When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals (11 page)

Elephant calves, like mountain goat kids or bear cubs, do not always fear what their elders think they should. Cynthia Moss, who studies elephants in Kenya, reports that very young calves appear largely fearless. They may come up to her Land Rover and ex-

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amine it—while people are in it. This often alarms their mothers and aunts, producing visible conflict, Moss reports. Apparently they would like to hustle the calves away but are too frightened to come close enough to do so. They stand very tall, and shuffle back and forth or swing one leg. VVHien the calf eventually wanders back, the adults pull it to them, feel it, and make threatening gestures at the vehicle.

A Possible Need to Fear

By the time elephant calves are grown, they are likely to have had reason to fear things besides people in Land Rovers. Objects that justify^ fear appear in most creatures' lives. But what about an animal that is so protected and sheltered that it never encounters anything frightening? VVTiat happens to its capacity for fear? It is possible that such a creature will feel fearful anyway, that its capacity to fear will demand expression, fastening on an object that seems arbitrary.

Koko, a gorilla, was born in a zoo and raised by humans in a sheltered, loving environment. Koko was never exposed to big older gorillas, to leopards, to hunters, or to anything that might frighten her. Yet she has fears—of alligators, for instance, though she has never seen a real one. For years she acted afraid of toy alligators unless their lower jaws were missing. Though not frightened of her alligator puppet, she would play chasing games with it. She once threatened an aide in American Sign Language with being chased by an alligator if she didn't make lunch faster. She also appeared to be afraid of iguanas, specifically a pet iguana whom she saw often. Although the iguana (described as "comatose") never made threatening moves toward her, Koko would nin into her own room if the iguana was brought out.

Possibly Koko's fear of Hzards and alligators is instinctive, or partly instinctive; perhaps it is strengthened by the lack of anything else to fear. It may be that fear demands an object, and that no matter how secure and protected a child is, vampires, werewolves, or fire engines will be conjured up to serve as that object. In later

FK4R, HOPE, AND THE TERRORS OF DREAMS

years, perhaps because she received gifts of dozens of toy aUigators of various descriptions, Koko seemed to lose her fear of them.

The chimpanzee Viki, raised by humans, had a fear of tarpau-Hns so severe that she could be kept from entering forbidden rooms by hanging pieces of tarpaulin on the doorknobs. The famous Washoe, while unimpressed by tarpaulins, has been reported to fear dust mops. Moja, another chimpanzee in the same group, was unmoved by dust mops but found the dividers from ice-cube trays so alarming that researchers kept ice-cube dividers hidden in drawers and cupboards so that, if Moja became unruly, they could punish her by taking out a divider and exhibiting it.

In a remarkable use of narration, Washoe and the other chimpanzees in her group were also led to fear an imaginary "bogeydog." This grew from an effort to get the easygoing young Washoe to use the sign for no more often. One evening researcher Roger Fouts looked out the window of Washoe's trailer, and signed to Washoe that he saw a big black dog with long teeth that ate baby chimpanzees. He asked Washoe if she wanted to go out, and got a most emphatic "no." On other occasions, when Washoe was playing outside and did not want to go in, researchers would sign that they saw the big black dog coming—and Washoe would hasten inside.

Island Fearlessness

Fearless animals sometimes greet travelers to remote islands. These bold creatures, rather than running from humans, may gaze attentively at a person walking up to them with a net or a gun. The botanist Sherwin Carlquist describes an encounter with an insular species of burrowing owl. He came close and photographed the owl, which stood and blinked lazily. A snake slithered by and Carlquist picked it up. Unperturbed, the snake draped itself on his shoulders and allowed him to carry it about all day. In the same archipelago, Carlquist was able to stroke elephant seals lying on the beach and boobies sitting on their eggs. Elsewhere, an island

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species of chuckwalla (a large lizard) was so placid that it would even disregard "a mild kick from a biologist's shoe."

