When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals (22 page)

When Jane Goodall was able to show what looked like chimpanzees going to war, one could almost feel a sigh of relief among scientists. But compared to our own history, as biologist Richard Lewontin points out, it is the tiniest of blips, worthy of note only because it was previously unknown. We do not know, nor does Goodall pretend to know% how common it is. In many respects it feels like a man-bites-dog story, interesting because it is so uncommon. What is common is the overall peacefulness with which ani-

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mals live together. Human history is incomparably more violent. Perhaps if we reversed our research strategy, we could find out why: A Study of Human Aggression from the Standpoint of Peace-fulness Among Elephants.

A^^ression over Resources

Aggression is employed by many animals to obtain access to resources like food. A principal delight of researchers on the African savannas is keeping track of which hyenas killed a wildebeest, which lions stole the carcass from them (or vice versa), and which jackals and vultures managed to snatch a bite before being driven off. Such conflict makes a dramatic spectacle. Most animals do not usually clash in this way. The wildebeest being struggled over did not, in life, stage bloody battles with other wildebeest over which of them was going to graze a patch of grass.

Competition uses a lot of energy, and many species seem to minimize such strife. In many animals there are postures of surrender that inhibit the attacker of the same species. The wolf rolls on its back, or the monkey looks away, and the attacker stops. What does an aggressor feel whose attack is checked in this way?

For many animals the creature likely to be its closest competitor, to want the same foods or the same nest sites, is another of its species, in some cases its own mate. Research suggests that size variation within some species confers survival advantage. For example, a female osprey is larger than her mate; they catch fish of different sizes, which reduces competition between them, increasing their joint supply of food.

Tame parrots often take a strong dislike to individual humans or to classes of humans, often to a whole gender. Veterinarians can grow weary of hearing clients say, "He hates all men. He must have been abused by a man in the past." Parrots have been known to conceive hatreds of all redheads, all brunettes, or all adults. While all wild-caught parrots have been abused, due to the cruelty involved in their capture and transport, this is less hkely for parrots

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reared in captivity. But it remains unknown whether these kinds of eccentric dishkes are found in the wild.

Perhaps these parrots simply enjoy having enemies. This may promote flock solidarity, prevent interbreeding between species, strengthen the pair bond, or have some other valuable function.

Another possibility is that the irritability of parrots is related to dominance struggles in the flock. Ever since it was announced in the 1920s that chickens have "pecking orders," ethologists have been seeking and finding pecking orders—now called dominance hierarchies—everywhere. In a pecking order a chicken is dominant to some other chickens, and can peck them and push them away from food—unless it is the lowest-ranking chicken of all. And, unless it is the top bird, other chickens will in turn be dominant to it, and the chicken will allow these birds to peck it and oust it from food. The idea of dominant and submissive animals has found wide public popularity. So has the idea that aggression is valuable because it helps an animal dominate.

In recent years the idea of the dominance hierarchy has become more controversial, with some scientists asking if such hierarchies are real or a product of human expectation. It is worth noting that in wild flocks, chickens do not form rigid pecking orders as they do in poultry yards.

Some ethologists now argue that while dominance relationships between two animals ("the gray female is dominant to the black female") may be real, dominance ranks assigned to individuals ("the second-ranking female in the pack") are not. Others point out that an animal may dominate in one situation—competing to eat first—but not in another—competing for a mate. Still others say that while dominance may be important between two adult male baboons, it may not be a realistic way to describe the relationship between a female and her adolescent daughter.

