Cruelty to Chimps in Research Lab

Science questions the morality of invasive experimentation.

Chimpanzees suffering from isolation and disease in the name of science.
Image: Animal Aid
The National Institute of Health scandal involving the abuse of chimpanzees has a full write up in the just released issue of Science. After working undercover and filming cases of abuse at an NIH facility, the Humane Society has published a 100-page report (summary here) calling for an end to invasive experimentation on all great apes. The video footage can be found here.

The video shows a chimpanzee falling from a perch and smacking the floor after being darted by a tranquilizer gun, an anesthetized monkey rolling off a table, a baby monkey writhing while receiving a feeding tube, and other strong images of caged primates. "A major issue for us is the psychological deprivation and torment that these animals are enduring," said HSUS President Wayne Pacelle at a press conference.

A ban on invasive experiments has already been established in Europe, where personhood rights for great apes are much further along than in the U.S. Naturally, in the interest of "balance", Science felt the need to include the opinions of those who are in favor of inflicting needless suffering on our closest relatives.

Several researchers who conduct studies on chimpanzees say the legislation is shortsighted. Geneticist John VandeBerg, the chief scientific officer at the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research in San Antonio, Texas, says researchers there use chimpanzees primarily for testing drugs and vaccines against hepatitis B and C, diseases that he notes affect nearly 500 million humans.

Neuroscientist Todd Preuss of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta complains that the bill defines "invasive" too broadly. It would prohibit his and other groups from sedating chimpanzees to perform brain scans or drawing blood for behavioral experiments and endocrinology studies. He calls these interventions "minimally invasive."

Since Dr. VandeBerg is such a humanitarian I'm sure he wouldn't mind testing the vaccines on himself or his family (or he can give his students extra credit for each injection). Chimpanzees have emotional and sensory lives as rich as our own. The pain and stress of isolation as well as the intentional infection with debilitating diseases is needlessly cruel and should be abolished. This concern about the definition of "invasive" is the same kind of verbal gymnastics that bent the definition of torture into utter meaninglessness. If you wouldn't perform an experiment on a person you shouldn't perform it on a chimpanzee. Period.

Jane Goodall has condemned the practices by the New Iberia Research Center, where the nine month investigation took place, and is a firm supporter of the Humane Society's proposed ban.

In no lab I have visited have I seen so many chimpanzees exhibit such intense fear. The screaming I heard when chimpanzees were being forced to move toward the dreaded needle in their squeeze cages was, for me, absolutely horrifying.

Today we rightly condemn the disgusting experiments conducted as part of the Tuskegee Study in the hope of understanding the course of syphilis. The intention was humanitarian then just as it is now. But to intentionally inflict suffering in order to reduce suffering elsewhere is an empty moral argument. Hopefully in a few decades our children will read about this current squabbling over how immoral we can afford to be in the name of science with the same disgust that we feel about such experimentation in the past.

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The Nature of Partisan Politics-Part II

Republicans from Mars, Democrats from Venus and the partisan assumptions about human nature.

Liberals embrace a human nature based on equality and cooperation.
Image: Eric Drooker, "People vs. Military"

Click here for The Nature of Partisan Politics - Part I
Liberals also have a unique perspective on human nature, though it would seem that Levin's ideological blinders prevented him from seeing it. Levin claims that liberal assumptions are based on the view that "most human problems are functions of an imperfect distribution of resources." This is a tenuous connection at best and seems intended merely to connect liberalism with Marxism. While economic justice is an important issue for liberals, the areas of concern are considerably broader than simply focusing on how resources are divided.

For example, concern for gay and lesbian rights is not based on economic inequality nor does the environmental movement build its foundation on a desire for the redistribution of wealth. In fact, the environmental movement has had a difficult time reaching out to labor unions based on the (largely erroneous) fear that the two are at odds with one another. It's also difficult to see how Levin can equate diplomacy with economic redistribution. Unless we're talking about paying someone for a peace treaty – like General Petraeus did with the Sunni insurgents in Iraq – most diplomacy is "the art of relating states to each other by agreement rather than by the exercise of force." Of course, that's the view of the renowned liberal Henry Kissinger, so shouldn't be taken in any way seriously.

