interest in the reaction of elephants to mirrors. We teamed up with Diana Reiss, who had tested the dolphins before, to see if we could get the same thing going with elephants. It sounded simple, until we reflected on the kind of mirror needed. We were definitely thinking big, bigger than an earlier study according to which elephants fail the rouge test. Looking at that study’s description, it’s not hard to see a few problems. First of all, the mirror was much smaller than an elephant’s body. Second, it was placed on the ground at a distance, so that even with the best of vision (which elephants may not have) attention must have been drawn mostly to the reflection of the animal’s feet. And finally, the mirror was put outside the enclosure, separated by bars, so that there was no way for the elephant to smell or touch it, or feel behind it, which many animals like to do before interacting further. In short, the setup kept the animal from fully exploring this unusual contraption.
We received excellent cooperation from the Bronx Zoo, which built us what we like to call a “jumbo-sized” mirror. It was a giant plastic mirror of eight by eight feet glued
to a metal frame with a sturdy cover, so that we could block its view on days we weren’t using it. We didn’t want the elephants seeing the mirror unless we could videotape their reactions. The mirror had a tiny lipstick camera in the middle so that we could film everything close up. Most of all, the mirror was elephantproof. The animals could smell and touch it as much as they wanted, and even look behind it, although we felt they were a little too enthusiastic doing so.
Maxine walked up to the mirror and slung her trunk over it, after which she began climbing up, standing on her hind legs so that she could peek over the wall on which the mirror was mounted. Elephants don’t climb, as everyone knows, and this was the first time keepers with decades of experience had seen anything like it. The wall withstood the couple of tons leaning on top of it; otherwise our experiment might have ended then and there with a pursuit of Maxine through New York traffic!
After her climbing effort, Maxine adopted a most ridiculous posture, getting completely down on her “elbows” with her large behind and back legs swinging up in the air as she tried to literally stick her entire trunk underneath the mirror. This just goes to show her extreme desire to understand the mirror. On the other hand, at no moment did the elephants treat their reflection as if it were another member of their species. This is remarkable, because even apes and children do so at first sight. Is it possible that smell plays a greater role for elephants, so that it makes no sense for them seeing “another” without accompanying odor cues?
Like the apes, they used the mirror to inspect parts of their bodies that they normally never see. They opened their mouths wide in front of the mirror, feeling into them with their trunks. One elephant pushed her ear forward with her trunk while facing the mirror. They also made strange swinging motions, or walked repeatedly in and out of view of the mirror, as if to make sure that their reflection behaved the same way as they did themselves. This is known as “self-contingency testing,” which is typical of apes as well. It was what we were waiting for, as it suggested that the animals had an inkling of what they saw in the mirror.
We prepared for the rouge test, following the same sham-mark procedure as Diana had applied to dolphins. A paint company had provided us with white face paint and a container with exactly the same paint in which a single, odorless component had been changed so that it showed no visible pigmentation. Large X’s were painted on both sides of the elephant’s head above each eye, on the right with the visible paint, on the left with the invisible one.
Happy, a thirty-four-year-old Asian elephant, did all the right things to indicate that she connected the mirror image with herself. She first walked straight to the mirror, where she spent ten seconds, then moved away. We were disappointed. But without having touched the mark, she returned seven minutes later. She moved in and out of the mirror’s view a couple of times, until she moved away again. While turning away, she began to feel the visible mark. She then returned to the mirror and, while standing directly in front of it, touched and investigated the mark multiple times with her trunk. According to our videotapes, Happy directed a dozen touches at the visible mark and none at the sham mark.
With a big white X painted on her forehead, Happy walked up to the mirror. She could not see the mark without the mirror, but began feeling and touching it.
The great thing, compared with dolphins, is that the elephant is an animal that can touch itself. By any standard used for apes or children, Happy passed the rouge test. We tested two more elephants, including Maxine, but they failed. This is less surprising than it may seem, because for even the most intensely tested primate, the chimpanzee, the proportion of individuals passing the rouge test is far from 100 percent, and in some studies it is less than half.
To see Happy rhythmically swing her trunk in the direction of the big white cross that she couldn’t know about without the mirror, closer and closer, until she began to carefully and precisely touch it, was a sight to behold. We were elated. It was the first indication that elephants have the same capacity for mirror self-recognition that humans, dolphins, and apes have.
For the news media, our scientific report on this discovery appeared at a propitious moment, right after the midterm debacle of the Republican Party in 2006. Their proud symbol, of course, is the elephant. Newspapers couldn’t resist cartoons of an injured and bandaged pachyderm sitting in front of a mirror, staring dejectedly at itself. But the funniest opening line came from a widely carried Associated Press piece: “If you’re Happy and you know it, pat your head.”