By far the most serious blow to theories about dominance is the discovery that one of its most basic assumptions isn't always true. This is the assumption that male animals who are dominant are able to mate more often and produce more offspring. Such males are romanticized—by some—as potent princes of their kind, genetic heroes. But recent studies show that dominant males can't

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always mate more often. In the hamadiyas baboon, for example, whether or not females like a male is more significant to his reproductive success than his dominance. Shirley Strum found that the more high-ranking and aggressive a male olive baboon was, the less likely females were to mate with him. Such males also lost out when special foods were found, apparently because they had fewer friends to share with them. Leyhausen noted long ago that when tomcats fight over a female in heat, the female is no more likely to mate with the winner than with the loser—a fact that seems to have eluded most observers. Such evidence means that many cherished theories must be reexamined. A better analysis of dominance will have to include the emotions of both dominant and subordinate animals. Increasingly, attempts to fit theories of dominance to the way animals really live seems to require such terms as respect, authority, tolerance, deference to age, and leadership; terms that begin to mix emotional concepts with those of status.

Far from trying to get mates by showing dominance, many animals try to seem anything but dominant when courting, to avoid frightening the one being wooed. A courting male mountain goat lowers his back to look smaller, keeps his horns back, and takes small steps. A male brown bear slouches, flattens his ears, takes care not to stare at the female, and acts playful.

The idea of observing animals engaged in mysterious behavior and charting a tidy hierarchy that produces testable predictions has great appeal for scientists. Sometimes the idea that hierarchies are inevitable and that this proves certain things about humans is also part of the appeal. This may be why some theorists pay more attention to aggressive species than to peaceful ones, and more attention to species where males dominate than to species where females dominate, as in the lemurs. Human interest in dominance is so great that this seems to be a particularly fertile area for errors caused by projection. Scientists' behavior may, in this respect, parallel that of recreational hunters, who often seek out the biggest males as trophy animals. These animals, hkely dominant or alpha males, are not usually the tastiest animals, or the easiest to find.

Yet dominance can be a real phenomenon in animals as well as people. From human lives we recognize the drive for respect or

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Status that may be called ambition. In a herd of scimitar-horned oryx in a wildlife preserve in the Negev Desert, a male called Napoleon had grown old and short of breath and had lost status. Rather than leave the herd, he continued to challenge other males and pursue females. His challenges were ignored, but when he pursued females the other males attacked, goring him with their yard-long horns.

The preserve managers put Napoleon in protective custody— a five-acre paddock. He escaped the next day, and was injured by another oryx. He was recaptured and treated—and escaped again. After his eighth escape from the paddock, now festooned with bolts and latches, the managers changed their approach. Since Napoleon could not be forcibly contained, they decided to give him what he wanted in the paddock. They decided that he wanted not to attack males, nor to be with females, but to be dominant. So every morning the director would enter the paddock with a bamboo pole. In ritual battle, he clattered the pole on Napoleon's horns and Napoleon threatened and charged until the director allowed the victorious oiyx to drive him out. Napoleon stopped escaping and lived in the paddock until he died of old age, the top oryx of his enclosure, and apparently content. It is worth asking how an animal feels when it loses status. Do animals get depressed, do they adapt, or is it ever a relief?

Rape

Rape, a sexual form of aggression, has been observed in some animals. Biologists have observed forcible rape in orangutans, dolphins, seals, bighorn sheep, wild horses, and some birds. In Arizona, an attempted rape was observed in coatimundis (long-nosed raccoonlike animals). A large male bounded out of the bushes into a group of females and juveniles, jumped on a young female and tried to mate with her. She squealed and instantly three adult females ran snarling at the male, drove him away, and chased him for fifty yards down the canyon. In none of these species does rape appear to be the norm, but in several it does occur regularly. For

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instance, although white-fronted bee-eaters (tunnel-nesting African birds) form mated pairs, female bee-eaters leaving the nest must dodge males who try to force them to the ground and rape them. The males preferentially attack females who are laying eggs and thus might lay an o.^^ fertilized by the rapist, rather than by the mate.