However, there is a connection between such seemingly disparate issues as workers rights, environmental sustainability, a progressive income tax and gay marriage. What all these areas of concern are based upon is a moral sense of equality and fairness. Workers are small players in a larger financial system; by helping them join together in unions to collectively bargain with their employer it helps to level the playing field. For centuries the natural world has been used only for its supply of cheap resources or as a waste dump; now that the full picture of this human impact has been revealed we must advocate for our collective future. Issues of civil rights, women's rights, gay and lesbian rights or animal rights; all fall under the broad category of nurturing a society based around notions of equality. The assumption about human nature inherent in the liberal worldview is that fairness and equality can ultimately be achieved and that our innate character is both flexible as it is fundamentally decent. Liberals therefore assume that the social ills that plague our society – unemployment, crime, racism, homophobia – are all moral issues that can be resolved by improving the environment where these problems prevail.

In other words, our "deepest disagreements" are that conservatives think human nature is fixed and a problem to be guarded against while liberals think human nature is flexible and that experience either corrupts or refines. Conservative commentator Thomas Sowell calls these the "Tragic" or "Utopian" worldviews while liberal cognitive scientist George Lakoff refers to them as the "Strict Father" or "Nurturing Parent" traditions. To put these same categories into religious terms, where a conservative would thump the pulpit preaching dominion, a liberal would organize the poor around the cross of liberation theology.


The science of human nature has been studied for more than three hundred years.
Image: Vesalius, De Humani Corporis Fabrica / University of Glasgow
What's important to point out, of course, is that whatever the conservative or liberal assumptions about human nature may be, they have no bearing on what human nature actually is – something that political theorists often forget. The father of political science, Thomas Hobbes, justified monarchy based on his assumption that humans in a "state of nature" (what we would now call indigenous societies) lived a bestial existence that was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." Ever since then appeals to a human nature of this sort have been used as an excuse for all manner of draconian policies to maintain order. That there have now been three and a half centuries of research in anthropology and biology on this very question doesn't seem to have filtered down yet to the level of politics.

So, which view is the correct interpretation of human nature? Clearly this question can't be fully addressed in such a short space, but the simple answer is that both are flawed, but one more than the other. Human nature is not intractable. To say that would be like suggesting a healthy lifestyle would have no effect on someone born with the genetic predisposition for a fatal disease. Biology is not destiny, but neither is it unimportant. Morality and cooperation are intrinsic properties of human nature, just as the self-indulgent and antisocial behaviors are that conservatives fear. All societies at all times in history (and pre-history) have had a firmly entrenched moral code; that this code frequently applies only to the in-group is one of the human tragedies to be overcome. Furthermore, most social species – and primates in particular – have an intuitive sense of right and wrong and will work in cooperation with their social group more often than not.

As a social species ourselves, and one that has adapted to thrive in an enormous range of habitats and conditions, we are influenced significantly by our environment and will alter our behavior based on experience. But we are not infinitely flexible. Left-wing totalitarian assumptions that human nature could be “reeducated” to fit the interests of the state were as flawed as right-wing assumptions are now that suggest homosexuality is a lifestyle choice that can be learned or unlearned at will. However, by influencing people's environment you can, to a significant extent, influence the social outcome. This makes having a better understanding of human nature all the more vital, since important decisions based on faulty assumptions could be corrosive to human liberty.



Conservatives show their determination to embrace partisanship on their terms.
Image: RJ Matson, The St. Louis Post Dispatch
While such ultimate questions about human nature will continue to be pursued for many years to come by both scientific thinkers and political pundits alike, Mr. Levin's current use is particularly unfortunate. It's not simply that he would seek to misuse these assumptions to beat his ideological drum; it is that his support for the intractable partisanship on which it is based would be as harmful to the nation during a time of crisis as it is personally disingenuous.