Biologists who arrived on one uninhabited island after an arduous trip paused to rest; one researcher lying on the beach fell asleep. An island wren alighted on his foot, scrutinized his bootlaces, hopped along his body, perched on his chin and—to the joy of the sleeper's companions—peered long and carefully down each of his nostrils before flying off. Such fearlessness is found in species living on small islands where predators are few or absent. Carlquist argues, "Excessive skittishness is no virtue, in terms of evolution. If a bird spends much of its time flying away from false alarms, it will have that much less time for feeding and other essential activities. Thus, in a predator-free situation, a reasonably oblivious animal might be more successful than a perpetually nervous one." It is not reported whether island-tame species retain other fears—of heights or of water—but it seems likely. Many island species have calmly met their doom through fearlessness. The great auk and the dodo are only two who disappeared because they did not flee hungry humans or their animal companions.

Tne Otner Side or Fear

If fear is the feeling that something bad is imminent, then its converse may be hope, the feeHng that something good is imminent. In humans hope, like fear, can be unreasoning and irrational or logical and conscious. One of the most endearing traits of pet animals is their (quite reasonable) hope of being fed, and their unsophisticated joy at the prospect. Dogs whirl around in anticipation, cats purr loudly and rub against objects, people, or other animals.

When Washoe grew older, she had a baby that died four hours after birth because of a defective heart. Three years later she had a second baby, Sequoyah. Sequoyah was sickly, and despite excellent care from Washoe, died of pneumonia at the age of two months. Determined that Washoe should raise a baby, researchers made frantic efforts to find a replacement, and eventually procured Lou-

FEAR, HOPE, AND THE TERRORS OF DREAMS

lis, a ten-month-old chimpanzee. Fifteen days after Sequoyah's death, Fouts went to Washoe's enclosure and signed "I have baby for you." Every hair on Washoe's body stood on end. She displayed signs of great excitement, hooting, swaggering bipedally and signing "baby" repeatedly. "Then when she signed 'my baby,' I knew we were in trouble," Fouts said.

When Fouts returned with Loulis, Washoe's excitement vanished instantly. Her hair flattened and she declined to pick LouHs up, impassively signing "baby." But after an hour had passed, Washoe began approaching Loulis, trying to play with him. That evening, she tried to get him to sleep in her arms, as Sequoyah had done. At first she was unsuccessful, but by the next morning they were clasped together, and from that time Washoe has been a devoted mother to Loulis, who eventually acquired a vocabulary of fifty signs from Washoe and the other chimpanzees in the group. It seems clear that when told she would get a baby, Washoe hoped to see Sequoyah again.

Ludwig Wittgenstein believed that animals may feel frightened but not hopeful. He wrote, in the 1940s, "One can imagine an animal angry, frightened, unhappy, happy, startled. But hopeful? ... A dog believes his master is at the door. But can he also believe his master will come the day-after-tomorrow?" Wittgenstein argues that only those who have mastered the use of language can hope. Not only does this statement remain unproven to this day, but there seems no good reason to doubt that an animal can imagine or even possibly dream about the future. Animals may lack the language of hope, but the feelings that underlie it are probably shared by humans and animals alike. If animals can remember and dream about the past, if fear can be relived, why can they not imagine and project a future in which fear will be unnecessary?

Love and Friendsnip

One evening in the 1930s Ma Shwe, a work elephant, and her three-month-old calf were trapped in rising floodwaters in the Upper Taungdwin River in Burma. Elephant handlers rushed to the river when they heard the calf screaming but could do nothing to help, for the steep banks were twelve to fifteen feet high. Ma Shwe's feet were still on the river bottom, but her calf was floating. Ma Shwe held the baby against her body; whenever she began to drift away, she used her trunk to pull the calf back against the current. The fast-rising water soon washed the calf away and Ma Shwe plunged downstream for fifty yards and retrieved it. She pinned her calf against the bank with her head, then lifted it in her trunk, reared up on her hind legs, and placed it on a rocky ledge five feet above the water. Ma Shwe then fell back into the torrent and disappeared downstream.

The elephant handlers turned their attention to the calf, which could barely fit on the narrow ledge where it stood shivering, eight feet below. Half an hour later, J. H. Williams, the British manager of the elephant camp, was peering down at the calf wondering how to rescue her when he heard "the grandest sounds of a

LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP

mother's love I can remember. Ma Shwe had crossed the river and got up the bank and was making her way back as fast as she could, calling the whole time—a defiant roar, but to her calf it was music. The two little ears, like little maps of India, were cocked forward hstening to the only sounds that mattered, the call of her mother." When Ma Shwe saw her calf, safe on the other side of the river, her call changed to the rumble that elephants typically make when pleased. The two elephants were left where they were. By morning Ma Shwe had crossed the river, no longer in flood, and the calf was off the ledge.

