Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (34 page)

Sex hormones are now manufactured by pharmaceutical companies, and widely used—legally and illegally. We can learn something about their role in Nature by asking why people use them. Anabolic steroids are molecules very like, but usually not identical to, testosterone. They’re taken mainly by: (1) bodybuilders and athletes (who widely believe that certain feats of strength can be accomplished
only
by young men on steroids); (2) young men who wish to macho up, usually to attract women or other men; and (3) those who wish to disinhibit their meanness (nightclub bouncers, hit men in organized crime, prison guards, and so on).
¹⁶
The enhanced musculature does not come about through steroids alone; it also requires vigorous and systematic exercise. One of the side effects is facial and back acne. Anabolic steroids don’t seem to grow hair. Large doses lead to dysfunction and atrophy of the testicles—perhaps the body’s response to excessive testosterone titers; too much testosterone is socially sufficiently dangerous that a mechanism may have evolved so that tendencies toward excessive production aren’t passed on to future generations.

Estrogen is taken by women, usually post-menopause or post-hysterectomy, to preserve sexual interest and lubrication, to slow loss of bone calcium, and to achieve a more youthful complexion. Bodybuilding and transsexual women may take anabolic steroids because they strikingly redistribute weight—from thighs to chest and biceps, for example. Transsexual men taking estrogen redistribute weight the other way, grow breasts, and feminize the nipples and areolae; there’s also a general mellowing of temperament. Bearing in mind these consequences of taking sex hormones as an adult, and the much more
profound influence they have on the embryo—actually determining which sexual organs will be present—it seems likely that far subtler changes in hormone levels might influence not just dominance, territoriality, aggression, care for the young, gentleness, anxiety level, and talent for conflict resolution, but also sexual appetite and preference.

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Bulls, stallions, and roosters are made into steers, geldings, and capons because humans find their machismo inconvenient—the very same male spirit that the castrators likely admire in themselves. One or two skilled motions of the blade—or a deft bite by a reindeer-herding Lapp woman—and the testosterone levels are down to manageable proportions for the rest of the animal’s life. Humans want their domestic animals to be submissive, easily controlled. Intact males are an awkward necessity; we want just enough of them to father a new generation of captives.

Something similar although less direct happens within the dominance hierarchy. From pit vipers to primates, the loser in ritual combat often experiences a steep decline in testosterone and related sex hormones, making him less likely to challenge the leadership at a later time, and therefore less likely to be injured. On a molecular level, he’s learned his lesson. With fewer circulating steroids, he’s now less ardent in his pursuit of females—at least when high-ranking males are around. This also is to the liking of the alphas. Again, decreases in testosterone levels following defeat are usually much more marked than any increases following victory.

Back to the testicles of sparrows: In a breeding area each little piece of territory has a male sparrow who will defend it against all comers.
*
Suppose a meddling ornithologist captures one of these territorial males and removes him from the territory. What happens? Other males from adjacent areas—many of them not previously able to defend a territory—move in. Of course they have to threaten and intimidate before they’ll be taken seriously. So the general level of sparrow anxiety rises, both among the newcomers and among unreplaced sparrows
in adjacent territories. Political tensions become high. If now we monitor the bloodstreams of the sparrows in the course of their disputes (which from our point of view, of course, seem petty, but to them it’s Quemoy and Matsu), we find that everyone’s testosterone level has risen—the newly introduced males who are trying to establish their territories, and the males of neighboring territories who are now required to do more in the way of defending than has been their recent practice. Something similar is true for many animals.

Those who have more testosterone, by and large, become more aggressive. Those who need more testosterone, by and large, generate it. Testosterone seems to play a vital role as both the cause and the effect of aggression, territoriality, dominance, and the rest of the “boys-will-be-boys” constellation of male behavioral traits. This seems to be true for widely differing species, including monkeys, apes, and humans.