The day after the 2008 election, on November 5, when it was disclosed that Rahm Emmanuel would be the top pick for President Obama's Chief of Staff, Levin lambasted his choice as someone who was "a vicious graceless partisan: narrow, hectic, unremittingly aggressive, vulgar, and impatient." This, for Levin, was a bad sign and he criticized the new President because it "suggests both that he wants to be ruthless and partisan and that he does not have a clear sense of how the White House works." Perhaps his essay should have been titled "Partisanship is Good (But Only If My Side Wins)". With such a statement it would seem that Levin’s view of human nature has no concept of hypocrisy. Such outright duplicity not only illuminates his approach as an advocate of Ethics and Public Policy, it is the very nature of partisan politics that we should all seek to avoid.

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The Bad Taste of Moral Turpitude

A new study reveals the oral origins of moral disgust

Protester in Iceland shows her disgust after US toxic assets infect global markets.
Image: Der Spiegel
The greed and avarice responsible for the current economic meltdown has resulted in a growing distaste for business as usual. As it turns out, evolution may explain just why this is. Speaking about his reaction to the economic crisis, Jeremy Warner, writing in the British newspaper The Independent, states that:

The spectacle of secretive deal-making on luxury yachts and at five-star hotels amid the Mediterranean playgrounds of the world's super rich leaves a bad taste in the mouth and is plainly offensive to the thousands of ordinary lives likely to be affected by it.

This kind of physical expression of distaste for immoral behavior is commonplace in our language. A used car salesman’s offer seems “fishy” or the crimes of a corporate banker are condemned as “wretched” behavior. Even the word "turpitude" is based on the latin root turpis for something foul. But why would something as abstract as morality be associated with these physical expressions of digust?

Now, a study by psychologist Hanah Chapman and colleagues in the latest edition of the journal Science (subscription required), has sought to understand this connection and its evolutionary implications. In a series of careful trials, carried out at the University of Toronto, Chapman recorded facial data while participants were engaged in three separate experimental conditions to simulate different forms of disgust: oral, visual and moral.

In the first set of experiments, the researchers focused on the levator labii muscle region of the face, the muscle group responsible for raising the upper lip and wrinkling the nose. These facial muscles were thought to be the most important group for the expression of disgust. By using a technique known as electromyography (EMG), the activation of the muscle cells in this region could be precisely recorded. EMG data were then recorded from participants while they drank small samples of unpleasant-tasting bitter, salty and sour liquids. Then, by comparing the muscle response of participants while drinking the foul liquids to that of something sweet or neutral (such as water), the researchers hoped to demonstrate the levator labii region as the muscles responsible for the expression of oral disgust.

Confirming their predictions, the unpleasant drinks caused significantly more activity from the levator labii than either the sweet drink or the water produced. With their baseline measurements established, Chapman and her team could then move on to determine if more abstract feelings of disgust tapped into the same brain network as the disgusting tastes did.


Foul tasting liquids cause levator labii muscles to evoke expression of disgust.
Image: Chapman et al.

The researchers then recorded EMG facial data while showing a series of disgusting photographs such as feces, serious injuries or crawling insects to elicit an expression of visual disgust in the participants. They also showed sad and neutral photographs to act as controls in the same way that the sweet liquid and drinking water did in the previous test. Once again, only the disgusting photographs resulted in a significant activation of the levator labii muscles and the characteristic appearance of disgust in the participant. Now that the same group of muscles were shown to be activated in two separate forms of disgust, the researchers moved on to their final goal: moral disgust.

Having determined that both the primitive distaste response and more complex forms of disgust evoke levator labii region activity that is proportional to the degree of disgust or distaste experienced, we next examined whether the same pattern of results would hold for moral transgressions. Given that fairness is a cornerstone of human morality and sociality, we examined the facial motor activity associated with violations of the norm of fairness.

The researchers used a simulation known as the Ultimatum Game to model unfairness in social interactions. In this game, two players split $10: The first player, the proposer, makes an offer suggesting how the money should be split, which the second player, the responder, can accept or reject. If the responder accepts the offer, the money is split as proposed, but if they reject the offer then neither player receives anything. Each participant played 20 rounds of the Ultimatum Game in the role of responder while EMG data recorded their facial movements. The offers ranged from “fair” (an even $5:$5 split) to very “unfair” (proposing a $9:$1 split). The EMG data was then used to interpret the varying levels of unfairness that participants experienced as part of the game.

