Ecological Intelligence

by Ian Mccallum

  Looking back on our early beginnings, it is likely that one factor more than any other was responsible for our progression from individualistic foragers to collective scavengers and then hunters—the quality of our diet. The protein derived from eating small mammals, reptiles, and the scavenging on carcasses was not enough. We needed more animal protein and it needed to be fresh. Bone marrow and organ meat became increasingly important as “brain food,” necessitating that we invent more sophisticated ways of obtaining it. As human animals we did not come blessed with the ability to outsmell, outsee, or outrun the animal meat we desperately needed. Instead, in conjunction with a remarkable increase in the size and neural circuitry of the hominid forebrain, our ancestors learned to outthink their prey. They formed hunting alliances, the equivalent of today’s goal-oriented economic and political alliances.

  There is little doubt when viewing the stone tools of Homo erectus that he was a more sophisticated hunter than his smaller-brained predecessor, Homo habilis. But there was more to it than just tool making. The need for meat and marrow, combined with the neurological equipment to plan its acquisition, predisposed the species to a huge leap in the sophistication of animal tracking—checking, comparing, collating, interpreting, testing, and retesting—a process akin to modern scientific thinking. It almost goes without saying that to have been a successful hunter one had to be a successful tracker, but even that was not enough. Not only did the hunters have to learn to read the signatures in the sand, they had to learn the ways of the animals, their applied anatomy, physiology, and their behavior. They had to learn about the environment in which the animals moved and lived and about the seasons of water, wind, and fire. They had to learn how to put the elements to their advantage, and finally, because the emotions of fear and anxiety were always with them, they had to learn how to interpret and prioritize their own emotional responses to threat and danger.

  In his book Affective Neuroscience, neurobiologist Jaak Panksepp writes the following:

  As the humanoid brain developed enough cortex to think and to elaborate complex ideas, hunting became an acquired practice of the human lifestyle. Humans eventually developed the habit of stalking prey and eating meat as do some present-day male chimpanzees in the wild. It is likely however that this thread of character emerged independently of the intense and persistent carnivorous hunting urges of the cats and dogs of the ancient plains.

  Shaped by the environment, by necessity, and aided by an intelligence that made it workable, hunting became an adapted form of what neurobiologists refer to as seeking behavior—in this case, the seeking of food taking priority over the seeking of companionship, attachment, and approval.

  In summary, the seeking of food is one thing, how it is achieved is another. We had to learn how to hunt and it did not only apply to the human animal. An example of what I mean can be seen in the food-seeking behavior of baboons and otters. Try raising a baboon and an otter in captivity and then, after three years, releasing them into the wild. Within an hour, we could expect the otter to have caught a fish. Instinct. The baboon, on the other hand, will not have a clue about what or what not to eat. It would have to learn the hard way that a scorpion (a wild delicacy), for instance, has to be detailed before eating it.

  Hunting, as essential as it has been to human survival, has to be understood as an important part of the learning curve of human culture. And yet, precisely because of its cultural significance, there are reasons other than the learned skills of acquiring food and skins for blankets and clothing why hunting continues to hold its appeal.

  Historically, for communities like the Kalahari bushmen, the many hunting tribes of Africa, the Nunamuit people of Alaska, and the traditional Native Americans, hunting was never simply an act of throwing a spear, pulling the bowstring, or aiming a gun. It was also central to healing rituals and to the initiatory rites of passage of young adolescents into manhood and womanhood. Hunting, then, was also a symbolic act. To face and to kill a wild animal was about proving oneself in one’s community, that a young man, for instance, could face his fears and that he could provide food, skins, and ornaments for his people. The trophy was the evidence of a man’s skill, courage, and prowess. To succeed was to gain wide-ranging approval and privileges from one’s peers and from one’s community. In many instances, hunting in this form was part of a mate-selection ritual. Today there are few areas in the world where such traditional lifestyles prevail. However, the need to prove oneself remains. It is part of our nature, and while there are other ways of proving oneself, approval, as we shall see, is central to the psychological dynamics of trophy hunting.

  THE PSYCHOBIOLOGY OF HUNTING

  When hunters take aim at an animal, how do they divorce them-selves from personal feelings of negativity, especially the feelings aroused by the thought of the distress the animal may be experiencing? To protect the ego from being overwhelmed by negative feelings, the hunter becomes desensitized.

  Desensitization is part of the process of denial, an important but complex defense mechanism of the human ego. In the process of blocking our feelings, we become hardened to the predicament and the feelings of the other. As in any form of indoctrination—a less-polite word for required learning—the earlier the desensitization occurs, the more reinforced it becomes. In his book Body Count: The Death Toll in America’s War on Wildlife, N. Phelps reminds us that 89 percent of American hunters began hunting before they were nineteen years old, 69 percent before they were sixteen, and 54 percent before they were thirteen. What makes the process of desensitization in young people so easy is that it is socially sanctioned, albeit by an inner circle of family members and friends. Promoted in the name of kinship, belonging, and upholding of traditional values, the child and the young adolescent can hardly resist the call to hunt, for, as we know, it is only in late adolescence and early adulthood that young people begin to reexamine the value systems of society and of their kin.

