Common examples of ‘grooming invitation ailments’, as we can call them, include coughs, colds, influenza, backache, headache, stomach upsets, skin rashes, sore throats, biliousness, tonsillitis and laryngitis. The condition of the sufferer is not serious, but sufficiently unhealthy to justify increased attention from social companions. The symptoms act in the same way as grooming invitation signals, releasing comfort behaviour from doctors, nurses, chemists, relations and friends. The groomee provokes friendly sympathy and care and this alone is usually enough to cure the illness. The administering of pills and medicines replaces the ancient grooming actions and provides an occupational ritual that sustains the groomee-groomer relationship through this special phase of social interaction. The exact nature of the chemicals prescribed is almost irrelevant and there is little difference at this level between the practices of modern medicine and those of ancient witch-doctoring.
The objection to this interpretation of minor ailments is likely to be based on the observation that real viruses or bacteria can be proved to be present. If they are there and can be shown to be the medical cause of the cold or stomach ache, then why should we seek for a behavioural explanation? The answer is that in any large city, for example, we are all exposed to these common viruses and bacteria all the time, but we only occasionally fall prey to them. Also, certain individuals are much more susceptible than others. Those members of a community who are either very successful or socially well adjusted rarely suffer from ‘grooming invitation ailments’. Those that have temporary or long-standing social problems are, by contrast, highly susceptible. The most intriguing aspect of these ailments is the way they are tailored to the special demands of the individual. Supposing an actress, for example, is suffering from social tensions and strains, what happens? She loses her voice, develops laryngitis, so that she is forced to stop work and take a rest. She is comforted and looked after. The tension is resolved (for the time being, at least). If instead she had developed a skin rash on her body, her costume would have covered it and she could have gone on working. The tension would have continued. Compare her situation with that of an all-in wrestler. For him a loss of voice would be useless as a ‘grooming invitation ailment’, but a skin rash would be ideal, and it is precisely this ailment that wrestlers’ doctors find is the muscle-men’s most common complaint. In this connection it is amusing that one famous actress, whose reputation relies on her nude appearances in her films, suffers under stress not from laryngitis, but from skin rash. Because, like the wrestlers, her skin exposure is vital, she falls into their ailment category rather than into that of other actresses.
If the need for comfort is intense, then the ailment becomes more intense. The time in our lives when we receive the most elaborate care and protection is when we are infants in our cots. An ailment that is severe enough to put us helplessly to bed, therefore, has the great advantage of recreating for us all the comforting attention of our secure infancy. We may think we are taking a strong dose of medicine, but in reality it is a strong dose of security that we need and that cures us. (This does not imply malingering. There is no need to malinger. The symptoms are real enough. It is the cause that is behavioural, not the effects.)
We are all to some extent frustrated groomers, as well as groomees, and the satisfaction that can be obtained from caring for the sick is as basic as the cause of the sickness. Some individuals have such a great need to care for others that they may actively promote and prolong sickness in a companion in order to be able to express their grooming urges more fully. This can produce a vicious circle, with the groomer-groomee situation becoming exaggerated out of all proportion, to the extent where a chronic invalid demanding (and getting) constant attention is created. If a ‘mutual grooming pair’ of this type were faced with the behavioural truth concerning their reciprocal conduct, they would hotly deny it. Nevertheless, it is astonishing what miraculous cures can sometimes be worked in such instances when a major social upheaval occurs in the groomer-groomee (nurse-patient) environment that has been created. Faith-healers have occasionally exploited this situation with startling results, but unfortunately for them many of the cases they encounter have physical causes as well as physical effects. Also working against them is the fact that the physical effects of behaviourally produced ‘grooming invitation ailments’ can easily create irreversible body damage if sufficiently prolonged or intense. Once this has happened, serious, rational medical treatment is required.
Up to this point I have been concentrating on the social aspects of comfort behaviour in our species. As we have seen there have been great developments in that direction, but this has not excluded or replaced the simpler kinds of self-cleaning and self-comfort. Like other primates we still scratch ourselves, rub our eyes, pick our sores, and lick our wounds. We also share with them a strong tendency to sunbathe. In addition we have added a number of specialized cultural patterns, the most common and widespread of which is washing with water. This is rare in other primates, although certain species bathe occasionally, but for us it now plays the major role in body-cleaning in most communities.
Despite its obvious advantages, frequent cleansing with water nevertheless puts a severe strain on the production of antiseptic and protective oils and salts by the skin glands, and to some extent it is bound to make the body surface more susceptible to diseases. It survives this disadvantage only because, at the same time that it eliminates the natural oils and salts, it removes the dirt that is the source of these diseases.