What the researchers concluded was that, when offers reached very unfair levels (such as an $8:$2 or $9:$1 split) the levator labii muscles activated revealing the players feeling of disgust at being cheated. Fair offers or offers that were in the players favor did not evoke this response. These EMG responses fit with the self-report that participants felt about the level of unfairness. During times where they felt cheated, they were disgusted by the other player’s behavior and their face responded accordingly. As the authors summarized their findings:

When participants received unfair offers, they judged their experience as most similar to tasting or smelling something bad. . . even though the “bad taste” left by immorality is abstract rather than literal.

French poster condemning the economic crimes of the rich. No translation necessary.
Image: Snup Paris.com

What these findings suggest is that reactions based on moral disgust influence decision-making in the same way that oral disgust would keep you from eating something noxious. This was certainly the case in the Ultimatum Game as the more disgusted the responder was by an unfair offer the less likely they were to accept it. It would seem that our economic decisions are not based purely on logic, but also on a physiological response based on our innate reaction to immoral behavior. As principal investigator Adam Anderson told United Press International:

These results shed new light on the origins of morality, suggesting that not only do complex thoughts guide our moral compass, but also more primitive instincts related to avoiding potential toxins. . . Surprisingly, our sophisticated moral sense of what is right and wrong may develop from a newborn's innate preference for what tastes good and bad, what is potentially nutritious versus poisonous.

Perhaps what’s most intriguing about this study is the implication that moral disgust “hitched a ride” on the more primitive reaction to poisonous or spoiled food. This process, known as exaptation, is where a trait or behavior that was adapted for one function is later co-opted and used for something entirely different (such as bird feathers adapted for use in thermoregulation and only later being useful for flight). In this case it would seem that our evolved neurological template for moral behavior tapped into the previously existing neural pathway for oral disgust. In this way, a physical aversion to immorality could have served as a check upon anti-social behavior in our ancestors and helped to reduce its prevalence in the social group.

Morality has long been thought to be a learned behavior and that if evolution were true it would mean that we are condemned to live in an immoral universe. The current economic crisis would seem to suggest that humans are indeed rotten to the core and in need of moral salvation. However, what this study demonstrates is that our intuitive sense of moral crimes are the direct result of our evolutionary history. As we continue to rinse our mouths of the policies that led to our current crisis we should keep in mind that, while trickery and deceit are a permanent part of our character, evolution has provided us with the very skills we need to create the kind of society that doesn't leave us reeling with a bitter aftertaste.

Reference:

H. A. Chapman, D. A. Kim, J. M. Susskind, A. K. Anderson (2009). In Bad Taste: Evidence for the Oral Origins of Moral Disgust Science, 323 (5918), 1222-1226 DOI: 10.1126/science.1165565

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The Dangers of Technological Adolescence

A brief history of scientific "progress" in human experimentation.

A diorama showing Japanese researchers testing biological weapons on villagers
in Ping Fan, China during the 1930s.
*This post has also been picked up by the Chronicle of Higher Education. Join the debate at their blog or in the comments below.

Perhaps it’s because today is overcast or perhaps it’s due to the generalized sense of self-reflection I feel on this morose day. But as we champion “economic progress” beyond all other concerns (including the integrity of our ecosystem) it’s only appropriate that I take a good, long look in the mirror at the ugly history behind “scientific progress”. The legacy of cruel experimentation on primates is well documented and ongoing. But the history of scientific experimentation on unwilling human subjects should warn all wide-eyed science enthusiasts about the costs of placing progress above all other concerns.

Recently the abused orphans of the University of Iowa “Monster Study” were granted a $925,000 payment from the state. In an experiment by a psychology graduate student, six otherwise normal children were subjected to psychological cruelty in order to find out if stuttering could be induced. All of them experienced lifelong emotional distress and social anxiety, and none of them became a stutterer.

