We often place ourselves at the apex of evolution and
view ourselves, humans, as unique creatures against which all other species are
found wanting. The result of this
perspective is smugly satisfying, but it causes us to miss the rich and complex
lives that other animals around us are living, and to denigrate their actions
based on emotion or intelligent reasoning as being merely instinctual. Carl Safina wishes to disabuse us of such
fantasies in his book Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel. He uses detailed studies of the lives of
elephants, wolves, killer whales, and dolphins, coupled with an amazing
collection of anecdotal experiences to convince us that we are more similar to
other animals than we might wish to believe.
Or, if one prefers, he convinces us that animals are similar to us.
Safina’s constant message is that we will learn more about
other species and more about ourselves if we focus more on the similarities and
less on the differences.
“If you imagine the very slow
changes over millions of years that turned some mammals into apes and others
into whales, we seem to have grown very distant indeed, almost estranged. But is that really a long time, or a big
difference? Take the skin off, and the
muscles are much the same, the skeletal construction nearly identical. The brain cells, under a microscope, are
impossible to distinguish. If you
imagine the process very much sped up, you see something real: dolphins and
humans, both having already shared a long history as animals, vertebrates, and
mammals—same bones and organs doing the same job, same placenta and that same
warm milk—are basically the same, in merely shape-shifted proportions. It’s a little like one person outfitted for
hiking and another for scuba diving.”
“Whales are nearly identical to
us in every way except their outer contours.
Even their hand bones are identical to ours, just shaped a little
differently and hidden in mittens. And
dolphins still use those hidden hands for handlike gestures of touch and
calming reassurance. (In any group of
spinner dolphins, at any given time one-third are usually caressing with
flippers or making bodily contact, a bit like primates grooming.)”
Even our human brains, of which we are so proud, are
quite similar in structure and function to that of other animals.
“If you look at side-by-side
drawings of human, elephant, and dolphin brains, the similarities overwhelm the
differences. We are essentially the
same, merely molded by long experience into different outer shapes for coping
with different outer surroundings, and wired inside for special talents and
abilities. But beneath the skin, kin.”
The misunderstanding of our common origin has produced
tragic misconceptions. For many years people
believed animals could not experience pain or possessed no emotions at all,
leading to horrible abuses.
“Elephants and mice might not tell
us what they are thinking. But their
brains can. Brain scans show that core
emotions of sadness, happiness, rage, or fear, and motivational feelings of
hunger and thirst, are generated in ‘deep and very ancient circuits of the
brain,’ says the noted neurologist Jaak Panksepp.”
“Rage, for example, gets
produced in the same parts of the brains of a cat and a human.”
“Under stress, other animals’
blood carries the same hormones that the blood of stressed-out humans does.”
And our emotions are also associated with the same chemical
drivers.
“Complex animals have inherited very ancient emotional systems. The genes that direct our own bodies to
create the mood-making brain hormones oxytocin and vasopressin, for instance,
date back at least seven hundred million
years. They ‘likely arose when animals
became mobile and started to make experience-based decisions’.”
Emotions that we take for granted as being genetic in
origin are, but the activation is via the programmed release of hormones and
other chemicals. What we describe as “maternal
instinct,” and the much less potent “paternal instinct,” are chemically aroused
states. And the mechanisms that generate
them are shared with other animals.
“Oxytocin drives bonding, and it
makes elephants and many other species act social or sexual. Block the hormone; many mammals and birds
lose interest in socializing, pairing, nesting, and contact. Oxytocin and opiod hormones create sensations
of pleasure and social comfort in many species, including humans.”
New mothers are doused in oxytocin to encourage them to
care for their infant. It isn’t possible
to determine what would happen if mothers were deprived of the chemical. However, fathers evolved in such a way that
oxytocin levels are naturally low. It is ethical to experiment with men whose
oxytocin levels are artificially increased.
“Given a sniff of oxytocin,
human fathers get more playful with their babies, increase eye-to-eye gazing, and
show greater interest in the child. This
is the chemistry of bonding.”
Safina goes to great lengths to demonstrate the lives of
the animals he has studied mirror in many ways the lives of humans in terms of
both intellectual and emotional drivers.
He reaches a firm conclusion: animals are not “its” they are “whos.” Each member of a species is a unique
individual.
“’Who’ animals know who
they are; they know who their family and friends are. They make strategic alliances and cope with
chronic rivalries. They aspire to higher
rank and wait for their chance to challenge the existing order. Their status affects their offspring’s
prospects. Their life follows the arc of
a career. Personal relationships define
them. Sound familiar? Of course.
‘They’ includes us. But a vivid,
familiar life is not the domain of humans alone.”
Safina succeeds in demonstrating the connection between
humans and other animals, mostly by describing animal behaviors that we can
recognize as familiar to humans.
However, he also provides a fascinating example of how the human-animal
similarity can be demonstrated in human activities.
Consider dolphins.
Like many sea animals they must live in a world where light makes
visualization important. However, they
must also live at depths where light does not penetrate and they must resort to
sound to navigate. They produce bursts
of sound and sample the reflected waves: echolocation.
“Dolphins using sonar can detect
a ping-pong ball one hundred yards away, a distance at which many humans would
fail to see it. They can track rapidly
swimming fish well enough to capture them, meanwhile avoiding obstacles while
travelling at high speeds. They click
fast: each click last ten millionths of a second, and they make up to four
hundred clicks per second.”
Dolphins evolved this capability by adapting the same
basic brain structure that they share with humans. Eyes do not capture images and pass them on
to the brain. They are sensors that
respond to perceived energy signals.
These sensations are passed on to the brain where very complex logic is
used to construct an image from them.
Could it be that this same logic can be used to interpret sonic
signals? And could humans learn to use
it in that manner?
Safina introduces us to Daniel Kish.
“Perhaps the most amazing
practitioner of echolocation among humans is Daniel Kish, blind since he was one year old, who early in life
discovered that making clicking noises helped him get around. Much of his brain must be reassigned to
sound, because he uses his own clicks to navigate. He can ride a bicycle in traffic (hard to imagine), and he has founded World Access for
the Blind to teach other blind people to use their own sonar—to summon, as it
were, their inner dolphin.”
Kish can’t compete with a dolphin. He would have to develop
a more powerful and more rapid sonar system to acquire greater accuracy and
function at larger distances, but what he can do is still astonishing.
“Sounds from his tongue clicks,
he explains, ‘bounce off surfaces all around and return to my ears as faint
echoes. My brain processes the echoes
into dynamic images….I construct a three-dimensional image of my surroundings
for hundreds of feet in every direction.
Up close, I can detect a pole an inch thick. At fifteen feet I recognize cars and
bushes. Houses come into focus at about
150 feet’….’Many students are surprised at how quickly results come. I believe echolocation capability is latent
within us….The neural hardware seems to be there; I’ve developed ways to
activate it. Vision isn’t in the eyes;
it’s in the mind’.”
Perhaps we could learn more from our animal relatives if
we would stop trying to render them all extinct. Safina provides an apt summary for the discussion
of ourselves and our cousins.
“There is no other animal like
us. But don’t forget, there are no other
animals like each of them, either.”
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