When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals (24 page)

Although jealousy might appear in any situation where animals gather, it is most often thought of in relation to siblings and to mates. Animal siblings can be quite vicious, going so far as to eat one another; whether this involves jealousy is not known. Group members other than siblings may be the source of jealousy. William Jordan has described what happened when the first baby was born in a group of gorillas at a zoo. The group became closer and seemed more unified—except for the mother's brother, Caesar, who was hostile toward the baby: throwing branches at her, swatting her on the head. Ultimately he climbed out of the closure "in what appears to have been a jealous snit," and was placed in another cage.

In a Swedish animal park, Bimbo, a young male elephant, was shown special attention by Tabu, an older female. When a younger calf, iVIkuba, arrived, Tabu lost interest in Bimbo. Bimbo responded by surreptitiously digging Mkuba with his tusks whenever possible, and Mkuba responded to that with loud, histrionic shrieks for help from Tabu. This sort of behavior is so reminiscent of human actions that strong scientists feel compelled to take a deep breath and start numbering the animals they observe instead of naming them.

Freud formulated his notion of Oedipal jealousy in reference to humans, but Herbert Terrace interprets the chimpanzee Nim Chimpsky's actions in this light. After being taken from his mother at the age of five days, Nim was raised in a human household. His foster mother, Stephanie, observed that Nim displayed both affection and a certain hostility toward her husband. In one instance, Nim, Stephanie, and her husband were taking an afternoon nap on

a large bed, with six-month-old Nim in the middle. Nim appeared to be asleep, but when Stephanie's husband put his arm around her, Nim leapt up and bit him. Terrace was unable to resist describing Nim's behavior as "downright Oedipal," though other explanations are possible.

The famous grey parrot Alex, who speaks words whose meaning he understands, is not a bird prodigy. His trainer has worked with at least one other grey parrot who learns just as quickly. Asked why Alex has learned so much more than thousands of pet parrots over the centuries, Pepperberg ascribes his success to the model/ rival method. (It may also be that some of those pet parrots did understand the meaning of words they used, but that this was not believed.) In this method, two people work with the animal, one as trainer, the other as model or rival. Thus, if Alex is to be taught the word green, the model (usually a graduate student) is shown a green object and asked what color it is. When the student says "green," the trainer praises her or him, and bestows the green object as a reward. When the student gets it wrong, there is no reward.

Alex, who has watched, is then asked to do the same task. The student may be thought of as a model, who demonstrates what is wanted and what the reward is. But the student may also represent a rival, someone who makes Alex feel jealous. Perhaps Alex doesn't really want the green object until he sees someone else get it. Perhaps he doesn't like to see someone else praised instead of him. This is currently only speculation: Irene Pepperberg's analysis of the model/rival system focuses on its referentiality, contextual applicability, and interactivity, rather than on Alex's feelings.

Parrots, who form enduring pairs, often seem jealous of their mate or desired mate. A tame parrot may suddenly become hostile to humans if it acquires a mate. Parrot behavior consultant Mattie Sue Athan estimates that a third of the calls for help she receives arise from "love triangles" when a parrot falls in love with one member of a human couple and tries to get rid of the other with displays of hostility. Orcas may also show jealousy over mating. At a California oceanarium three orcas were kept, two female and one male. When Nepo, the male, reached sexual maturity, he showed a

151

H'-HEN ELEPtL4NTS IVEEP

Strong preference for the female called Yaka. The other female, Kianu, repeatedly interrupted their mating by leaping out of the water and falling on them. Ultimately she attacked Yaka during a performance.

Scientists classifying animal mating have defined a number of systems in which it would be in an animal's genetic interest not to allow its partner to mate with others. They speak in terms of "monopolizing," "defending" or "guarding" mates, not in terms of love and jealousy. Yet jealous behavior, in the sense of possessive-ness or enforced exclusivity in mating, can certainly have genetic effects. In the famous chimpanzee colony at the Arnhem Zoo, high-ranking males can often prevent females from mating with low-ranking males by attacking both the females and the males. Frans de Waal reports that, during the day, females may decline invitations to mate from low-ranking males. When the chimps go in at night they are put in separate cages. During this process, when the high-ranking males are caged, females have a chance to mate with low-ranking males without fear of attack, and will sometimes even rush over to their cages to mate through the bars. If it were not for the cages, the females might never dare mate with the lower-ranking males. Wild chimpanzees sometimes leave the group in pairs, in "consortships," and this may provide relief from jealous attacks.

