The Naked Ape (24 page)

So powerful is this tendency that it can lead us into difficulties. The point is that there are two elements in a food object that make it attractive to us: its nutritive value and its palatability. In nature, these two factors go hand in hand, but in artificially produced foodstuffs they can be separated, and this can be dangerous. Food objects that are nutritionally almost worthless can be made powerfully attractive simply by adding a large amount of artificial sweetener. If they appeal to our old primate weakness by tasting ‘super-sweet’, we will lap them up and so stuff ourselves with them that we have little room left for anything else: thus the balance of our diet can be upset. This applies especially in the case of growing children. In an earlier chapter I mentioned recent research which has shown that the preference for sweet and fruity odours falls off dramatically at puberty, when there is a shift in favour of flowery, oily and musky odours. The juvenile weakness for sweetness can be easily exploited, and frequently is.

Adults face another danger. Because their food is in general made so tasty—so much more tasty than it would be in nature—its palatability value rises sharply, and eating responses are overstimulated. The result is in many cases an unhealthy overweight condition. To counteract this, all kinds of bizarre ‘dieting’ regimes are invented. The ‘patients’ are told to eat this or that, cut down on this or on that, or to exercise in various ways. Unfortunately there is only one true answer to the problem: to eat less. It works like a charm, but since the subject remains surrounded by super-palatability signals, it is difficult for him, or her, to maintain this course of action for any length of time. The overweight individual is also bedevilled by a further complication. I mentioned earlier the phenomenon of ‘displacement activities’—trivial, irrelevant actions performed as tension-relievers in moments of stress. As we saw, a very frequent and common form of displacement activity is ‘displacement feeding’. In tense moments we nibble small morsels of food or sip unneeded drinks. This may help to relax the tension in us, but it also helps us to put on weight, especially as the ‘trivial’ nature of the displacement feeding action usually means that we select for the purpose something sweet. If practised repeatedly over a long period, this leads to the well-known condition of ‘fat anxiety’, and we can witness the gradual emergence of the familiar, rounded contours of guilt-edged insecurity. For such a person, slimming routines will work only if accompanied by other behavioural changes that reduce the initial state of tension. The role of chewing-gum deserves a mention in this context. This substance appears to have developed exclusively as a displacement feeding device. It provides the necessary tension-relieving occupational’ element, without contributing damagingly to the overall food intake.

Turning now to the variety of foodstuffs eaten by a present day group of naked apes, we find that the range is extensive. By and large, primates tend to have a wider range of food objects in their diets than carnivores. The latter have become food specialists, whereas the former are opportunists. Careful field studies of a wild population of Japanese macaque monkeys, for example, have revealed that they consume as many as 119 species of plants, in the shape of buds, shoots, leaves, fruits, roots and barks, not to mention a wide variety of spiders, beetles, butterflies, ants and eggs. A typical carnivore’s diet is more nutritious, but also much more monotonous.

When we became killers, we had the best of both worlds. We added meat with a high nutritive value to our diet, but we did not abandon our old primate omnivory. During recent times—that is, during the last few thousand years-food-obtaining techniques have improved considerably, but the basic position remains the same. As far as we can tell, the earliest agricultural systems were of a kind that can loosely be described as ‘mixed farming’. The domestication of animals and plants advanced side by side. Even today, with our now immensely powerful dominance over our zoological and botanical environments, we still keep both strings to our bow. What has stopped us from swinging further in one direction or the other? The answer seems to be that, with vastly increasing population densities, an all-out reliance on meat would give rise to difficulties in terms of quantity, whereas an exclusive dependence on crops would be dangerous in terms of quality.

It could be argued that, since our primate ancestors had to make do without a major meat component in their diets, we should be able to do the same. We were driven to become flesh-eaters only by environmental circumstances, and now that we have the environment under control, with elaborately cultivated crops at our disposal, we might be expected to return to our ancient primate feeding patterns. In essence, this is the vegetarian (or, as one cult calls itself, fruitarian) creed, but it has had remarkably little success. The urge to eat meat appears to have become too deep-seated. Given the opportunity to devour flesh, we are eager to relinquish the pattern. In this connection, it is significant that vegetarians seldom explain their chosen diet simply by stating that they prefer it to any other. On the contrary, they construct an elaborate justification for it, involving all kinds of medical inaccuracies and philosophical inconsistencies.

