Humans have long basked in the misconception that they are unique among nature’s creations, possessing levels of reasoning and culture that are not possible for any other species. While humans are in fact unique, so are all other species. Recent research continues to diminish the degree to which humans can view themselves as exceptional. Carl Safina discusses such matters in his book Becoming Wild: How Animal CulturesRaise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace. We tend to think of animals as being born with inherent behavioral characteristics that greatly determine their future lives. In other words, they are merely “wild animals.” Safina’s intention is to demonstrate that what we consider “wild animals” are species whose young are born into specific societies with specific cultures. Becoming “wild” can require years of learning and practice before an animal can survive within its culture. Rather than living preprogrammed lives, groups or societies of a given species will adapt their culture to best optimize their lives within whatever environment they reside. That view can be applied to humans—ancient or current—as well.
Culture is usually thought of as a human construct. Consider this human-focused definition from Wikipedia.
“Culture is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.”
However, many animal species develop those same characteristics. Safina provides a more relevant definition of culture.
“Culture comprises knowledge and skills that travel from individual to individual and from generation to generation. It is learned socially. Individuals pick it up from other individuals. It is knowledge that doesn’t come from instinct alone. It’s not inherited in genes. What is learned and shared: that is culture. Our understanding of living diversity is only just beginning to recognize that what is learned and shared is often crucial to survival.”
Safina introduces the reader to the cultures of whales, particularly sperm whales, to demonstrate how familial relationships are crucial to survival; cultures of birds, particularly scarlet macaws, to demonstrate how cultural features lead to the evolution of physical appearance (beauty); and cultures of chimpanzees to demonstrate how cultural features work to limit antisocial behavior and enforce long-term community peace. What is striking is the length of time required for an animal to learn what it needs to learn to become what we would refer to as a “wild animal.”
It has long been claimed that chimpanzees provide the nearest genetic relative to humans. And there are definitely characteristics of chimpanzee and human societies that are similar leading to focus on violent tendencies that are shared. However, there is another near neighbor that diverged from the chimpanzee and human lines and arrived at an entirely different culture and society than either. That would be the bonobos which have become now to be considered not a species of chimpanzee, but a separate species. Some experts have begun to argue that bonobos are physically and socially our closest relative. Chimpanzees are known for their male dominance and violent tendencies. Bonobos are known for female dominant societies, the absence of violence, and their lust for sexual interactions. Comparisons with humans is complicated. What we are interested in here is the maturation process required to become a “wild” specimen. Chimpanzees will be discussed.
“Pregnancy lasts eight months. Because the infant’s head is small relative to a human baby’s, and the chimpanzee’s pelvis is not specialized for upright walking, birth is merely uncomfortable, not difficult. Into her own waiting hands, the mother delivers. She bites the umbilicus, then expels the placenta. She either eats the placenta—sometimes sharing it—or discards it under some leaves. The newborn, helpless as a human, will for the first couple of months be held inseparably to the mother’s body. Exploration, play, and socialization—carefully monitored by Mama—will begin at about three months. The young nurse for about five years, stay with their mothers for the first decade, become independent of their mother when they can match the pace of adult travel, at about ten years old, and begin to act independently at around fifteen years.”
Chimps and humans both require many years to attain adulthood. Before schools were established for human children, both needed that time to learn what they needed to learn by observing others. In the early years, that learning process is supervised entirely by mother chimps, mostly by human mothers. The very young learn by observing, chimpanzees of all ages learn by observing.
“What must a chimp learn by watching other chimps? Put it this way: they must learn everything—starting with whom they are, defined by with whom they belong. Almost never has a captive chimpanzee successfully returned to nature. Chimpanzees raised by humans are as unprepared to cope with—or be accepted into—free-living social situations as we would be if we were released into an indigenous territory in the Amazon rainforest. Released apes usually starve or get killed. Their long childhood, like ours, is for learning how to become who they will be. They must learn how to be normal. Theirs is a wild life that isn’t what we thought it was.; it’s a cultured existence.”
Besides the obvious needs to know how and where to find food, and how to protect themselves from predators, Chimps will have complex social interactions to navigate. Chimps live in groups of a few to several dozen individuals, a size which means every individual is known and will have a position in society. Both male and female adults will have sorted themselves into ranks in which highest are well-known and must be accorded the appropriate amount of respect. Young chimps, like young humans, begin as curious, friendly individuals. They must learn how to socialize with this group in situations where mistakes could wreck one’s status for life or lead to a savage beating. Observing and learning the appropriate social moves is a life-long task.
“We aren’t ‘like apes.’ We are like chimpanzees. Chimpanzees are obsessed with dominance and status within their group; we are obsessed with dominance and status within our group. Chimpanzees oppress within their group; we oppress within our group. Chimpanzee males may turn on their friends and beat their mates; human males may turn on their friends and beat their mates. Chimpanzees and males are the only two ape species stuck dealing with familiar males as dangerous. A gender that frequently creates lethal violence within our own communities makes chimpanzees and humans simply bizarre among group-living animals. Chimpanzees don’t create a safe space; they create a stressful, tension-bound, politically encumbered social world for themselves to inhabit. Which is what we do. This behavioral package exists only in chimpanzees and humans.”
