Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (64 page)

1.
Alexander Pope,
An Essay on Man
, Frank Brady, editor (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965) (originally published in 1733–1734), Epistle I, “Argument of the Nature and State of Man, with Respect to the Universe,” p. 13, lines 221–226.

2.
An updating after Jakob von Uexküll, “A Stroll Through the Worlds of Animals and Men: A Picture Book of Invisible Worlds” (1934), reprinted in Claire H. Schiller, translator and editor,
Instinctive Behavior: The Development of a Modern Concept
(New York: International Universities Press, 1957), pp. 6 ff.

3.
Six carbon atoms make up the ring in this molecule. Chemists number them in sequence from 1 to 6. The chlorine atoms are attached in the 2 and 6 positions. If instead they were attached in, say, the 2 and 5 positions, the tick of the opposite sex would not be interested.

4.
Ticks are arachnids with eight legs, like spiders, tarantulas, and scorpions. They’re a matter of practical concern because they are the vectors for the spread of Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Lyme disease, and other illnesses—of livestock as well as of humans. We’ve described many of the essential sensory skills of a particular species, but other strategies and capabilities appear on closer examination or in other species. Some species have not one but three different mammalian hosts at different stages of their life cycles. Those ticks that live in caves may wait years for an appropriate host. Ticks chemically interfere with fibrinogen and other machinery that works to staunch the flow of their host’s blood, permitting some species to stuff themselves with a hundred times their unfed body weight in blood. Not only butyric acid is sensed in their quest for mammalian blood, but also lactic acid (CH
₃
HCOHCOOH) and ammonia (NH
₃
). Ticks use pheromones for purposes other than attracting the opposite sex—an assembly pheromone, for example, for a gathering of the tribes in cracks and crevices, or in caves. (See Daniel E. Sonenshine,
Biology of Ticks
, Volume 1 [New York: Oxford University Press, 1991]). Nevertheless, the basic sensory armamentarium of tick life still seems, as it did in the 1930s, very simple.

5.
J. L. Gould and C. G. Gould, “The Insect Mind: Physics or Metaphysics?” in D. R. Griffin, editor,
Animal Mind-Human Mind
(Report of the Dahlem Workshop on Animal Mind-Human Mind, Berlin, March 22–27, 1981) (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1982), p. 283.

6.
Thomas H. Huxley, “On the Hypothesis that Animals Are Automata, and its History” (1874), in
Collected Essays
, Volume I,
Method and Results: Essays
(London: Macmillan, 1901), p. 218.

7.
von Uexküll,
op. cit.
, pp. 43, 46.

8.
Karl von Frisch,
The Dancing Bees
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1953).

9.
A provocative modern discussion, informed by neurophysiology and computer science, is Daniel C. Dennett’s
Consciousness Explained
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1991). Optimistic assessments of the near future of artificial intelligence and artificial life include Hans Moravec,
Mind Children
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988) and Maureen Caudill,
In Our Own Image: Building an Artificial Person
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). A more pessimistic assessment is Roger Penrose,
The Emperors New Mind
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

10.
Quoted in Konrad Lorenz, “Companionship in Bird Life: Fellow Members of the Species as Releasers of Social Behavior,” in Schiller,
op. cit.
, p. 126.

11.
René Descartes, letter to the Marquis of Newcastle, quoted in Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren,
Great Treasury of Western Thought: A Compendium of Important Statements on Man and His Institutions by the Great Thinkers in Western History
(New York and London: R. R. Bowker Company, 1977), p. 12.

12.
Aristotle,
History of Animals
, Book VIII, 1, 588
^a
, in
The Works of Aristotle
, Great Books edition, Volume II, translated into English under the editorship of W. D. Ross (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952) p. 114.

13.
Charles Darwin,
The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex
(New York: The Modern Library, n.d.) (originally published in 1871) (Modern Library edition also contains
The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life
), Chapters 1 and 3.

14.
René Descartes,
Traité de l’Homme
, Victor Cousin, editor, pp. 347, 427, as translated by T. H. Huxley, in Huxley,
Collected Essays
, Volume I,
Method and Results: Essays
(London: Macmillan, 1901), “On Descartes’ ‘Discourse Touching the Method of Using One’s Reason Rightly and of Seeking Scientific Truth’ ” (1870).

15.
Voltaire, “Animals,”
Philosophical Dictionary
(1764), T. H. Huxley, translator,
op. cit.
, ref. 14.

16.
Thomas H. Huxley, “On Descartes’ ‘Discourse Touching the Method of Using One’s Reason Rightly and of Seeking Scientific Truth’ ” (1870), and “On the Hypothesis that Animals Are Automata, and its History” (1874), in Huxley,
Collected Essays
, Volume I,
Method and Results Essays
(London Macmillan, 1901), pp. 186–187, 184, 187–189, 237–238, 243–244.

17.
J. L. and C. J. Gould, “The Insect Mind: Physics or Metaphysics?” in D. R. Griffin, editor,
Animal Mind-Human Mind
(Report of the Dahlem Workshop on Animal Mind-Human Mind, Berlin, March 22–27, 1981) (Berlin. Springer-Verlag, 1982), pp. 288, 289, 292.