This is an issue that is as old as experimental science, and has frequently ended much worse for the, usually poor, victims. In the 1570s a battle was being waged between the Paracelsians and the Galenists about which theorist had the best understanding of medicine. German born alchemist and anatomist Paracelsus outraged many of his 16th century contemporaries by criticizing the, then, 1,700 year-old writings of the Greek physician Galen. His followers were adamant to prove their master’s techniques and sought a test for their “chemical medicines” derived from lethal poisons. As Allen G. Debus writes in Man and Nature in the Renaissance:

“In the mid-seventeenth century it was suggested that several hundred sick poor people be taken from the hospitals and the military camps. They were to be divided into two groups, one to be treated by the Galenists, the other by the chemists. The number of funerals would determine whether the chemical or the traditional medicine had triumphed.” (p. 31).

In the early period of American medicine doctors would perform experiments on their socially “less valuable” patients. As Susan Lederer writes in Subjected to Science: Human Experimentation in America Before the Second World War:

“Before the discovery that monkeys could be infected with syphili and gonorrhea, the search for microbes of venereal disease prompted more than forty reports of experiments in which individuals were inoculated with the suspected germs of gonorrhea and syphilis. In 1895 New York pediatrician Henry Heiman . . . described the successful gonorrheal infection of a 4-year-old boy (“an idiot with chronic epilepsy”), a 16-year-old boy (an “idiot”) and a 26-year-old man in the final stages of tuberculosis.”

Even after the atrocities of Dr. Mengele and the Nazi experimenters were exposed (and human experimentation was condemned as part of the Nuremburg Tribunal) patients continued to be subject to life threatening experiments without their consent. In Eileen Welsome's book, The Plutonium Files, it documents how human radiation experiments were performed between 1951 and 1962 by injecting various concentrations of plutonium into unknowing patients in the United States:

“Physcians performed experiments on healthy people and sick patients without informing them of what was going on or getting their consent. Sick patients were preyed on most frequently. They were convenient, plentiful, and vulnerable, since nontherapeutic procedures could be administered easily under the guise of medical treatment. . . Terminally ill patients were perhaps the most vulnerable group of all. . . Women, children, unborn fetuses, minorities, the mentally retarded, schizophrenics, prisoners, alcoholics, and poor people of all ages and ethnic groups were targets.” (p. 214-215).

The 1994 Rockefeller Senate Report Examining Biological Experimentation on U.S. Military found that for fifty years the Department of Defense had intentionally exposed military personnel to dangerous substances without their knowledge or consent including mustard gas, radiation, and hallucinogenic drugs.

I shudder to think what has gone on today under the unprecedented secrecy of the current administration. But if our leaders are willing to use illegal chemical and experimental weapons on civilians in Iraq, I wouldn’t remain optimistic.

“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity,” stated Albert Einstein at the tipping point of the nuclear age. We have much progress to achieve if we wish to close the gap before this imbalance teeters out of control. As I began this morning's post with a quote from one of this generation's greatest advocates for both science and humanity (as well as one of my personal heroes), I see it as only fitting that I should close tonight's in the same fashion.

[I]t is possible to avoid the dangers of the period of technological adolescence we are now passing through. There are some who look on our global problems here on Earth - at our vast national antagonisms, our nuclear arsenals, our growing populations, the disparity between the poor and the affluent, shortages of food and resources, and our inadvertent alterations of the natural environment of our planet - and conclude that we live in a system which has suddenly become unstable, a system which is destined soon to collapse. There are others who believe that our problems are soluble, that humanity is still in its childhood, that one day soon we will grow up.

- Carl Sagan, The Quest for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (1978)

References:

Debus, Allen G. (1978). Man and Nature in the Renaissance. Cambridge University Press, London.

Lederer, Susan. (1997). Subjected to Science: Human Experimentation in America Before the Second World War. John Hopkins University Press, Maryland.

Welsome, Eileen (2000). The Plutonium Files: America’s Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War. Delta, New York.

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Why People Are Good

Your Sunday Skepticomic from Jesus and Mo.



To view last Sunday's comic click here.

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The Bonding Brain

How the evolution of primate sociality is linked to brain networks for pair bonds.