In springtime, stimulated by the increasing day length, the testosterone level in male perching birds and songbirds (such as jays, warblers, and sparrows) goes up; they develop plumage, unveil a scrappy temperament, and begin singing. Males with larger repertoires breed earlier and produce more chicks. The repertoires of the most attractive males range up to dozens of distinguishable songs. Musical variety is the means by which more testosterone is converted into more birds.

When eggs are being laid, the male testosterone level remains high; they’re protecting their mates. Once the females begin incubating the eggs and are uninterested in sexual advances, male testosterone levels fall. Suppose that the females are now given estrogen implants so they remain sexually alluring and receptive, despite their new maternal duties. Then the testosterone levels in the males remain high. As long as the female is sexually available, the male is inclined to be nearby and protective.
¹⁷

These experiments suggest that an important selective advantage may accrue if a species breaks out of the estrus constraint. Continuous female sexual receptivity keeps the male around for all sorts of useful services. This is just what seems to have happened—maybe through a small adjustment in the DNA code for the internal estrogen clock—in our species.

Testosterone-induced behavior must be subject to limits and constraints. If it were carried to counterproductive lengths, natural selection
would quickly readjust the concentration of steroids in the blood. Testosterone poisoning to the point of maladaptation must be very rare. In nectar-eating birds, bats, and insects it’s possible to compare the energy expended in male steroid-driven defense against poachers with the energy that could be extracted from the flowers being guarded.
*
In fact, territoriality typically turns on only when the energy benefit exceeds the energy cost, only when there are so few delectable flowers to suck that it pays for you to expend the effort to chase away the competition. Nectar-eaters are not rigid territorialists. They won’t fight all comers to protect a wasteland of stones. They make a cost-benefit analysis. Even in a rich garden of nectar-bearing flowers, often no territorial behavior is seen in the morning—because plentiful nectar has been accumulating at night when the birds were asleep. In the morning, there’s enough to go around. Toward noon, when birds from far and wide have been feeding and the resource begins to get scarce, territoriality turns on.
¹⁸
Wings outstretched, beaks lunging, the locals drive away the intruders. Maybe they feel they’ve been nice guys long enough, but now they’ve had it up to
here
with these foreigners. Fundamentally, though, it’s an economic, not a patriotic decision; practical, not ideological.

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Many animals may do it, but at least among rats and mice it’s well-demonstrated: Fear is accompanied by a characteristic odor, a fear pheromone, easily recognized by others.
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Often, as soon as they sense you’re afraid, your friends and relatives run away—useful for them, but not very helpful for you. It may even encourage the rival or predator who has prompted your fear in the first place.

In the heads of goslings and ducklings and chicks at the moment they peck their way out of the egg is, a classic experiment suggests, a rough knowledge of what a hawk looks like. No one has to teach it to them. Hatchlings know. They also know fear. Scientists make a very simple silhouette—cut out of cardboard, say: There are two projections which could be wings. They flank a body which is longer and rounded at one end and shorter and stumpy at the other. If the silhouette
moves with the long projection first, it looks like a flying goose, wings spread, long neck preceding. Move the silhouette overhead, neck first, over the hatchlings and they go about their business. Who’s scared of a goose? Now move the same silhouette stumpy end first—so it looks like a hawk with wings outstretched and long tail trailing—and there’s a flurry of peeps and trepidation. If this experiment has been properly interpreted,
²⁰
somehow, inside the sperm and the egg that made that chick, encoded in the ACGT sequence of their nucleic acids, there’s a picture of a hawk.

Perhaps this inborn fear of raptors is akin to the fear of “monsters” that almost all babies manifest around the time they become toddlers. Many predators who are circumspect when a human adult is around would happily attack a toddler. Hyenas, wolves, and large cats are only a few of the predators that stalked early humans and their immediate ancestors. When the child begins to amble off on its own, it helps for it to know—in its marrow—that there are monsters out there. With such knowledge, it’s much more likely to come running home to the grown-ups at the slightest sign of danger. Any mild predisposition in this direction will be resoundingly amplified by selection.
*

In grown-up chickens there’s a set of more organized and systematic responses, including specific auditory alarm calls that alert every chicken within hailing distance of the ominous news: A hawk is overhead. The cry announcing an aerial predator is distinctly different from that announcing a ground predator—a fox, say, or a raccoon. Since the bird sounding the alarm is also giving away its presence and location to the hawk, we might be tempted to consider it courageous, its behavior evolved through group selection. An individual selectionist might argue—how convincingly is another matter—that the cry works to stir other chickens into motion, whose scurrying might distract the hawk and save the bird that sounded the alarm.