  Another form of denial is dissociation—the emotionally expedient act of distancing oneself from unpleasant or threatening situations. As in the socially sanctioned madness of war, the hunter, like the soldier, dissociates himself from the trauma. A traumatic event then becomes dramatic. The trophy hunter is lulled into a complex yet absurd process of self-deception. The animal, the other, becomes the threat, the projected villain…the enemy. For the trophy hunter to maintain this deception, the stuffed animal in his home is invariably made to look dangerous. The implication is clear—the hunter is perceived as having shot the animal in self-defense.

  A further, well-used form of denial is justification—the act of convincing oneself that what one is doing is right, that there are good reasons to believe in certain traditions and to behave in specific ways. By aligning their activities to biological drives, hunters in general find little difficulty justifying their sport. As we are beginning to find out, this alignment is not biologically driven, but a learned behavior.

  However, there is another reason given for trophy hunting that is often overlooked. Once again, it stems not so much from biological evolution, but from cultural evolution. It is linked to the ancient, misguided belief that wild animals are dangerous. It is well known that those who are attracted to danger, more especially to the psychosocial challenge that comes with high-risk behavior, will travel great distances to confront and to overcome it and to bring back the trophy. I will give my reasons for why they do this, but before doing so we would do well to remember that the Big Five (elephant, rhinoceros, buffalo, lion, and leopard) is hunting terminology. They are so named because they are the most dangerous when they are threatened, wounded, when they are protecting their young, and when their escape routes are foiled. It is well documented that, with rare exceptions, every one of these animals will steer clear and even run away from the full profile of humans. When their behavior is understood, the Big Five are not dangerous, or, if you prefer, they are as dangerous as you and I would be in the same circumstances. It is the hunter who creates the
danger.

  But why would anyone want to have an animal’s head on his wall? The answer, I believe, is not difficult to find. There are fairly plausible psychological reasons, one of them being the deep human need for approval. From war medals through university certificates, sporting laurels and the heads of wild animals, our exhibits say the same thing—they are our displays of talent, achievement, acceptance, and prowess. Sigmund Freud, by the way, would have referred to these displays as phallic, which, as we shall see, is not that far from the truth.

  The need for approval is both primal and necessary. We admire people who set goals and who achieve them. We admire those who turn adversity into something of value. These are our role models and our leaders. However, in today’s ecological climate it is extremely difficult to approve or admire anyone who kills an animal for sport. It is difficult to justify, as proposed by the same hunter, that “the reason we hunt is for that special feeling” (italics mine). What kind of a feeling is he talking about? When examined carefully, we find that it is a feeling that is linked to the aggressively competitive nature of hunting itself, and, as we shall see, it is primarily a male thing (96 percent of the members of the Safari Club International—the biggest hunting society in the world—are males).

  Aggression and assertion are not only linked, but are evolutionarily significant—without them we would not have been able to compete effectively for environmental resources. Let’s take a closer look at the neurobiological basis of aggression and why men are intrinsically more aggressive than women. To do this, we need to return to the almond-shaped nucleus in the temporal lobe of our brains—the amygdala.

  This little structure, apart from being activated by emotionally charged situations, is one of several nuclei involved in seeking or exploratory behavior. It triggers the feelings associated with curiosity, reward, anticipation, and other appetitive states such as hunger and thirst. In both men and women, the amygdala is active in power play and dominance behavior. It is also involved in what is referred to as predatory or dispassionate “cold aggression” as well as its opposite, the “hot aggression” associated with avenge and revenge. However, there is an important difference between the sexes—these nuclei are significantly larger and more active in men than in women, even when we are asleep. From primates to rodents, the activity in this nucleus indicates that males show more concern for victory, winning, power, and dominance than females.

  But how does this translate to trophy hunting and to that special feeling that the trophy hunter cannot do without? As it is in any sport, it has to do with competition and the joy of winning. It has been conclusively shown that victory in a variety of forms—in sexual and social competition, on tennis courts, through academic degrees, and from military ventures to hunting—is associated with increased blood levels of the sexual hormone testosterone. With it comes the feeling of prowess and dominance. Losers, on the other hand, exhibit declined levels of the hormone. Combined with other morphinelike chemicals involved in competitive play, testosterone in men and women (not to be confused with its masculinizing metabolite in males, dihydrotestosterone), rather than adrenaline, appears to be the key chemical for that special feeling. The same process applies to the trophy hunter, with one notable difference from any other sport—the absence of play. The trophy, the victory, is practically guaranteed, there is little contest, and, what is more, the “opponent” is going to die. It is difficult to argue against the proposition that trophy hunting is more about reinforcing dominance than creating joy, more about approval than creativity, more about aggression than assertion. To me, there is no poetry in trophy hunting. The special feeling, because of the absence of play, is one of power, which means that these hunters can never be satisfied—they can never get enough of it. It becomes a habit, and an addictive one at that.