Social conservatives are fond of linking morality with monogamy and will be quick to condemn the moral crimes of adulterous felatio while ignoring the moral crimes of cutting social programs for poor mothers. However, in a bizarre twist, it seems that morality and monogamy are closely intertwined, though it’s doubtful many conservatives will champion the reasons why.

Those of you who are regular readers of these pages know that I’ve touched on the issues of evolution, cooperation and altruism on several occasions (for example see here and here). In the latest issue of the journal Science, Robin Dunbar revisits this question with a unique perspective on why some species (including humans) succeed so well as members of a group.

While it may come as a shock to the Milton Friedman’s of the world (proponents for the brand of capitalist theory often referred to as “free market fundamentalism”) human beings are a distinctively socialist species. While we come nowhere near the extreme for the natural world (the eusocial bees, ants and termites win the Karl Marx utopian award for selfless behavior on that one) we humans are far and away the most social species of the most social order of the most social class in the animal kingdom (for those of you not up on your Linnaean terminology I refer to primates and mammals respectively). How can I claim such a thing? A very simple measure will suffice: social group size.

Humans have the largest group sizes of any primate. Baboons are known as having the largest group sizes of all non-human primates with an average of about 40-50 individuals and only approach as many as two hundred under extreme circumstances. Humans, in contrast, have an average group size of about 150-200 individuals in hunter-gatherer societies and a maximum group size in the millions under the unique conditions we experience as the result of industrial agriculture. And these large social groups require substantial brain power. All organisms need to successfully predict and navigate their environments and this becomes far more complicated when there are multiple actors interacting in the same social circle.


In the 1990s Robin Dunbar championed an idea known as the Social Brain Hypothesis. He found that mammals who lived in the largest social groups often had the largest neocortex to brain ratio. Since the neocortex is associated with complex and abstract thought he suggested that the demands of group living selected for an increase in neocortex size. In his latest paper in Science he and Susanne Shultz have suggested that there is even more than simply group size that may have influenced this selective process. When the authors analyzed the mating strategies of those highly social mammals that had the largest neocortex they found that pair bonds were significant in all groups except primates.


All social mammals except primates show connection between brain volume and pair bonding
Pair bonds occur when an animal stays with their partner for extended periods rather than simply meet up during the mating season. Pair bonds are cognitively tricky because monogamy is a risky business. In order to avoid getting stuck with a bad partner (either one with bad genes or one who won’t share the costs of reproduction) individuals have to be careful in choosing a good-quality mate. Also, pair bonded individuals have to carefully coordinate their activities to be in synchrony with the other. This may require substantial brain power to predict the other’s behavior and adjust your own behavior accordingly. But why is it significant that the social primates don’t show this connection between a large neocortex and pair bonding like other mammals do? Well, whenever there is a consistent pattern in nature that is violated in a single case a good scientist will want to know why. Primates are already unique among mammals, so any unique qualities that jump out could help us understand the evolution of our lineage.


As mean group size rises so does neocortex ratio
What Dunbar and Shultz have suggested is that the social brain that was selected under conditions for pair bonds in other species has been coopted and utilized for strangers in primate social groups. As the authors state in their paper:

This would explain why, as primatologists have argued for decades, the nature of primate sociality seems to be qualitatively different from that found in most other mammals and birds. The reason is that the everyday relationships of anthropoid primates involve a form of “bondedness” that is only found elsewhere in reproductive pairbonds.

Primates, and humans in particular, are such good social cooperators because we can empathize with others and coordinate our activities to build consensus. Rather than natural selection being a process of selfish individuals maximizing their own fitness, this “bonding brain” hypothesis suggests that natural selection, at least in primates, was a process of maximizing individual fitness through the promotion of the group as a whole. There is already a vast literature on the proximate mechanisms (the hormonal and neurobiological aspects) that promote both pair bonding and affiliative behavior. While there are still many more questions that need to be answered, this research is a promising candidate for understanding the evolutionary origins of primate sociality and human morality itself.


