Subtitled Finding Human Nature in Animals this
intriguing
look at what the latest studies tell of us of animal
behavior, might as well be asking if we find animal
behavior in humans. The answer to that would be, of
course, yes sometimes humans behave in the same way as
animals do. We play, gather food, groom one another, care
for infants, work in teams, indulge in bullying and mourn
the dead. NOT SO DIFFERENT then says Nathan H. Lents.
Humans have the ability to reason, and we learn from past
experiences not just of our own but of other people. Animal
behavior is more based on genetic and environmental
factors. Nathan Lents describes how his family sheepdog
herded a room full of toddlers on her own initiative,
without having been taught herding. Natural selection gave
rise to an ancestor, he explains, now extinct, which
produced the separate lines of chimps, bonobos and humans.
Living things tend to produce variations and over time,
those which are best suited to their environment and any
changes - like drought or an influx of predators - will
survive to produce offspring. Social co-operation is one
way to overcome challenges and this trait is what helped
humans to rise to our current state.
I was curious about the statement that humans are now the
most abundant mammal on the planet. I would have said it
was rats. I looked it up and Britannica.com says that with
seven billion humans, it will be either humans or rats,
with mice a probable third place. The rodents, of course,
take advantage of human agriculture and habitations. Is our
great number a good or bad thing? Bad, if we outpace the
available resources. Good, if there had to be this many of
us in order to create the internet.
In the section on play, there's some thought given to how
we can objectively define and study something so
subjective, and what reasons and benefits cause animals to
play. Dogs play to establish social order; cats, to learn
to hunt. Children play to improve motor co-ordination, to
see how to manipulate objects, to communicate and learn
social skills, and to practice with items and skills they
will need as adults. Play can also be a formalized variety
of conflict, like a chess game or basketball match,
satisfying innate needs to compete while leaving nobody
dead or wounded. While Lents emphasizes that stress is
harmful to animals or people, making them more prone to
disease, and relaxation can alleviate the harmful effects
of stress. Play has physical and psychological benefits;
Stuart Brown, a leading expert on play, says that play is
not the opposite of work, but the opposite of depression.
Justice features in a section which includes behavioral
experiments with chimpanzees at Georgia State University.
The chimps were rewarded for tasks; interestingly the
chimps had to earn a token and trade it for food, a grape
or a slice of carrot. If shown a grape but only given a
carrot, they protested. If two chimps saw each other doing
the same task and one got a grape but the other carrot, the
one given carrot protested and sometimes the one given the
grape refused to eat it in solidarity. Equal pay for equal
tasks was a concept they understood. Children understand
this too, and humans don't mind paying taxes if everyone is
taxed fairly. Lents tells us that intolerance of injustice
is being observed in progressively more animals, like dogs.
He discusses what purpose it must serve.
I hope that has whetted your appetite for this fascinating
compendium of studies, personal observations and
deductions. Other areas covered include emotions and
empathy, morals and immorality, the politics of sexual
behavior and reproductive strategies, in which the author
compares the offered potential to mate, with our glamorous
commercials. NOT SO DIFFERENT after all, says Nathan
Lents. Anyone interested in animal behavior and in modern
psychology will find this an absorbing read - and the
author makes room for skepticism.
Animals fall in love, establish rules for fair play,
exchange valued goods and services, hold “funerals” for
fallen comrades, deploy sex as a weapon, and communicate
with one another using rich vocabularies. Animals also get
jealous and violent or greedy and callous and develop
irrational phobias and prejudices, just like us. Monkeys
address inequality, wolves miss each other, elephants grieve
for their dead, and prairie dogs name the humans they
encounter. Human and animal behavior is not as different as
once believed.
In Not So Different, the biologist Nathan H. Lents argues
that the same evolutionary forces of cooperation and
competition have shaped both humans and animals. Identical
emotional and instinctual drives govern our actions. By
acknowledging this shared programming, the human experience
no longer seems unique, but in that loss we gain a fuller
understanding of such phenomena as sibling rivalry and the
biological basis of grief, helping us lead more grounded,
moral lives among animals, our closest kin. Through a mix of
colorful reporting and rigorous scientific research, Lents
describes the exciting strides scientists have made in
decoding animal behavior and bringing the evolutionary paths
of humans and animals closer together. He marshals evidence
from psychology, evolutionary biology, cognitive science,
anthropology, and ethology to further advance this work and
to drive home the truth that we are distinguished from
animals only in degree, not in kind.
© 2003-2024 off-the-edge.net
all rights reserved Privacy Policy