1.
Thomas Hobbes,
Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil
, Michael Oakeshott, editor (Oxford Basil Blackwell, 1960), Part 2, Chapter 30, p. 227.

2.
Charles Darwin and Alfred R. Wallace, “On the Tendency of Species to Form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection,”
Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society: Zoology
, Volume III (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans & Roberts, and Williams and Norgate, 1859), p. 50. Here Darwin also describes sexual selection in which the males compete for the favors of the female, or she selects from among several males on the basis of some quality she finds attractive: “This kind of selection, however, is less rigorous than the other,” Darwin said; “it does not require the death of the less successful, but gives to them fewer descendants.”

3.
Curt P. Richter, “Rats, Man, and the Welfare State,”
The American Psychologist 14
(1959), pp. 18–28.

4.
John B. Calhoun, “Population Density and Social Pathology,”
Scientific American 206
(2) (February 1962), pp. 139–146, 148; and references cited there.

5.
Frans de Waals,
Peacemaking Among Primates
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989)

6.
Richard Dawkins argues that lowered birth rates in response to overcrowding are explained equally well (not better) by individual
as by group selection
(The Selfish Gene
[Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989], p. 119).

7.
John F. Eisenberg, “Mammalian Social Organization and the Case of
Alouatta,’
in Michael H. Robinson and Lionel Tiger, editors,
Man and Beast Revisited
(Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), p. 135.

8.
Peter Marler,
“Golobus guereza:
Territoriality and Group Composition,”
Science
163 (1969), pp. 93–95.

9.
John F. Eisenberg and Devra G. Kleiman, “Olfactory Communication in Mammals,” in
Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics
3 (1972), pp. 1–32.

10.
As first pointed out by Charles Darwin (1872) in
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and the Animals
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965, 1967), p. 119.

11.
C. G. Beer, “Study of Vertebrate Communication—Its Cognitive Implications,” in D. R. Griffin, editor,
Animal Mind-Human Mind
(Report of the Dahlem Workshop on Animal Mind-Human Mind, Berlin, March 22–27, 1981) (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1982), p. 264.

12.
Lorenz’s translation from cranish. Konrad Lorenz,
On Aggression
(New York: Harcourt Brace, 1966), pp. 174, 175.

13.
An example:

“My friend and teacher, Bill Drury, invited me to go bird-watching one day on a small island off the coast of Maine. We left bird books and binoculars behind and strode to the nearest small tree growing alone in the open. He then made a series of high-pitched bird sounds and soon the tree began to fill up with birds, themselves making a series of calls. As the tree started to fill up, it seemed to attract more and more birds, so that as if by magic all small songbirds in the area were streaking toward the tree under which we were standing. By this time Bill was down on his knees, bent over, and most of the time making a deep kind of moaning sound. The birds actually appeared to wait in line to get the closest look at Bill they could; that is, they hopped from branch to branch until they rested on a branch about eight feet off the ground and not more than two feet from my face. As each bird hopped down, Bill, as if on cue, would introduce them. This is a male, black-capped chickadee. You can tell because of the black along the
neck and shoulders. I would guess he’s about two to three years old. Can you see if there is yellow on his back between his shoulders? This is a good index of age.

“For me the moment was utterly magical. In a matter of minutes Bill had reduced the distance between us and these birds by orders of magnitude, both physically and socially. Our relationship was so completely different that I was permitted individual introductions at a distance of a couple of feet. Obviously Bill was pulling some kind of trick and had induced some kind of trance through his bird song.… Bill was at first only imitating the mobbing calls of a couple of the small passerines in the area and interspersing these with occasional owl hoots. The owl is deadly at night but is vulnerable in the daytime, and groups of songbirds will mob it in order (presumably) to run it out of their area, or even harass and kill it on the spot. This drew them into the tree at an ever-increasing rate, since mobbing assemblages gain in individual safety with each new arrival (as well as gaining in power to harass the owl). Once they landed in the tree, however, they could see two four-eyed human beings but could not see the owl. Bill’s bending over and hooting from the ground was meant to suggest the owl was hidden underneath him. This drew them as close as they could get for a good look, which put them two feet from my face. Unlike some magic tricks, knowing how Bill’s was done did not detract from my enjoyment.” (Robert Trivers, “Deceit and Self-Deception: The Relationship Between Communication and Consciousness,” in Michael H. Robinson and Lionel Tiger, editors,
Man and Beast Revisited
[Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991], pp. 182, 183.)

14.
Mary Jane West-Eberhard, “Sexual Selection and Social Behavior,” in Robinson and Tiger,
op. cit.
, p. 165.

15.
T. J. Fillion and E. M. Blass, “Infantile Experience with Suckling Odors Determines Adult Sexual Behavior in Male Rats,”
Science
231 (1986), pp. 729–731.

16.
Marcus Aurelius,
Meditations
, translated with an introduction by Maxwell Staniforth (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1964), II, 17, p. 51.