This research doesn’t imply that monogamy causes increased social cooperation, merely that the brain mechanisms selected for in the evolution of pair bonds have been extended to additional members of the primate order. But it’s unfortunate that so many conservatives are adamantly opposed to understanding evolution. Finally a connection between morality and monogamy has been established by Science and their refusal to understand means they'll miss a terrific opportunity to pound the bully pulpit.

Reference:

R.I.M. Dunbar and Susanne Shultz (2007). Evolution in the social brain. Science 317:1344-47. DOI: 10.1126/science.1145463

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The Evolution of Morality

Morality is the final domain that theists cling to in order to justify the existence of God. They argue that, without a supernatural deity (or deities), there would be no reason for people to be kind with one another and we would be constantly at each other’s throats. The view of Darwinian evolution as “nature, red in tooth and claw” is pervasive and theists perceive that the absence of God is the absence of moral sense. However, this façade is cracking around its very foundation as a steady flow of observational evidence reveals it to be one more bit of fallacious reasoning.

Moral behavior is little more than behaving in ways that are beneficial to the group rather than merely to yourself. Group-living animals, and primates in particular, can teach us a great deal about how such behaviors could be selected for and evolve without requiring a moral puppetmaster in the sky. In many primate societies close social bonds formed by individuals serve to regulate social behavior. These social bonds are strengthened through grooming, food sharing and reconciliation behavior after a conflict. While competition and conflict are a normal part of group living it is often surprising to learn how rare it is, especially considering the amount of attention such conflict receives in the academic and popular press.

Fedigan (1993) found in one study that white-faced capuchins (the cute New World monkeys who carried the deadly virus in Outbreak) displayed 1,078 cooperative behaviors and only 136 aggressive ones. Likewise, Sussman et al. (2003) found that ring-tailed lemurs spent about twenty-five minutes per day in direct cooperation and less than one minute in aggression. Sussman and Garber (2004) followed up on these findings by analyzing seventy-eight studies covering twenty-five genera and forty-nine species of non-human primates. They determined that prosimians, monkeys and apes would spend the vast majority of their social lives in cooperative interactions. The study also showed that the amount of social aggression was statistically insignificant. The levels of aggression ranged from zero in colobus monkeys to a high of 0.92% in spider monkeys (a species that spent 22.0% of their time in cooperation).

The authors concluded by stating, “We hypothesize that affiliation is the major governing principle of primate sociality and that aggression and competition represent important but secondary features of daily primate social interaction” (Sussman and Garber 2004:178).

How then can theists justify that nature is cruel and immoral necessitating a moral force from beyond the natural world? If you remove the mental blinders for a second it makes perfect sense that group living animals would cooperate more than they’d compete. Group living is a way of gaining protection from predators. If too many individuals destabilize the group by behaving selfishly everyone in the group suffers as a result. The individuals involved wouldn’t have to understand this concept, it would emerge because those populations that didn’t follow this “moral law” wouldn’t survive. While there will always be a tendency to maximize individual benefit, the most stable groups will always be those that maximize the benefit of the most individuals at the same time (i.e. mutualism). The theistic argument for a supernatural force is as baseless for morality as it has been shown to be for love, abstract reasoning or any other domain thought exclusive to humans.

As is often the case in these discussions, Darwin said it best in one of his less quoted statements that we would be wise to recover from the shadows. Speaking about how ethical behavior could develop based on nothing but the laws of natural selection he wrote: “Those communities which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best and rear the greatest number of offspring” (Darwin 1871:163).

For more on this topic see my posts here and here.

References:

Darwin C. (1871). The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. New York: Random House, 1936.

Fedigan L. (1993). Sex differences and intersexual relations in adult white-faced capuchins. International Journal of Primatology 14: 853-77.

Sussman RW and Chapman AR (2004). The nature and evolution of sociality: Introduction. In: The Origins and Nature of Sociality. Ed. by RW Sussman and AR Chapman. Aldine De Gruyter: New York, pp. 3-19.

Sussman RW, Andrianasolondraibe O, Soma T, Ichino S. (2003). Social behavior and aggression among ringtailed lemurs. Folia Primatologica 74: 168-72.

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