Experiments by the biologist Peter Marler and his colleagues
²¹
show that, at least among cockerels, a propensity to make alarm calls depends
very much on whether there’s a companion nearby. With no other bird present, the cockerel may freeze or gaze up into the sky when seeing something like a hawk, but he doesn’t cry out in alarm. He’s more likely to sound the alarm if there’s another bird within earshot; and, significantly, he’s much more likely to cry out if his companion is another chicken—any chicken—rather than, say, a bobwhite. He’s indifferent to plumage, though; chickens with very different color patterns are worthy of being warned. All that counts is that the companion be another domestic fowl. Maybe this is just sloppy kin selection, but it certainly edges toward species solidarity.

So is this heroism? Does the cockerel understand the danger he subjects himself to, and then, despite his fear, bravely cry out? Or is it more likely that squawking when there’s a companion nearby but not when you’re alone is a program in the DNA, and nothing more? See a hawk, see another chicken, cry out, and no agonizing moral struggle. When one of the combatants in a cockfight continues, although bleeding and blinded, to fight to the death, is he displaying “invincible courage” (as an English admirer of cockfighting has described it), or is this just a combat algorithm gotten out of hand, escaping the inhibition subroutines? Indeed, in humans does the hero have a lucid grasp of the danger, or is he or she merely following one of
our
preprogrammed subroutines? Most heroes report that they just did what came naturally, without much conscious thought.

The two sexes are not equally likely to produce alarm calls. In another study by Peter Marler and his colleagues,
²²
cockerels cried out in alarm every time a hawk silhouette was presented; but hens made such calls only 13% of the time.
*
Castrated cockerels are much less likely to sound the alarm—except when they have testosterone implants, in which case the call rate goes back up. So testosterone plays a role not just in dominance hierarchies, sex, territoriality, and aggression, but also in providing early warning of predators, whether we hold the bearer to be hero or automaton.

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Preadolescent female mice have a molecule in theirurine that induces testosterone production in males who get a whiff. In turn, the males’ urine now contains pheromones which, when sniffed by the immature female, quicken her sexual development. She matures early if there are males around, and late if there aren’t—a positive feedback loop that saves unnecessary effort. (As you might expect, female mice who can’t detect odors never come into heat.) What’s more, normal pregnant females who sniff the urine from males of a different strain of mice spontaneously abort their pregnancies; they resorb the embryos back into their bodies and quickly come into heat.
²³
This is convenient for the alien males. If the resident males don’t like it, it’s up to them to stop strangers from coming around with their abortion-inducing aromas.

In mice, as for many other animals, testosterone begins to be manufactured in earnest at puberty, and that’s when serious aggression against other mice begins. In adult males, the more testosterone, the quicker will be the attack when a strange male appears at the territorial frontiers. Again, castrate the males and their aggressiveness declines. Again, deliver testosterone to the castrates and their aggressiveness increases. Male mice are given to “marking” their environment with tiny dribbles of urine—a practice they pursue with redoubled effort when other mice are around (or when they come upon some unfamiliar object, maybe a hairbrush). Because of embryo resorption, if the males are to leave progeny at all, they must be the chief urinators in their territory. Maybe marking is like nametags on luggage, “no trespassing” signs on private property, or heroic portraits of the national leader in public places. The doughty little mouse is singing “This land is my land” and “She belongs to me.” Even when he’s not physically present he wants passersby to take careful note of his proprietorship. As you might suspect, castrate the mouse and urinary marking declines strikingly; resupply testosterone and his compulsion to mark is rekindled.