When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals (23 page)

One of the colleagues of the famous Ivan Pavlov tried to discover with how much precision a dog could tell a circle from an ellipse. Food rewards were given along with the circle but not the ellipse. Each time the experimenter found (apparently by observing the flow of the dog's saliva) that the dog could tell the shapes apart, new tests would begin, with a rounder ellipse. After three weeks the dog suddenly got worse at making the distinction. "The hitherto quiet dog began to squeal in its stand, kept wriggling about, tore off with its teeth the apparatus for mechanical stimulation of the skin, and bit through the tubes connecting the animal's room with the observer, a behavior which never happened before. On being taken into the experimental room the dog now barked violently, which was also contrary to its usual custom; in short it presented all the symptoms of a condition of acute neurosis." Common sense tells us that this is not a neurotic dog, it is an angry and frustrated dog.

The difficulty of untangling anger and aggression is com-

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pounded with predatory animals, whose way of getting food is more direct than anything most people experience. (A person eating a hamburger is not thought to be gloating over the suffering of cows.) This has sometimes served as a pretext for the argument that animals are unlike humans in their savagery.

Predators are often alleged to be cruel, as is nature itself. This charge has been used to justify hunting certain species almost out of existence, like the wolf and the tiger, and is also used against smaller predators like the fox and the blue jay. Since they are cruel to one another, the argument seems to go, humans have the right or duty to exterminate them.

Cases where predators kill more than they can eat or begin eating their prey while it is still alive are viewed with particular horror. Literature arguing against the protection of wolves, for example, is full of accounts of deer "literally eaten alive" by wolves. The whistling dog (Kipling's dhole) of India, because of its short canine teeth, seldom kills its prey quickly, so is persecuted as treacherous and vicious.

It is common for some predators to begin eating their prey before it is dead. It is routine for them to kill and eat baby animals before their mothers' eyes. Does this in fact reflect cruelty? It certainly appears indifferent, lacking in empathy. In certain places and times the eating of certain live animals is considered a delicacy by humans. However, the question is not whether humans can be cruel—history demonstrates that irrefutably. The question is whether animals can be cruel.

If animals are to be excused for cruel acts Hke eating the baby in front of the anguished mother, on the grounds that they simply cannot understand the feelings of the other, can we then believe that they are ever kind, compassionate, or empathic, which also requires understanding the feelings of another?

Torture: Tne Cat and tne Mouse

Cruelty covers a continuum from lack of empathy to sadism. Animals do commit cruel acts. But are they cruel? Do they torment

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and torture? Do they like to make others suffer? (Extremists who deny that animals can suffer must also deny that animals can be cruel, since it is not possible to delight in nonexistent suffering.) A familiar instance of an animal torturing another is the cat with the mouse. On countless occasions a well-fed cat may be seen to catch a mouse that it doesn't eat. It may not kill the mouse at once. It may, instead, toss the mouse in the air, allow it to run off and almost escape—and then pounce again. It may hold the struggling creature down with a paw, and view its desperate attempts to escape with an expression that certainly looks like one of pleasure. A leopard has been seen to play with captured jackals in the same way.

The experiments of Paul Leyhausen and others with domestic and captive wildcats show that a cat will go on chasing, catching, and killing mice long after it has ceased to be hungry. Eventually it may stop killing them but will go on chasing and catching them. Then it may stop catching them, but will still stalk them. After a great while, it may give up on mice for the time being. But the stage during which the cat is chasing and catching without killing and eating looks just like torture.

Note what the cat likes best: most of all to chase, then to catch, next to kill, least of all to eat. This may seem antithetical to survival, but this hierarchy of appetites corresponds to what a successful hunter needs to be able to do. A predator may have to chase many animals before it catches one, is not able to kill all that it catches (some prey get away), and may have to catch more than it can eat (as when it is providing for the young). It has been estimated that a tiger catches prey once in twenty tries. Many kittens practice their predatory skills with prey their mother catches but does not immediately kill. A lioness has been seen holding a live warthog in her paws while cubs looked on with fascination, and cheetah have been seen bringing live gazelles to their cubs.