So, it seems that elephants too fit the co-emergence hypothesis. Obviously, we need to better understand their exact level of empathy, and it is paramount that more elephants be subjected to the rouge test. But for the moment I take our evidence as encouraging. Moreover, there is brain research to match, because as it turns out, all mammals with mirror self-recognition possess a rare type of brain cell.
A decade ago, a team of neuroscientists showed that so-called Von Economo neurons, or VEN cells, are limited to the hominoid (human and ape) brain. VEN cells differ from regular neurons in that they are long and spindle-like. They reach further and deeper into the brain, making them ideal to connect distant layers. John Allman, a member of the team, thinks that VEN cells are adapted for large brains, adding much-needed connectivity. In the dissection of the brains of many species, these cells were found only in humans and their immediate relatives, but were absent in all other primates, such as monkeys. The cells are particularly large and abundant in our own species, and are found in a part of the brain critical for traits that we consider “humane.” Damage to this particular part results in a special kind of dementia marked by the loss of perspective-taking, empathy, embarrassment, humor, and future-orientation. Most important, these patients also lack self-awareness.
In other words, when humans lose their VEN cells, they lose about every capacity that’s part of the co-emergence hypothesis. It’s unclear if these particular cells themselves are responsible, but it is thought that they underpin the required brain circuitry. Now, if VEN cells play such a vital role in what sets humans and apes apart from the rest of the animal kingdom, the obvious next question is whether they are an absolute requirement. Could other animals, such as dolphins and elephants, possess the same capacities without VEN cells?
But we don’t need to worry about this, because the latest discovery by Allman’s team is that VEN cells are not limited to humans and apes. These neurons have made their independent appearance in only two other branches of the mammalian tree, which happen to be the cetaceans (dolphins and whales) and elephants.
In Its Own Little Bubble
The co-emergence hypothesis offers a nice, tidy story tying together ontogeny, phylogeny, and neurobiology. It’s not a story that sets humans apart, even though we have more of everything: more empathy, more VEN cells, and more self-awareness. We go beyond other animals, for example, in that we are self-conscious about our looks, and have an actual opinion about it: Some hate how they look, and some love it. We shave, comb, or decorate ourselves in front of the mirror every day. We not only recognize ourselves, but also care about our appearance. This may not be totally unique (one orangutan at a German zoo had a habit of piling lettuce leaves onto her head before checking out the results in a mirror), but our species is definitely the planet’s greatest narcissist.
We are part of a small brainy elite that operates on a higher mental plane than the vast majority of animals. Members of this elite have a superior grasp of their place in the world and a more accurate appreciation of the lives of those around them. But however tidy the story may seem, I’m inherently skeptical of sharp dividing lines. For the same reason that I don’t believe in a mental gap between humans and apes, I can’t believe that, say, monkeys or dogs have none, absolutely none, of the capacities that we’ve been discussing. It’s just inconceivable that perspective-taking and self-awareness evolved in a single jump in a few species without any stepping stones in other animals.
B
ut let’s first look at the differences. In the early 1990s, my co-worker Filippo Aureli and I decided to study consolation in monkeys to see if they, like the apes, reassure distressed parties. Both of us had watched hundreds of aftermaths to aggressive conflict in a variety of species, and the setup of those studies had been similar to what we were now planning. The approach is to wait until a spontaneous fight breaks out in a primate group, and then document the events that follow. This method offers unambiguous evidence for consolation in apes, so should do the same in monkeys, provided they have it. At the time, we had no reason to think they wouldn’t.
But to our surprise, we found nothing! Whereas reconciliation, in which former opponents come together, occurs in all monkeys studied, consolation is totally absent. How could this be? In fact, the monkey observations were shocking, because we’d see a defeated monkey crouching in a corner, and not even its own family seemed the least bit worried. After more failed monkey studies, Italian scientist Gabriele Schino reasoned that if there’s any situation in which one would definitely expect consolation it would be between a mother and her youngest offspring, because this is the closest bond. When Schino tested this on macaques on a large rock at the Rome Zoo, however, his findings were positively baffling. Mothers barely paid attention to their offspring after they had been attacked and bitten, and certainly didn’t actively comfort them. This is all the more surprising since macaque mothers do defend their young against aggression, hence recognizing this as an aversive event. And juveniles do run to their mother after an attack, often huddling against her with a nipple in their mouth, seeking comforting contact. They just shouldn’t expect their mother to go out of her way to provide it.
The Age of Empathy Page 15