  Assertion, on the other hand, is that rare and precious state of knowing that one’s ultimate sense of approval is not externally dependent and that one no longer has to prove oneself. It is as if, as we mature, we become more aware of the difference between fair and unfair play, between hot and cold aggression. We grow up. Perhaps this is the reason why hunters, even the unauthentic ones, put down their guns.

  As for the future, there is something that authentic hunters need to do. They need to be a lot more outspoken against the profoundly disturbing practice of high-fence or canned hunting—the establishment of fencedin game farms for the purchase, breeding, and shooting of wild animals (mostly large herbivores and predators) for the sole purpose of having them shot as trophies. Often baited and in some instances drugged, these animals have been known to be shot from the back of open vehicles and from behind fences. Who can forget the horrific television footage of canned hunting in 1997 when a lioness on a South African game ranch was shot and killed in front of her cubs?

  While many hunters will argue that it is the unscrupulous few, including professional hunters, who have spoiled it for the others, the protest surrounding the entire concept of trophy hunting is growing. Directed not only toward the hunters, but toward the industry that encourages and supports it, the protest is at the same time a plea for an ecological ethic. Ethical hunters stress the importance of a fair chase of the quarry, defining fairness as the pursuit, on foot, of a free-ranging or enclosed animal that is free to escape its pursuer. The important question, of course, refers to the definition of a canned/trophy hunting operation: how big an area must the land be to ensure a fair chase? To me, the definition of a canned-hunting operation is simple: If there is a fence, if there are artificial water holes and the kill is guaranteed, then the word ethical does not fit. You are dealing with a canned-hunting operation.

  The operators may argue that the selected trophy animals are “usu-ally” past their breeding prime and that they would have been taken by other predators anyway. Why not earn money from them? I will argue that we know little about the kinship and social roles of wild animals once they are beyond their reproductive age. Buffalo are a good example of what we are beginning to discover about the disciplinary, protective, and mentoring roles of herd animals. It was always thought that the huge, cantankerous old bulls (the “dagga boys”) were hanging around waiting to die. Not so. It would appear that they continue to play a protective, albeit more distant, educational role in the survival of their kind.

  Another argument put forward by breeding operations is that the trophy animals provide a potential gene pool for rare, exotic, or endangered species, or that the money earned from trophy hunting pays for the operation as well as providing benefits for local communities such as employment and money for schools and clinics. This may sound plausible, if not noble, but does the end justify the means? And, how much goes toward these noble ends?

  It is well known that one’s genes and one’s fate are not the same thing. In other words, genetic replication from one generation to another is not a given. It depends on the environment into which the genotype is born. For any creature, its natural environment is a part of its creatureliness, its cunning, its vigilance, its territoriality, its sexual preferences…its wildness. Take lions, for example. Is a second- or third-generation zoo, circus, or captive lion the same as its bloodline cousin in the wild? They might look the same, but at the molecular/ genetic level, especially with the inevitable interbreeding of close relatives, things may be very different. Two questions need to be asked: what is being bred into the gene pool and with the progressive domestication of the animal, what is being bred out of it? Let the history of the breeding and interbreeding of dogs speak for itself. Is this part of the future of wild animals?

  Addressing the impact on the gene pool of domesticating wild animals, writer and wildlife photographer Ian Michler asks some pointed questions. In the breeding of lions for trophy hunting (although it applies to all animals), he asks: “Are these operators in the process of creating a domesticated version of the wild lion? Do we understand the biological, behavioral, and philosophical implications of what is going on behind the fences
and cages on these farms?” He reminds us that there are at least three broad categories of interaction between humans and wild animals—habituation (when wild animals become familiar with our routine), taming (when we control their feeding behavior), and domestication (when we control their breeding behavior). It is a fact that canned-hunting operators are crossbreeding lions and tigers to produce “ligers” as trophies. In South Africa they are breeding the rare and recessive lion genotype, the white lion, for trophy hunters. Antelope like the bontebok, Damaliscus dorcas, are being crossbred to produce longer horns while others, like the springbok, Antidorcas marsupialis, and the impala, Aepyceros melampus, are being bred for their novel but recessive skin-color genes—all of this for the trophy hunter. Where is the ethic in this? As Michler says, if there is to be any legislation against canned hunting it has to be aimed as much at the dealer as at the consumer.

  There are two reasons why it is going to be difficult to eradicate trophy hunting. Firstly, the mindset of the trophy hunter will have to change. Secondly, while hunting is not nearly as lucrative as the photographic safari industry, it is nevertheless a profitable one. Money invariably triggers the dark side of human nature, and, in spite of claims to the contrary, it is a sad fact that—at a price—you can hunt almost any kind of animal you like in the world today, from Bengal tigers and cheetahs to pythons. And yet there are many in the industry who vigorously support trophy hunting and they do so, as I have said, in the name of sustainable utilization. They say, “Animals must pay their way.” My question: have they not paid enough, already?