Those individuals who are vegetarian by choice ensure a balanced diet by utilising a wide variety of plant substances, like the typical primates. But for some communities a predominantly meatless diet has become a grim practical necessity rather than an ethical minority-preference. With advancing crop-cultivation techniques and the concentration on a very few staple cereals, a kind of low-grade efficiency has proliferated in certain cultures. The large-scale agricultural operations have permitted the growth of big populations, but their dependency on a few basic cereals has led to serious malnutrition. Such people may breed in large numbers, but they produce poor physical specimens. They survive, but only just. In the same way that abuse of culturally developed weapons can lead to aggressive disaster, abuse of culturally developed feeding techniques can lead to nutritional disaster. Societies that have lost the essential food balance in this way may be able to survive, but they will have to overcome the widespread ill effects of deficiencies in proteins, minerals and vitamins if they are to progress and develop qualitatively. In all the healthiest and most go-ahead societies today, the meat-and-plant diet balance is well maintained and, despite the dramatic changes that have occurred in the methods of obtaining the nutritional supplies, the progressive naked ape of today is still feeding on much the same basic diet as his ancient hunting ancestors. Once again, the transformation is more apparent than real.

THE place where the environment comes into direct contact with an animal—its body surface—receives a great deal of rough treatment during the course of its life. It is astonishing that it survives the wear and tear and lasts so well. It manages to do so because of its wonderful system of tissue replacement and also because animals have evolved a variety of special comfort movements that help to keep it clean. We tend to think of these cleaning actions as comparatively trivial when considered alongside such patterns as feeding, fighting, fleeing and mating, but without them the body could not function efficiently. For some creatures, such as small birds, plumage maintenance is a matter of life and death. If the feathers are allowed to become bedraggled, the bird will be unable to take off fast enough to avoid its predators and will be unable to keep up its high body temperature if conditions become cold. Birds spend many hours bathing, preening, oiling and scratching themselves and carry out this performance in a long and complicated sequence. Mammals are slightly less complex in their comfort patterns, but nevertheless indulge in a great deal of grooming, licking, nibbling, scratching and rubbing. Like feathers, the hair has to be maintained in good order if it is to keep its owner warm. If it becomes clogged and dirty, it will also increase the risk of disease. Skin parasites have to be attacked and reduced in numbers as far as possible. Primates are no exception to this rule.

In the wild state, monkeys and apes can frequently be seen to groom themselves, systematically working through the fur, picking out small pieces of dried skin or foreign bodies. These are usually popped into the mouth and eaten, or at least tasted. These grooming actions may go on for many minutes, the animal giving an impression of great concentration. The grooming bouts may be interspersed with sudden scratchings or nibblings, directed at specific irritations. Most mammals only scratch with the back foot, but a monkey or ape can use either back of front. Its front limbs are ideally suited to the cleaning tasks. The nimble fingers can run through the fur and locate specific trouble spots with great accuracy. Compared with claws and hooves, the primate’s hands are precision ‘cleaners’. Even so, two hands are better than one, and this creates something of a problem. The monkey or ape can manage to bring both its hands into play when dealing with its legs, flanks, or front, but cannot really get to grips efficiently in this way with its back, or the arms themselves. Also, lacking a mirror, it cannot see what it is doing when it is concentrating on the head region. Here, it can use both hands, but it must work blind. Obviously, the head, back and arms are going to be less beautifully groomed than the front, sides and legs, unless something special can be done for them.

The solution is social grooming, the development of a friendly mutual aid system. This can be seen in a wide range of both bird and mammal species, but it reaches a peak of expression amongst the higher primates. Special grooming invitation signals have been evolved here and social ‘cosmetic’ activities are prolonged and intense. When a groomer monkey approaches a groomee monkey, the former signals its intentions to the latter with a characteristic facial expression. It performs a rapid lip-smacking movement, often sticking its tongue out between each smack. The groomee can signal its acceptance of the groomer’s approach by adopting a relaxed posture, perhaps offering a particular region of its body to be groomed. As I explained in an earlier chapter the lipsmacking action has evolved as a special ritual out of the repeated particle-tasting movements that take place during a bout of fur-cleaning. By speeding them up and making them more exaggerated and rhythmic, it has been possible to convert them into a conspicuous and unmistakable visual signal.