In addition to problems of keeping clean, the general category of comfort behaviour also includes those patterns of activity concerned with the task of maintaining a suitable body temperature. Like all mammals and birds, we have evolved a constant, high body temperature, giving us greatly increased physiological efficiency. If we are healthy, our deep body temperature varies no more than 3º Fahrenheit, regardless of the outside temperature. This internal temperature fluctuates with a daily rhythm, the highest level occurring in the late afternoon and the lowest at around 4 a.m. If the external environment becomes too hot or too cold we quickly experience acute discomfort. The unpleasant sensations we receive act as an early-warning system, alerting us to the urgent need to take action to prevent the internal body organs from becoming disastrously chilled or overheated. In addition to encouraging intelligent, voluntary responses, the body also takes certain automatic steps to stabilize its heat level. If the environment becomes too hot, vasodilation occurs. This gives a hotter body surface and encourages heat loss from the skin. Profuse sweating also takes place. We each possess approximately two million sweat glands. Under conditions of intense heat these are capable of secreting a maximum of one litre of sweat per hour. The evaporation of this liquid from the body surface provides another valuable form of heat loss. During the process of acclimatization to a generally hotter environment, we undergo a marked increase in sweating efficiency. This is vitally important because, even in the hottest climates, our internal body temperature can only stand an upward shift of 0.4º Fahrenheit, regardless of our racial origin.
If the environment becomes too cold, we respond with vasoconstriction and with shivering. The vasoconstriction helps to conserve the body heat and the shivering can provide up to three times the resting heat production. If the skin is exposed to the intense cold for any length of time, there is a danger that the prolonged vasoconstriction will lead to frostbite. In the hand region there is an important, built-in anti-frostbite system. The hands at first respond to intense cold by drastic vasoconstriction; then, after about five minutes, this is reversed and there is strong vasodilation, the hands becoming hot and flushed. (Anyone who has been snowballing in winter will have experienced this.) The constriction and dilation of the hand region then continues to alternate, the constriction phases curtailing heat loss and the dilation phases preventing frostbite. Individuals living permanently in a cold climate undergo various forms of bodily acclimatization, including a slightly increased basal metabolic rat
e.
As our species has spread over the globe, important cultural additions have been made to these biological temperature control mechanisms. The development of fire, clothing, and insulated dwelling-houses have combated heat loss, and ventilation and refrigeration have been used against heat gain. Impressive and dramatic as these advances have been, they have in no way altered our internal body temperature. They have merely served to control the external temperature, so that we can continue to enjoy our primitive primate temperature level in a more diverse range of external conditions. Despite recent claims, suspended animation experiments involving special freezing techniques are still confined to the realms of science fiction.
Before leaving the subject of temperature responses, there is one particular aspect of sweating that should be mentioned. Detailed studies of sweating responses in our species have revealed that they are not as simple as they may first appear. Most areas of the body surface begin to perspire freely under conditions of increased heat, and this is undoubtedly the original, basic response of the sweat-gland system. But certain regions have become reactive to other types of stimulation and sweating can occur there regardless of the external temperature. The eating of highly spiced foods, for example, produces its own special pattern of facial sweating. Emotional stress quickly leads to sweating on the palms of the hands, the soles of the feet, the armpits and sometimes also the forehead, but not on other parts of the body. There is a further distinction in the areas of emotional sweating, the palms and the soles differing from the armpits and the forehead. The first two regions respond well only to emotional situations, whereas the last two react to both emotional and to temperature stimuli. It is clear from this that the hands and feet have ‘borrowed’ sweating from the temperature control system and are now using it in a new functional context. The moistening of the palms and soles during stress appears to have become a special feature of the ‘ready for anything’ response that the body gives when danger threatens. Spitting on the hands before wielding an axe is, in a sense, the non-physiological equivalent of this process.
So sensitive is the palmar sweating response that whole communities or nations may show sudden increases in this reaction if their group security is threatened in some way. During a recent political crisis, when there was a temporary increase in the likelihood of nuclear war, all experiments into palmar sweating at a research institute had to be abandoned because the base level of the response had become so abnormal that the tests would have been meaningless. Having our palms read by a fortune-teller may not tell us much about the future, but having them read by a physiologist can certainly tell us something about our fears for the future.
8
ANIMALS
UP TO THIS point we have been considering the naked ape’s behaviour towards himself and towards members of his own species – his intra-specific behaviour. It now remains to examine his activities in relation to other animals – his inter-specific behaviour.
