Learning from apes
Guestblogger Marina Gorbis is executive director at Institute for the Future.
Whenever you are tempted to feel superior about our unique status as humans in the animal kingdom and our extraordinary achievements in building a sophisticated civilization, it is worth reading Frans De Waal, a Dutch primatologist who has studied apes for almost 40 years. Several years ago when I picked up his book "Our Inner Ape," it quickly occurred to me that this is probably one of the best management books I've ever read. (OK, so I don't like management books). Behaviors that we, humans, embellish with complex rationalizations and justifications, De Waal was able to observe with clarity among his subjects, apes. Making alliances to achieve power, engaging in acts of reciprocity to build and maintain social capital, puffing up to threaten the opponent and scare enemies -- so ape and so human at the same time. So if you are looking for an entertaining, yet humbling experience, above is De Waal's speech from 2004 at Pop!Tech.
Previously:
- Kids on Bluegrass - Boing Boing
- Socialstructing: Statement of Social Currency - Boing Boing
- Dushechka, or how I learned to love baseball and bluegrass - Boing ...
- Collecting dead souls in social media - Boing Boing
- Personal Transformations in the Internet Age - Boing Boing
- Socialstructing: Bringing Social Back into Our Economy and ...
- From Odessa to the Future - Boing Boing
- Guest blogger: Marina Gorbis - Boing Boing
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Boing Boing patron saint Robert Anton Wilson wrote a book on this very subject- 'Prometheus Rising.' In it, he invites the reader to examine the instinctive mammalian behaviors that govern much of our lives.
But humans are apes. Comparing humans to apes is like comparing great danes to dogs. Comparing humans to different sorts of apes is what's going on here.
Santa's Knee here.
Cue Scopes Monkey Thread in 3...2...1...
I feel people often get too specific.. living with three cats and having associated with many dogs me and the missus, gimpwii have decided to call all mammal desire 'the mammal imperative' and we consider the slight differences in body language just accents created by their cultural associations.
there's nothing my cats do that makes them alien from apes.. just the lack of tool use but thats just a gradient of skill.
mammalian life is quite similar and with deeper investigation quite possibly all sentient life, mammal or not.
He studied the wrong apes. Chimpanzees are mean sons of bitches. The Congo bonobos, or so-called pygmy chimpanzees, however, offer a significantly different social model. As the old disclaimer has it, they'd rather fuck than fight. Cheeta in comparison is a thug living the thug life.
The bonobo, in comparison, is kind of sweet. One wonders if all the past speculation about the ape-based origins of human behavior would be different if anthropologists had earlier known about the 24-7 sexuality and matriarchal nature of this fascinating species.
It was recently reported that humans and bonobos also share a gene which ordinary chimpanzees lack — a bonding/empathy gene.[!] Does this mean that they, and not those grumpy-assed chimps, are our closest non-human relatives?
--Buddy Bonobo
they haven't got a chance
http://karlammann.com/gallery-preparation.php
No, it means we are all descended from the same ancestor, and each branch of the family retained a different selection of material from the same pool of resources.
Just because the human and the bonobo version of the gene is the same doesn't mean the line of descent leading to chimpanzees didn't also have the same gene at one point. It could have mutated or been lost along the way without making them any more "distant".
Chimps and bonobos are descended from the same branch of the human family. Humans and others from the genus Homo came from a different branch. The proto-chimps and proto-bonobos split into different species AFTER humans diverged from the pack.
@BUDDY66 actually he studied both and claims that we have characteristics of both.
bonding/empathy gene?
graft that to a alligator and then tell me its cuddly.
the belief there is a gene link to mental behaviour is rampant but yet unsubstantianted.
statistics don't prove anything. The samples are often such small sample groups it only proves indivual dice rolls can give you anything.
Kanedajones, genetic links to complex behaviors keep popping up all the time, and some of them are quite thoroughly substantiated.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden "...genetic links to complex behaviors keep popping up all the time..."
Which is why redheads are all crazy. It's about time that we admit this, so that no more people will wake up to find them leaning over us, knife in hand. Take that, Clarisa!
