Behavior is as behavior does

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, natural history, animals, behavior, evolution, nature-nurture debate

A fellow showed up half an hour late for his regular poker game with friends, and found they'd started without him. For a fourth, they'd recruited the host's dog. The man told the host, "Wow! That's some talented pup!!" "Oh," he replied, "Old Groaner isn't so great. Whenever he has an ace he wags his tail."

We are amused by pictures or stories of animals doing "human" things (or the converse!). Yet until recently, while most people with pets seem to easily understand that the animals have feelings and purposeful behaviors, scientists have been slow (by centuries!) to come around.

Marlene Zuk's new book, Dancing Cockatoos and the Dead Man Test: How Behavior Evolves and Why it Matters, drives lots of new nails into the coffin of the Animal-as-Automaton view. Let me state at the outset that, for two good reasons I hold that animals, even the rather elementary ones we call "bugs", all fit along at least three scales (none of them is the scala naturae, the "natural ladder" so beloved of ignorant biologists). Firstly, as to consciousness, one end might be called "Human-level self consciousness" (assuming it's truly the end point; maybe toothed whales are beyond us, for example); the other end we can call "barely conscious of more than the basic drives of hunger and the 'urge to merge'". Secondly, as to emotion, just as some animals have abilities we don't, there ought to be some that can have feelings we don't have. Thirdly, considering behavior, which is often divided into "purposive" (the scientific jargon for "purposeful") and "instinctive" (which really means "purely genetic"): everything living behaves. Animals are practically defined by behavior. It is what they ARE. "Lower animals" are the product of 4 billion years of evolution, the same as humans. So are the things that they DO.

Somewhere on my bookshelves I have the seminal volume, Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men by E.C. Tolman, published in 1932. This book is not referenced by Dr. Zuk, more's the pity. If she's not an intellectual descendant of Tolman, she's at least a grandniece. He was far ahead of his time, as witness the still-nearly-pervasive use of the canard "anthropomorphism" to discredit much work on animal behavior.

My two reasons: To hard-line creationists, many of whom also hold the Calvinist position that God has no emotions, I would say, "Are we not created in the image of God? Did our emotions and behaviors come from nowhere? Are they not part of that image?" Of course, some would double down to say that all such things are part of "original sin" or whatever Protestants call it. (Though I am a believer, I am neither Catholic nor Protestant.) They are fools. To take a further step, "If we have feelings and behaviors that are something other than automatic, why would God deny such abilities to animals?"

To hard-line Skinnerian scientists I would say, "I subscribe to evolution, as carried out by natural selection. Do you? If so, you must realize that our feelings came from somewhere. Where? Of course, from our nonhuman ancestors. We emote and behave because they did." So much for anthropomorphism. And as I said before, animals that are attuned to greatly different environments than humans could survive (without costly technology) are likely to have feelings and behaviors that are so foreign to us that we are unlikely to recognize them as such.

So, a bit about the book—which I urge everyone to read!—what is the Dead Man Test? Some, wishing a less macabre moniker, call it the Teddy Bear Test: If a Teddy Bear can do it, it isn't behavior. Substitute Dead Man for Teddy Bear if you prefer. Definition by exclusion.

How does behavior evolve? Just like anything else! Behavior is a physical attribute. It is just as real as height, eye color, and whether your ring finger is longer or shorter than your middle finger. These things, plus all other "genetic traits" are influenced by environmental factors. This is the central emphasis of the book. Genes alone don't determine anything. Neither does environment alone. Everything is a mix, an intertwining of the two. She has to say it over and over, because many folks won't get it otherwise!

For an example of this intertwining: One of my great-grandfathers was prone to drink. The family was Methodist, and Methodists were, until the 1960's, required to sign a Pledge that they would not touch alcohol. Great-grandpa Joe fought his addiction mightily, but he would go on a bender on occasion. His daughters kept their Pledges; it helped that they never tasted "the sauce" as young people, and that they took their father as a cautionary example. Having a strict mother helped. My mother was also raised to be a teetotaler, as was I. But in college some friends persuaded me to have a beer to celebrate my 18th birthday (I lived in a state that allowed 18-year-olds to drink "low beer"). I soon found a way to get harder stuff, and I was off, headed for a life as an alcoholic! Except, I couldn't afford it. Also, returning home after the school year, back in a teetotaling home, I took a hard look at myself, and decided not to use "anything that hinders thinking clearly". At that time I didn't know about Joe. Later one of my brothers became more of an alcoholic than I had been. His own story is fascinating, but won't fit here. He and I are both "recovering"; one never fully "recovers".

Why weren't my mother and her mother alcoholics? In a different environment they'd have been so. We have a kind of protein that turns ethanol into a heroin-like addicting substance. Fortunately, it is kind of rare. Yeah, I know there are lots of alcoholics; some of them have this same genetic situation. But they are a small fraction of the whole of humanity.

I'll leave it to you to get the book and allow Dr. Zuk to lead you down many a lane and garden path, with her stories of dancing cockatoos (do they have something to dance to in nature? Neither do elephants, and I've also seen videos of them responding to music); of octopuses punching fish, apparently out of irritation; of how animals from flies to flying foxes vary in their behaviors based on still-inscrutable combinations of their genetic endowment and their past and present environment. This sure is an enjoyable book!