Does the cat who is sated with killing mice take pleasure in their suffering? Hunters enjoy their marksmanship, their ability to find their prey. They may enjoy killing the pheasant or the deer, but most hunters would claim that they do not enjoy the suffering of the pheasant or the deer. As to cats, how can this be tested?

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Consider prey that doesn't suffer. A cat can hardly take pleasure in the suffering of a ball of yarn or a wad of paper. A cat is attracted to certain attributes of prey—a scamper, an uneven gait. Mice usually show these attributes better than balls of yarn or wads of paper do. But if a wad of paper could squeak and scamper as well, it might be just as attractive to the cat. Some cats have been seen to play with paper balls while mice run around underfoot.

In addition to the movement of prey, cats are often fascinated by the idea of prey in hiding. Leyhausen reports that a captive serval (a tall, lynxlike African cat), when no longer hungry, will catch a mouse, carry it delicately over to a hole or crevice, and release it. If the mouse doesn't take the chance to hide, the serval will actually push it into the hole with its forepaw—and then try to fish it out again. This can't be good for the nerves of the mouse, but servals also play the same game with pieces of bark.

Alternatively one may ask whether cats take pleasure in the suffering of prey if it does not involve flight behavior. Would a cat enjoy seeing a mouse beaten or stretched on a rack? It seems unlikely—injured mice in traps are of only fleeting interest to cats. (If any person were to suggest actually doing such experiments, one would instantly have more data about cruelty in humans.) A cat quickly loses interest in a mouse who is too badly injured to scamper away. Perhaps the cat bats it with a paw to see if it can be induced to run again, but when it doesn't, the cat is bored. The mouse may be visibly suffering, gasping and bleeding, but if it is not trying to escape, a well-fed cat is not interested. Death itself holds no interest.

WTience comes that glee that seemed to flash over the cat's face? The cat loves to hunt, to catch, to triumph. Many predators do. They may be said to enjoy killing their prey. They are uninterested in how their prey feels. It is the mouse's movements, not its fear, that fascinates the cat. Catching prey is part of their work, and they enjoy being successful.

RAGE, DOMINANCE, AND CRUELTY IN PEACE AND IVAR Surplus Killing

Surplus killing has enraged shepherds and poultry keepers ever since people began husbanding animals. Typically, a weasel gets into a henhouse and kills all the chickens, more than it can possibly eat; or a fox jumps a fence and kills a flock of geese, making off with only one. In the wild, orcas attack a school of fish and tear from one to another, leaving bodies floating. Bears, confronted by a river full of salmon, become more and more selective about which parts of the fish they eat, until, at times, they simply stand as if in a trance, catching and releasing salmon without even killing them. Hyenas invade a flock of gazelles at night and kill dozens, far more than the pack can eat.

Such surplus killers are charged with cruelty, evil, and wastefulness. The fact that predators may kill more than they need to eat is used to justify killing them—that is, killing animals humans do not need to eat.

Predators who surplus kill are very often animals that store food to eat later. Foxes and weasels cache food. Both wild and captive hyenas have been seen to store meat in shallow water, which keeps it from rotting as quickly as it would in air. Perhaps predators that store food have the capacity to surplus kill because sometimes the excess can be cached. And it may still surplus kill when it will be unable to store the excess, like the fox that kills a flock of geese when it can only carry off one. When hyenas surplus kill, other pack members, including pups, often eat some of the surplus. Orcas that dispatch many fish in a frenzy succeed in eating more than they would if they ate each fish when they killed it, while the rest of the school escaped. They may not estimate closely how many fish will be eaten by the pod, and so may kill extra fish.