Too Nome for Animals

Humans—who are, after all, social primates—believe they know what love is and esteem it highly. Yet love is not considered an emotion by many theorists, but rather a "drive," like hunger.

Whether it is called emotion or drive, in most scientific circles it is forbidden to say that animals love. Had WiUiams been an animal behaviorist describing Ma Shwe and her calf, he would probably have felt constrained fi^om using the word love to describe her behavior. He might instead have written of a "bond" between Ma Shwe and her calf. In a critique of Harry Harlow's deprivation experiments in which young rhesus monkeys were forced to grow up without mothers, biologist Catherine Roberts has written, "Does he not know that human love differs qualitatively fr-om animal love? Does he not know that a human mother is unique because she has an abstract idea of the Good and that therefore human love, unhke animal love, has its ontogenetic beginnings in a spiritual bond between mother and child?" Animals, in other words, cannot love like people can because their bonds are not spiritual.

The evolutionary approach stresses the survival value of love over its emotional authenticity. The writer of one book for a popular audience has noted that there is general approval of animals that mate for life, and added, "It's important to remember . . . that these animals are not displaying 'true love,' but simply following

miEN ELEPH.4NTS H-'EEP

the dictates of their genes. They are survival machines, and their mission is to multiply their own genes in the gene pool. If a male felt that his partner could raise young without him, he'd be off in a flash. But this would not be abandonment in our terms, and we need not feel sorry for the female. Both are pursuing their own game plan that will lead to the best positioning of their genes—a pursuit that is adaptive and, therefore, beautiful." Whatever their scientific view of human coupling may be, most people would not accept this as an accurate way of looking at their own loves and families, yet where the difference on this point lies between animals and people is not stated. Would the most "beautiful" human love be one that sought dominant genes to reproduce? The fact that an animal is described on the one hand as a machine, and on the other as a being that may ponder whether its partner can raise young alone is only one of the inconsistencies in such thinking. Ostensibly objective statements like this that reduce the complexity of inner life to its function are all too typical. Perhaps love, the emotion, has evolutionary value. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas argues of two dogs, Misha and Maria:

Popular prejudice might hold that romantic love, with its resulting benefit of fidelity, sexual and otherwise, is not a concept that can be applied to dogs, and that to do so is anthropomorphic. Not true. Fully as much as any human love story, the story of Misha and Maria shows the evolutionary value of romantic love. The force that drove Romeo and JuHet is no less strong or important if harbored by a nonhuman species, because the strength of the bond helps to assure the male that he, instead of, say, Tybalt or Bingo, is the father of any children born and that both parents are in a cooperative frame of mind when the time comes to raise those children.

Even though she observed that the emotion could serve a scientific rationale, Thomas has been castigated for using the word love rather than bond in writing of dogs.

LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP Parental Love

The evolutionary approach suggests that parental love— watching over young—makes urgent sense. Parental care allows more young to survive. If parents protect their young, the young can grow bigger before they have to fend for themselves. A baboon can even inherit its mother's status in the troop and an adult female black bear can use her mother's territory while her mother is still occupying it. A young animal can learn survival practices while safely under the protection of its parent. Perhaps—this is debated —the parent even teaches it some of those things.

Not all creatures protect their young. A turtie lays eggs in the sand and departs. Presumably it would not recognize, let alone love, its offspring. But if an animal lays eggs and guards them, as crocodiles do, there must be something that motivates it to do so, and then prevents it from eating the young when they hatch. This might not necessarily be love—it could be brought about by such simple mechanisms as an inhibition against eating eggs and young crocodiles. But expressing care may be evidence of feeling love. Crocodiles also dig their young out of the nest when they hatch, guard the babies, carry them in their jaws, and respond vigorously to their distress calls. Females of a southeast Asian diadem butterfly apparently guard their eggs by standing over them. This probably increases their chances of survival. However, a female will sometimes continue this behavior even unto death, her rotted corpse standing guard over a batch of as yet unhatched eggs.