The Social Lives of Animals: They talk, mourn and are just like us
The evolution of intelligence depended on emulation and imitation as much as on innovation. Civilisation is founded on co-operation, on the social instincts we evolved and share with fellow animals.
JAMES McCONNACHIE: We like to think we are a very special species. We base this claim not just on our intelligence, but on the richness of our emotional and social lives — yet it is a claim that is increasingly hard to sustain. Just as science has revealed new depths of animal intelligence and emotional capacity, it is learning that animal social behaviour is far more complex than we once thought.
Ashley Ward is a British-born animal behaviourist, now a professor at the University of Sydney. In this book he charts what scientists now know about the social lives of animals, from swarming krill and flocks of birds all the way up the scale of relatability to elephants and, our closest relatives, chimpanzees. By understanding social behaviour in animals, he suggests, we can learn about ourselves…
Antarctic krill — of which there are 10,000 for every person alive — help to keep each other afloat by creating upwelling currents. Migrating birds eliminate error by pooling information, and birds flying in V formations follow precisely in the path of the bird ahead — riding the upwash like children following an adult’s footprints in the snow. Except the trail is invisible, and turbulent, and in three dimensions.
Some animal behaviour seems almost democratic. African buffalo wake up and gaze towards where they want to go; the herd heads off in the direction chosen by the majority. Tonkean macaques line up behind candidates for a leader, like MPs voting in the Commons. Army ants even elect their queens: when founding a new colony, they form two columns down which the contenders march with their attendants; when a queen is accepted by each line, it sets off…
Grieving behaviour in animals is peculiarly suggestive of qualities such as empathy and individuality. Elephant graveyards are a myth, but elephants do respond distinctively when they come across the bones of one of their own… Sometimes they return to the site weeks later, with a certain stillness… Chimps mourn too. They have been seen approaching dead members of the community, whimpering, hugging each other and lingering quietly. And when a baby chimp is born, the mother will receive up to 100 visits a day from chimps wanting to touch the youngster…
Language, of course, is still regarded as distinctively human — but it is looking wobbly as a unique species identifier. Vervet monkeys, for instance, have a different alarm call for each of their main predators… Dolphins and sperm whales have signature tunes that they give to announce themselves; it would not be a stretch to call it a name. Young dolphins, endearingly, take a year or two to settle on what to call themselves…
Ward does make one very striking observation, though. He points out that herd behaviour does not have a good reputation. We dismiss “groupthink” and deride “sheeple”. Yet the evolution of intelligence depended on emulation and imitation as much as on innovation. Civilisation is founded on co-operation — on the social instincts we evolved and share with fellow animals. SOURCE…
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