"the belief there is a gene link to mental behaviour is rampant but yet unsubstantianted."
Are you serious. All behavior is an expression of an organism's phenotype.
"statistics don't prove anything."
Statisticians always keep their sample size in mind. Individual dice rolls always converge to 1/6 chance unless there are particular biases on the faces of the dice, just like coin flips will converge to 1/2 chance, given enough flips. Just try it yourself.
"they haven't got a chance"
"But then again, who does?"
In my undergrad years, I took a primate anthropology class to satisfy a science requirement. As part of the class, we students were required to sit and watch monkeys several hours per week, during which time we collected data for the professor's research. Basically, we had a form, and made a mark each time a certain animal exhibited a certain behavior. For example: juvenile male plays w/juvenile male. Adult female threatens adult female.
Soon after that, I moved to Japan. During the first year when I could not speak Japanese, I watched the people around me, and without the benefit of language to distract me, it was very clear that human beings were doing the same things as the primates I had been watching for my class.
Anonymous (#15): That's disgusting. I had no idea that Japan used people for its primate anthropology classes.
I am one of those guys who falls squarely in the category of "Big Ape." Those clips DeWaal shows of alpha males showing dominance, I've caught myself using nearly those exact behaviors in social situations... but that's exactly my point -- I've caught myself, and realized that my moral upbringing has dubbed these behaviors as wrong.
As someone who would benefit greatly from a world where we act like apes, I can tell you - most of society's rules are very "anti-ape." I can't punch, kick, or flying-elbow my way to President of the United States. If I "bark louder" to argue my position, people don't suddenly respect me more and give me a social promotion - they often lose respect because I am unable to control my emotions. If I puffed up my chest and backed a girl into a corner until she started to "pant-grunt," I'd be thrown in jail.
So, yeah, maybe those behaviors are "human instinct" as much as they are "chimpanzee instinct," but we are very different from these apes. Why? Because we train ourselves to be different. We learn to override that instinct and "do the right thing." We choose to be "not apes."
This is a much bigger difference than just walking on two legs.
@13 subheight640
"all behavior is an expression of an organism's phenotype."
Genotype and phenotype aren't the same. phenotype factors in many extra factors over a single gene. reading chapter 2 here may help explain why I feel a gene present equals a potential but not much else.
@11 Teresa Nielsen Hayden
many studies show gene expression happens on a gradiant. if that wasn't the case illness' caused by genetic error would have all victims die identicaly. instead we get variants dying in years, months, or days.
I think a sample group under one hundred tested subjects doesn't pass random results considering how many humans exist. But with that in mind, I'm open to data.. any specific cases to mention that quite thoroughly substantiate anything in particular?
These discussions go around in circles and I do not expect to change anyone's strongly held beliefs. so we can all just drop it if anyone responding to me wants to. it always looks like I'm trolling which why I normaly try not to argue with the crowd.. and genes are the 'in' thing these days.
amen to that #17 anon
above and beyond that, even 'lower' animals don't always lay the smack down when they can. Its about if its advantagous on all levels they register. You are right about us adding that civilization layer though. heh
"Behaviors that we, humans, embellish with complex rationalizations and justifications, De Waal was able to observe with clarity among his subjects, apes."
Sounds like you got your human exceptionalism right there.
"If I "bark louder" to argue my position, people don't suddenly respect me more and give me a social promotion - they often lose respect because I am unable to control my emotions."
You've obviously never watched Fox News.
Anyway, this is only "humbling" if you were previously under the impression that we are fundamentally different than the other apes. My human chauvinism comes from a different place. Not only are we as much apes as they are, but we're better at it.
Here's another book he wrote which if I remember correctly is the one I read in college.
I highly recommend it.
http://www.amazon.com/Chimpanzee-Politics-Power-among-Apes/dp/0801863368/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247771876&sr=1-1
It's been my observation that orangutans are the peace loving 'hippies' of the simian family. I would never have a pet monkey- them little bastards are just wildly destructive, like humans in their early teens. I haven't studied this, but orangutans seem sweet to me.
Troof: Bonobos. The future is bonobos.