A^^ression and Nona^^ression

Frans de Waal has pointed out that comparatively little study has been made of the avoidance of aggression and of peacemaking and reconciliation in animals or humans, although these are vital parts of social Hfe. Watching chimpanzees in the Arnhem Zoo in 1975, de Waal saw one ape attack another, an altercation in which other group members immediately took part, resulting in shrieking pandemonium. There was a pause, and then the two apes who had the original quarrel embraced and kissed, while the others hooted excitedly. Pondering the episode, de Waal suddenly perceived it as reconciliation. "From that day on I noticed that emotional re-

152

unions between aggressors and victims were quite common. The phenomenon became so obvious that it was hard to imagine that it had been overlooked for so long by me and by scores of other ethologists."

De Waal has since studied reconciliation in rhesus monkeys, stump-tailed monkeys, and bonobos. Not only do these primates strive to make peace with each other after hostile encounters, but they also reconcile others who have quarreled. Mama, the oldest female in the Arnhem colony, once ended a conflict between Nik-kie and Yeroen, two dominant males. She went to Nikkie and put a finger in his mouth, a reassuring gesture. Simultaneously she beckoned to Yeroen and when he came over gave him a kiss. When she moved from between them, Yeroen hugged Nikkie and their breach was over.

De Waal's argument is not that primates are unaggressive, but that the ways they handle and dispel aggression are as important as the antagonism and deserve equal attention. A full understanding of reconcihation awaits evidence on the emotions felt by the peacemakers. Similarly, we will not understand aggression, cruelty, or dominance and its attractions for animals and for humans until we understand their emotional aspects.

153

Compassion, Rescue, and me

Altruism Debate

One evening during the rainy season in Kenya, a black rhinoceros mother and her baby came to a clearing where salt had been left out to attract animals. After licking up some of the salt the mother moved away, but the rhino calf got stuck in the deep mud. It called out, and its mother returned, sniffed it, examined it, and headed back into the forest. The calf called again, the mother returned, and so on, until the calf was exhausted. Apparently the mother rhino either could not see the problem—the calf was uninjured— or did not know what to do about it.

A group of elephants arrived at the salt lick. The mother rhino charged the elephant in the lead, who sidestepped her and went to a different salt lick a hundred feet from the baby rhino. Appeased, the mother went to forage in the woods again. An adult elephant with large tusks approached the rhino calf and ran its trunk over it. Then the elephant knelt, put its tusks under the calf, and began to lift. As it did so, the mother rhino came charging out of the woods, and so the elephant dodged away and went back to the other salt lick. Over several hours, whenever the mother rhino returned to the forest, the elephant tried to lift the young rhino out of the

154

COMPASSION, RESCUE, AND THE ALTRUISM DEBATE

mud, but each time die modier rushed out protectively and the elephant retreated. Finally the elephants all moved on, leaving the rhino still mired. The next morning, as humans prepared to pry it loose, the young rhino managed to pull free from the drying mud on its own and join its waiting mother.

The elephant who tried to rescue the young rhinoceros ran some risk of being injured by the mother's attacks. Why did it bother trying to help? Clearly it would gain no genetic benefit from the survival of the rhino. Though both are pachyderms, there is no reason to imagine that elephants ever confuse rhinos with their own species. Perhaps it recognized the youth of the rhino and its predicament and felt a generous impulse to help.

Elephants can also be nasty to rhinos, even young ones. They have been seen to tease a rhino by surrounding it and kicking dust in its face. In Aberdare National Park in Kenya, a deadly encounter between elephants and rhinos took place one night in 1979. Elephants arriving at a water hole chased a male rhino away. Presendy a mother rhino arrived with her baby, who began to play with one of the baby elephants. The mother elephant picked up the young rhino, threw it into the forest, and made as if to impale it with her tusks. But the mother rhino charged, and both mother and calf escaped. At this point the male rhino who had been chased away before made a return appearance. The irate mother elephant charged him, knocked him a distance of three meters, knelt on him, and stabbed him with one tusk, kiUing him.