Understanding the peculiarities of animal societies often illustrates that animal behavior and human behavior are not that different. Consider the development of language as a means to define group membership. Humans certainly have done that and continue to do that. Animals that produce sounds use that capability to create identifications that allow them to distinguish between group members and nonmembers. And like humans, these animals will use these differences to discriminate against nonmembers.
“For a long time cultural separation was believed to be ‘uniquely human.’ But we’ve now learned that humans are not the only creatures that use signals to determine group identities, reaffirm membership, reinforce differences, and cause distancing.”
“The Pacific Northwest’s so-called northern- and southern-resident orca communities’ only humanly discernable differences are their vocal dialects. Both communities of orcas specialize in hunting salmon, and no apparent physical or genetic differences characterize membership between those two communities. They seem to share everything—including a disdain for the community that is not theirs. Orca communities avoid mixing for purely cultural reasons. Their self-segregation of stable cultural groups was until recently considered so exceptional that researchers said it has ‘no parallel outside humans’.”
However, recent research has discovered that such self-segregation is quite common in the animal kingdom.
“Sperm whales, pilot whales, orcas (killer whales), and various dolphins can tell by sound which pods they might warmly greet—and which they must avoid. Elephants know which families they like and which they prefer to avoid. Elephants, primates, and other species know who’s in their group and who is an outsider. Thousands of species of birds recognize their mates and neighboring territory holders, and vigorously repel other intruders. Apes’ responses when meeting other groups range from murderously violent (chimpanzees) to frisky and frolicking (bonobos).”
One of Safina’s most intriguing observations is that cultural separation can lead to a single species diverging into multiple species. Clearly, separation itself can create separate gene pools which will drift apart. Bonobos and chimpanzees provide one of many examples. All breeds of dogs are thought to have a common ancestor: the grey wolf. The way in which gene pools become isolated is by eliminating intermixing by breeding. Physical separation can clearly prevent sexual interactions. It appears cultural factors can also eliminate cross breeding.
“At this point in our explorations, two clarifying points need our extra attention. One is a question: Why do males so often compete and females do the choosing? It’s largely because many kinds of males are mainly selling sperm, and sperm is cheap. Sex is a buyer’s market. Females, who hold more precious goods, get to browse and choose. This general truism holds even for many birds in which males provide parental care, a role of greatly added value compared to mere hit-and-run fertilization. Females benefit from pairing with high-status males in either case, because the female investment in eggs and young is much greater and, therefore, riskier than male investment in sperm. So females require that males bring quality to the negotiating arena.”
“The second point is the real big one. Animals are often attracted to what they see other animals attracted to. This means that what an animal sees as attractive is also subject to cultural influence and social learning. If that seems subtle, don’t be fooled. It’s the big show-stopping dance number, with implications that reverberate across Life, through time, and to the far horizons.”
According to the above logic, males should gain the option of choosing mates provided they bring sufficient value to the negotiation. Humans seem to have arrived at a culture in which that happens.
“In humans, both sexes’ bodies advertise maturity; both sexes are vain and careful about their looks and are usually choosy about long-term mates. Male humans are selling not just fertilization but the potential for reliable decades-long childcare and long-term bonding, making the best of them more valuable, putting them in a bargaining position to do some of the choosing. The result is that men are in competition with men and women are competitive with women.”
In human cultures (some cultures at least), attractiveness is a dominant factor in mate selection. But attractiveness is a cultural-specific quantity that changes over time and from one culture to another. We have observed the tendency for animals to exhibit tribalism, or self-segregation: preferring to interact with their own group and avoiding other groups. If this cultural avoidance of interaction extends to sexual interactions, then the gene pools become isolated and can evolve in different directions—perhaps even leading to new species.
Hardly any analysis of the polarized politics in the US omits references to tribalism or tribal behavior. We seem to be undergoing a “Big Sort” where politics provides the tribal characteristic. The urban-rural divide continues to grow. Surveys suggest that the likelihood of marriage between members of the two parties is diminished. We are animals exhibiting animal behavior, but animal tribes often have violent interactions. Can this end well?
Can we learn anything from our nearest animal relatives the chimpanzees and bonobos? Chimps will violently defend their territory against intruders, and occasionally use violence to raid another group’s territory, but the interactions seem more like the result of economic issues than that of visceral hatred. The violence could not become genocidal because the neighboring groups maintain a shared culture which dictates that in their male-dominated world females will eventually leave their birth group and migrate to another group. This interchange mixes the gene pools and avoids in-breeding for small groups. It also helps keep the group culture from drifting away from the norm. Bonobos have a different solution. They avoid any tension that might occur in group interactions by throwing a party. Or to be more exact, they have an orgy. Let’s have sex and worry about problems later.
Well, perhaps those examples aren’t very helpful. But we must come up with some mechanism to
keep our two political cultures from drifting farther apart.
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