1.
Charles Darwin,
The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life
(New York: The Modern Library, n.d.) (originally published in 1859) Chapter XV, “Recapitulation and Conclusion,” p. 371.

2.
From George Seldes,
The Great Thoughts
(New York: Ballantine, 1985), p. 302.

3.
E.g., Natalie Angier, “Pit Viper’s Life: Bizarre, Gallant and Venomous,”
New York Times
, October 15, 1991, pp. C1, C10.

4.
Snakes certainly fight over territory as well—rat snakes, for example, over knotholes in trees where birds nest. The loser looks for another tree.

5.
David Duvall, Stevan J. Arnold, and Gordon W. Schuett, “Pit Viper Mating Systems: Ecological Potential, Sexual Selection, and Microevolution,” in
Biology of Pitvipers
, J. A. Campbell and E. D. Brodie, Jr., editors (Tyler, TX: Selva, 1992).

6.
B. J. Le Boeuf, “Male-male Competition and Reproductive Success in Elephant Seals,”
American Zoologist 14
(1974), pp. 163–176.

7.
C. R. Cox and B. J. Le Boeuf, “Female Incitation of Male Competition: A Mechanism in Sexual Selection,”
American Naturalist
111 (1977), pp. 317–335.

8.
E.g., Peter Maxim, “Dominance: A Useful Dimension of Social Communication,”
Behavioral and Brain Sciences 4
(3) (September 1981), pp. 444, 445.

9.
Charles Darwin,
The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex
(New York: The Modern Library, n.d.) (originally published in 1871) Part II, “Sexual Selection,” Chapter XVIII, “Secondary Sexual Characters of Mammals—continued,” p. 863.

10.
Paul F. Brain and David Benton, “Conditions of Housing, Hormones, and Aggressive Behavior,” in Bruce B. Svare, editor,
Hormones and Aggressive Behavior
(New York and London: Plenum Press, 1983), p. 359.

11.
Ibid.
, Table II, “Characteristics of Dominant and Subordinate Mice from Small Groups,” p. 358.

12.
Dominance in a one-on-one encounter and dominance rank
within a hierarchy are not necessarily the same and cannot always be predicted from one another. See Irwin S. Bernstein, “Dominance: The Baby and the Bathwater,” and subsequent commentary,
Behavioral and Brain Sciences 4
(3) (September 1981), pp. 419–457. Some animals distinguish only between those lower and those higher in rank. Others—baboons, for example—behave differently to those of very distant rank than to those nearly co-equal in rank (Robert M. Seyfarth, “Do Monkeys Rank Each Other?”
ibid.
, pp. 447–448).

13.
W. C. Allee,
The Social Life of Animals
(Boston: Beacon Press paperback, 1958), especially p. 135 (originally published in 1938 by Abelard-Schuman Ltd.; this revised edition published in hardback in 1951 under the title
Cooperation Among Animals With Human Implications
).

14.
V. C. Wynne-Edwards,
Evolution Through Group Selection
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), pp. 8–9.

15.
Neil Greenberg and David Crews, “Physiological Ethology of Aggression in Amphibians and Reptiles,” in Svare,
op. cit.
, pp. 483 (varanids), 481 (crocodiles), 474
(Dendrobates
[dendratobids]), and 483 (skinks).

16.
B. Hazlett, “Size Relations and Aggressive Behaviour in the Hermit Crab,
Clibanarius Vitatus,” Zeitschrift fur Tierpsychologie
25 (1968), pp. 608–614.

17.
Patricia S. Brown, Rodger D. Humm, and Robert B. Fischer, “The Influence of a Male’s Dominance Status on Female Choice in Syrian Hamsters,”
Hormones and Behavior 22
(1988), pp. 143–149.

18.
One of many other examples: Bart Kempenaers, Geert Verheyen, Marleen van den Broeck, Terry Burke, Christine van Broeck-hoven, and Andre Dhondt, “Extra-pair Paternity Results from Female Preference for High-Quality Males in the Blue Tit,”
?ature
357 (1992), pp. 494–496.

19.
Mary Jane West-Eberhard, “Sexual Selection and Social Behavior,” in Michael H. Robinson and Lionel Tiger, editors,
Man and Beast Revisited
(Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), p. 165.

20.
In 1857, Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote: “[H]ow perfectly [woman’s dress] describes her condition. Her tight waist and long, trailing
skirts deprive her of all freedom of breath and motion. No wonder man prescribes her sphere. She needs his aid at every turn. He must help her up stairs and down, in the carriage and out, on the horse, up the hill, over the ditch and fence, and thus teach her the poetry of dependence.” (J. C. Lauer and R. H. Lauer, “The Language of Dress: A Sociohistorical Study of the Meaning of Clothing in America,”
Canadian Review of American Studies 10
[1979], pp. 305–323.) Stunning change has occurred since 1857, although the poetry of dependence is still widely recited in the women’s fashion industry.

21.
Owen R. Floody, “Hormones and Aggression in Female Mammals,” in Svare,
op. cit.
, pp. 51, 52.