Among waterfowl like mallards, pintail, and teal, an unwilling female is occasionally pursued by one or more males, which can result in her death by drowning when many males try to pile on. She will fight back and flee, and her mate will try to drive off the aggressors, but their efforts at defense do not always succeed. In addition, the male of a pair of mallards will sometimes attempt to mate with the female immediately after a rape attempt by another male. These mating attempts may not be preceded by the usual mutual displays of mated pairs. In most such cases "the female visibly struggled, but in no case did she flee." The sociobiological explanation for such marital rapes is that it gives the mate's sperm a better chance of competing with the rapist's sperm. It sheds no light on how the male or female birds feel. Nor does such behavior provide any evidence whatsoever that human rape is "natural," biologically determined, or reproductively advantageous.

At one marine park, where newly captured dolphins would be given a companion who was accustomed to captivity, bottle-nosed dolphins could not be used as companions because they would torment and sometimes rape the newcomer, if it was of another species. In the wild, bottle-nosed dolphins, despite their saintly popular image, have been seen to form male gangs to sequester and rape females of their own species.

Hans Kruuk witnessed a male spotted hyena attempting to mate with a female, who drove him off each time. Her ten-month-old cub was nearby, and the male hyena repeatedly mounted it and ejaculated on it. According to Kruuk, the cub sometimes ignored this and sometimes struggled "slightly as if in play." The mother did not interv^ene. Yet such behavior seems to be rare in animals and accounts are difficult to find.

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In most discussions of aggression and dominance, nodiing is said about anger or other emotions that might inhabit such behavior. It is very difficult to tell when anger is or is not involved in aggression. Aggressive behavior in humans can be coolly calculated: whatever motivates it does not seem to be the same thing that makes people shout and fume. There is some belief that penguins may push one of their number into the water before they all dive, to see whether leopard seals are waiting there to eat them. If this proves true, it would seem unlikely that penguins commit such aggressive acts out of anger.

Some instances of animal behavior do resonate with the human experience of anger and irritation, and perhaps are easier to understand in this way because they do not constitute stereotypical reactions. Giraffes seem to disHke cars. When a car honked at one giraffe standing in the road, the giraffe knocked the car over and kicked it vigorously. Another driver encountered two giraffes crossing a road at night, stopped, and dimmed the headlights. One giraffe got off the road but the other walked over, turned its back, and delivered a series of two-footed kicks to the radiator. To anyone who has ever been annoyed by a honking vehicle, this is the very picture of irritated behavior, even the fulfillment of a fantasy.

Karen Pryor notes that if you are teaching either people or porpoises to do a task for which you have rewarded them in the past, and then stop rewarding them, they both appear irritated: humans will grumble and look sour; the porpoises will jump out of the water and splash you from head to toe.

Pryor also describes Ola, a young false killer whale (resembling an orca), reacting to a bird called a booby. One day, during a show at the oceanarium, a booby landed next to Ola's tank. Ola stuck his head out of the water and stared at the booby. When the booby didn't move, Ola leapt up at it with gaping jaws. The booby still didn't move. By this time most of the audience was ignoring the show and watching Ola and the bird. Ola hurtled around the tank, raising big waves that splashed over the booby's feet. Still the booby didn't move. Ola submerged, took a mouthful of water,

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came up, and squirted it directly onto the booby. The drenched bird took flight and the audience burst out laughing. Such laughter contains an element of recognition.

Oddly, dog trainers disagree on whether dogs feel anger, although they generally agree that dogs recognize anger in humans. Mike Del Ross, an experienced dog trainer at Guide Dogs for the Blind, although confident that dogs feel fear, sadness, happiness, frustration, and other emotions, doubted that they feel anger or jealousy, even when behaving aggressively. Another Guide Dog expert, Kathy Finger, disagreed strongly, saying that dogs do indeed feel anger.

This difference of opinion may stem from differing definitions of anger, but it may also be based upon a situation that every dog trainer hears about constantly: the dog that destroys things when left alone. The owner is certain that the dog is angry at being left and is chewing furniture, digging holes, knocking things over, or barking as revenge. The trainer may be just as certain that the dog is intensely bored, and that the solution lies in better conditions for the dog, rather than in discussions of what the owner considers its unjustifiable rage. Yet the two explanations are fully compatible.