There should be no more difficulty reconciling these two incidents than there is reconciling equally different human behaviors. Sometimes people behave generously toward an unfamiliar child, sometimes badly. However, while there has been no significant movement to deny that animals can fight and kill each other, there is much argument that they cannot behave altruistically toward each other, and that they lack the capacity for compassion and generosity. Yet observations of what actually happens in the real world do not confirm this view.

Young animals are often defended by unrelated animals. Other members of their group may defend them. Young white oryx will be defended not only by their mother, but by any oryx in the

HUEN ELEPHANTS HEEP

group. A mother Thomson's gazelle will defend her fawn from a hyena by running between them—but so will other female gazelles. Four female gazelles have been seen simultaneously "distracting" a hyena from a single fawn.

It may not be necessary for a young animal to be a member of a group to be defended by unrelated adults. Thus a researcher who was trying to mark rhino calves discovered to his dismay that the loud squeals of a young rhino bring not only its mother to its aid, but also every rhino within earshot.

When a group of chimpanzees in Gombe were hunting bushpigs and adolescent Freud captured a piglet, a sow charged and bit him to the bone. The piglet ran away, but the sow hung on to the screaming Freud. Gigi, a childless female chimp, charged the sow, who wheeled to face her. Though badly injured, Freud managed to clamber into a tree, and Gigi leapt free, escaping the pig's teeth only by inches.

Zebras energetically defend both young and grown zebras of their group from predators. Hugo van Lawick saw wild dogs chase a group of about twenty zebras, until they managed to separate a mare, foal, and yearling. As the rest of the herd vanished over a hill, the pack surrounded these three zebras. Their principal target was the foal, but the mother and yearling kept them back. After a while the wild dogs began jumping at the mare, grabbing for her upper lip, a hold that nearly immobilizes a zebra. Van Lawick thought the dogs would soon succeed and was astonished when he felt the ground shaking and looked up to see ten zebras thundering toward the scene. This herd galloped up, engulfed the three embattled zebras within its ranks, and galloped away again. The wild dogs followed for only a short distance before giving up.

Young animals are not the only ones to be defended. African buffalo sometimes defend other buffalo even when adult. A lion was struggling with an adult buffalo when several more buffalo ran up and chased away the lion and two other lions that had been waiting nearby.

Not all scientists are thrilled by such behavior. In the mid-nineteenth century, naturalist Henry Walter Bates shot a curl-crested toucan near the Amazon River for his ornithological collec-

156 —

COMPASSION, RESCUE, AND THE ALTRUISM DEBATE

tion. When he picked it up, he found that it was still alive, and it began to scream.

In an instant, as if by magic, the shady nook seemed alive with these birds, although there was certainly none visible when I entered the jungle. They descended toward me, hopping from bough to bough, some of them swinging on the loops and cables of woody lianas, and all of them croaking and fluttering their wings Hke so many furies. If I had had a long stick in my hand, I could have knocked several of them over. After killing the wounded one, I began to prepare for obtaining more specimens and punishing the viragoes for their boldness; but the screaming of their companion having ceased, they remounted the trees, and before I could reload every one of them had disappeared.

Though Bates was in no danger from these birds, they might have been able to rescue their companion from a smaller, less well armed predator.

Consider the following claim in an article written in 1934 by the then curator of birds at the Smithsonian, writing for an audience of psychoanalysts: "There are no cases known to me of anything like compassion or mercy for the wounded in any bird . . . there are some cases on record that appear, on the surface, to be examples of sympathy or compassion for other birds. Thus, some parrots, eminently gregarious in their feeding habits, exhibit what looks like strong mutual attachment between the members of a flock. If one of their number has been killed or wounded by a hunter, the others, instead of flying away in terror, hover over the fallen one calling vociferously ('shrieking,' as some writers have put it) and themselves may fall the victims of the gunner who continues to shoot." This, the author tells us, is "not true sympathy and compassion in the human sense," but a feeling more like the "neurotic feigning behavior in birds whose nests and eggs or young are endangered." The writer's approach is psychoanalytic rather than behaviorist, yet in saying that the birds are not compassionate but neurotic, he achieves a similar denial of animal emotion.