Because social grooming is a cooperative, non-aggressive activity, the lip-smacking pattern has become a friendly signal. If two animals wish to tighten their bond of friendship, they can do so by repeatedly grooming one another, even if the condition of their fur hardly warrants it. Indeed, there seems to be little relationship today between the amount of dirt on the coat, and the amount of mutual grooming that takes place. Social grooming activities appear to have become almost independent of their original stimuli. Although they still have the vital task of keeping the fur clean, their motivation now appears to be more social than cosmetic. By enabling two animals to stay close together in a non-aggressive, cooperative mood they help to tie tighter the interpersonal bonds between the individuals in the troop or colony.

Out of this friendly signalling system have grown two re-motivating devices—one concerned with appeasement and the other with reassurance. If a weak animal is frightened of a stronger one, it can pacify the latter by performing the lip-smacking invitation signal and then proceed to groom its fur. This reduces the aggression of the dominant animal and helps the subordinate one to become accepted. It is permitted to remain ‘in the presence’ because of services rendered. Conversely, if a dominant animal wishes to calm the fears of a weaker one, it can do so in the same way. By lip-smacking at it, it can underline the fact that it is not aggressive. Despite its dominant aura, it can show that it means no harm. This particular pattern—a reassurance display—is less often seen than the appeasement variety, simply because primate social life requires it less. There is seldom anything that a weak animal has which a dominant might want and could not take by a direct use of aggression. One exception to this can be seen when a dominant but childless female wants to approach and cuddle an infant belonging to another member of the troop. The young monkey is naturally rather frightened by the approach of the stranger and retreats. On such occasions it is possible to observe the large female attempting to reassure the tiny infant by making the lip-smacking face at it. If this calms the youngster’s fears, the female can then fondle it and continue to calm it by gently grooming it.

Clearly, if we turn now to our own species, we might expect to see some manifestation of this basic primate grooming tendency, not only as a simple cleaning pattern, but also in a social context. The big difference, of course, is that we no longer have a luxuriant coat of fur to keep clean. When two naked apes meet and wish to reinforce their friendly relationship they must therefore find some kind of substitute for social grooming. If one studies those situations where, in another primate species, one would expect to see mutual grooming, it is intriguing to observe what happens. To start with it is obvious that smiling has replaced lip-smacking. Its origin as a special infantile signal has already been discussed and we have seen how, in the absence of the clinging response, it became necessary for the baby to have some way of attracting and pacifying the mother. Extended into adult life, the smile is clearly an excellent ‘grooming-invitation’ substitute. But, having invited friendly contact, what next? Somehow it has to be maintained. Lip-smacking is reinforced by grooming, but what reinforces smiling. True, the smiling response can be repeated and extended in time long after the initial contact, but something else is needed, something more ‘occupational’. Some kind of activity, like grooming, has to be borrowed and converted. Simple observations reveal that the plundered source is verbalized vocalisation.

The behavioural pattern of talking evolved originally out of the increased need for the co-operative exchange of information. It grew out of the common and widespread animal phenomenon of non-verbal mood vocalisation. From the typical, inborn mammalian repertoire of grunts and squeals there developed a more complex series of learnt sound signals. These vocal units and their combinations and re-combinations became the basis of what we can call information talking. Unlike the more primitive non-verbal mood signals, this new method of communication enabled our ancestors to refer to objects in the environment and also to the past and the future as well as to the present. To this day, information talking has remained the most important form of vocal communication for our species. But, having evolved, it did not stop there. It acquired additional functions. One of these took the form of mood talking. Strictly speaking, this was unnecessary, because the non-verbal mood signals were not lost. We still can and do convey our emotional states by giving vent to ancient primate screams and grunts, but we augment these messages with verbal confirmation of our feelings. A yelp of pain is closely followed by a verbal signal that ‘I am hurt’. A roar of anger is accompanied by the message ‘I am furious’. Sometimes the non-verbal signal is not performed in its pure state but instead finds expression as a tone of voice. The words ‘I am hurt’ are whined or screamed. The words ‘I am furious’ are roared or bellowed. The tone of voice in such cases is so unmodified by learning and so close to the ancient non-verbal mammalian signalling system that even a dog can understand the message, let alone a foreigner from another race of our own species. The actual words used in such instances are almost superfluous. (Try snarling ‘good dog’, or cooing ‘bad dog’ at your pet, and you will see what I mean.) At its crudest and most intense level, mood talking is little more than a ‘spilling over’ of verbalised sound signalling into an area of communication that is already taken care of. Its value lies in the increased possibilities it provides for more subtle and sensitive mood signalling.