All the higher forms of animal life are aware of at least some of the other species with which they share their environment. They regard them in one of five ways: as prey, symbionts, competitors, parasites, or predators. In the case of our own species, these five categories may be lumped together as the ‘economic’ approach to animals, to which may be added the scientific, aesthetic and symbolic approaches. This wide range of interests has given us an inter-specific involvement unique in the animal world. In order to unravel it and understand it objectively we must tackle it step by step, attitude by attitude.
Because of his exploratory and opportunist nature, the naked ape’s list of prey species is immense. At some place, at some time, he has killed and eaten almost any animal you care to mention. From a study of prehistoric remains we know that about half a million years ago, at one site alone, he was hunting and eating species of bison, horse, rhino, deer, bear, sheep, mammoth, camel, ostrich, antelope, buffalo, boar and hyaena. It would be pointless to compile a ‘species menu’ for more recent times, but one feature of our predatory behaviour does deserve mention, namely our tendency to domesticate certain selected prey species. For, although we are likely to eat almost anything palatable on occasion, we have nevertheless limited the bulk of our feeding to a few major animal forms.
Domestication of livestock, involving the organized control and selective breeding of prey, is known to have been practised for at least ten thousand years and, in certain cases, probably much longer. Goats, sheep and reindeer appear to have been the earliest prey species dealt with in this way. Then, with the development of settled agricultural communities, pigs and cattle, including Asiatic buffalo and yak, were added to the list. We have evidence that, in the case of cattle, several distinct breeds had already been developed four thousand years ago. Whereas the goats, sheep and reindeer were transformed directly from hunted prey to herded prey, it is thought that the pigs and cattle began their close association with our species as crop-robbers. As soon as cultivated crops were available, they moved in to take advantage of this rich new food supply, only to be taken over by the early farmers and brought under domestic control themselves.
The only small mammalian prey species to undergo prolonged domestication was the rabbit, but this was apparently a much later development. Amongst the birds, important prey species domesticated thousands of years ago were the chicken, the goose and the duck, with later minor additions of the pheasant, guinea fowl, quail and turkey. The only prey fish with a long history of domestication are the Roman eel, the carp and the goldfish. The latter, however, soon became ornamental rather than gastronomic. The domestication of these fish is limited to the last two thousand years and has played only a small role in the general story of our organized predation.
The second category in our list of inter-specific relationships is that of the symbiont. Symbiosis is defined as the association of two different species to their mutual benefit. Many examples of this are known from the animal world, the most famous being the partnership between the tick birds and certain large ungulates such as the rhinoceros, giraffe and buffalo. The birds eat the skin parasites of the ungulates, helping to keep the bigger animals healthy and clean, while the latter provide the birds with a valuable source of food.
Where we ourselves are one of the members of a symbiotic pair, the mutual benefit tends to become biased rather heavily in our favour, but it is nevertheless a separate category, distinct from the more severe prey-predator relationship, since it does not involve the death of the other species concerned. They are exploited, but in exchange for the exploitation we feed and care for them. It is a biased symbiosis because we are in control of the situation and our animal partners usually have little or no choice in the matter.
The most ancient symbiont in our history is undoubtedly the dog. We cannot be certain exactly when our ancestors first began to domesticate this valuable animal, but it appears to be at least ten thousand years ago. The story is a fascinating one. The wild, wolf-like ancestors of the domestic dog must have been serious competitors with our hunting forebears. Both were co-operative pack-hunters of large prey and, at first, little love can have been lost between them. But the wild dogs possessed certain special refinements that our own hunters lacked. They were particularly adept at herding and driving prey during hunting manœuvres and could carry this out at high speed. They also had more delicate senses of smell and hearing. If these attributes could be exploited in exchange for a share in the kill, then the bargain was a good one. Somehow – we do not know exactly how – this came about and an inter-specific bond was forged. It is probable that it began as a result of young puppies being brought in to the tribal home base to be fattened as food. The value of these creatures as alert nocturnal watch-dogs would have scored a mark in their favour at an early stage. Those that were allowed to live in a now tamed condition and permitted to accompany the males on their hunting trips would soon show their paces in assisting to track down the prey. Having been hand-reared, the dogs would consider themselves to be memb
ers of the naked-ape pack and would co-operate instinctively with their adopted leaders. Selective breeding over a number of generations would soon weed out the trouble-makers and a new, improved stock of increasingly restrained and controllable domestic hunting dogs would arise.
The Naked Ape Page 21