But these are simply arguments concerning the survival value of surplus killing. On the emotional side, the question is whether some creatures enjoy the surplus killing. Probably some do, not because they are killing more than they need, but because they are using their abilities to the fullest, exercising their capacities; they ^is-^X^iy funktionsliist^ delight in their powers. Scientist David Mac-donald, author of Running with the Fox, says this: "I have watched

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foxes surplus killing. Certainly their postures and expressions were neither aggressive nor frantic. If anything they looked playful, or perhaps merely purposeful."

Is this a case of claiming nice emotions for animals and not nasty ones? Does it seem likely that animals can be kind but never cruel? Are we, as a species, alone in our capacity for cruelty?

Tne Target or Cruelty

If predators are not seen to torture and delight in the suffering of their prey, they might still enjoy the suffering of one another. It would not be straying from a known pattern to hypothesize that the target of real cruelty is a creature's very nearest—its family or the members of its group. Are cats cruel to other cats? Do foxes ever take pleasure in being cruel to foxes, hyenas to hyenas? Little evidence is available. Certainly hyenas and foxes act cruelly to con-specifics at times. Even when young, littermates may attack and even kill each other. It is easy to argue that there is an ultimate evolutionary benefit to the killer, but harder to guess what the killer feels.

Perhaps such animals feel hatred, yet hatred does not seem to describe the relationship between predators and prey. From an evolutionary standpoint, rabbits would gain no advantage by hating owls, and they do not appear to do so. Fear is both more advantageous and more descriptive of their behavior. Nor do owls appear to hate rabbits. However, something like hatred does seem to exist, albeit reserved for competitors, of the same or other species. The interaction between lions and hyenas seems to be at times deeply hostile. Even when not fighting over a kill, they watch one another and attack a weakened or isolated animal. Schaller notes that a lion chasing a hyena, cheetah, or leopard does not wear the impassive face of a lion hunting. It bares its teeth and utters the calls it would use against another lion.

Animals may also hate rivals of their own species. No one is better equipped to compete with an animal than a conspecific— their needs may be identical. A wolf might not only be ousted from

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its position in a pack, but might be viciously attacked, driven away, or even killed by other wolves.

Congo, a chimpanzee raised by humans from an early age, became deeply unhappy when he was moved to a zoo enclosure. It was hoped that the company of female chimps would please him, but he hated them and rejected their friendly attentions. He began soliciting lighted cigarettes from zoo visitors and with these he would chase the other apes around the cage, trying to burn them. Whether he felt contempt for the nonsocialized chimpanzees or simply misdirected anger at being abandoned by his companions is unknown, yet surely his feelings were very strong. Congo's spirits continued to decline and he eventually stopped tormenting the female chimps. He died a short time afterward.

Scapegoating, the identification of one animal as a target for a group's aggression, has been seen in some animals. This is especially clear where captive animals are confined in close quarters. Leyhausen confined many cats in small enclosures to see what relationships would form. In one, the "community of twelve," two cats became pariahs for no apparent reason. If they ventured down from a retreat on a pipe near the ceiling, the other cats attacked. They dared not even come down to eat unless Leyhausen stood guard. But it is important not to succumb to the idea that such situations are inevitable, since Leyhausen found that in other "communities" no pariahs or top cats emerged. In the wild, a pariah could leave, either to be solitary or to seek another group. Yet what drives wild animals away from their group sometimes looks like cruelty. To answer the question of cruelty in animals, we will have to look harder at how they treat members of their own kind and not at how they feed themselves.

Jealousy: A "Natural" Emotion?

One source of aggression in social animals seems to be jealousy, a feeling that is often expressed as anger in humans. The evolutionary approach readily attributes a value to jealousy. Between siblings it can ensure the individual's access to food and

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parental care. Between mates it can ensure that both parents focus their care on their mutual offspring.

In humans jealousy is frequently repudiated. Jealous people are often admonished not to feel that way. Romantic jealousy is sometimes called unnatural, a cultural artifact. Without examining whether jealousy is wrong or unwise, it is possible to examine the statement that it is a product of human culture by asking whether animals are ever jealous. (Whether it could be a product of animal culture is a subtler question.)