Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?(60)
Since Malini and the rest of us wished to see if the chimps could figure out the task on their own, she gave them no pretraining at all. All they knew was that there was a new apparatus and that food was associated with it. They proved remarkably quick learners, realizing that they had to work together and mastering both two-way and three-way pulls within days. Sitting next to one of the pull-bars, Rita would look up at her mother, Borie, who was asleep in a nest on top of a tall climbing frame. She’d climb up all the way to poke Borie in her ribs until she would come down with her. Rita would head for the apparatus, all the while looking over her shoulder to make sure Mom was following. Sometimes we had the impression that the chimps had reached an agreement without us knowing how. Two of them would walk side by side out of the night building, which is quite a distance away, and together head straight for the apparatus, as if they knew exactly what they were going to do. Talk about shared intentionality!
The main point of the study was to see if the apes would compete or cooperate. Clearly, cooperation won big time. We saw some aggression but virtually no injuries. Most fights were low level, such as pulling at someone to drag him or her away from the apparatus, chasing someone off, or throwing sand. Individuals also tried to gain access by grooming one of the pullers until this individual allowed them to take their spot. Cooperation at the apparatus went on almost nonstop, resulting in a total of 3,565 joint pulls.42 Freeloaders were avoided and occasionally punished for their activities, while overly competitive individuals quickly found out how unpopular their behavior made them. The experiment was conducted over many months, affording plenty of time for all the chimps to learn that tolerance paid off in terms of finding partners to work with. In the end, we found proof in the pudding that chimpanzees are highly cooperative. They have no trouble whatsoever regulating and dampening strife for the sake of achieving shared outcomes.
One possible reason that the behavior we observed was more in line with what is known from the natural habitat may be our colony’s background: by the time we tested them, our chimps had lived together for almost four decades. This is a long time by any standard, resulting in an unusually well-integrated group. But when we recently tested a newly formed group, in which many individuals had known one another for only a few years, we found the same high level of cooperation and low level of aggression. In other words, chimpanzees are generally good at conflict management for the sake of cooperation.
The current reputation of chimpanzees as violent and belligerent—“demonic” even—is almost entirely based on the way they treat members of neighboring groups in the wild: they occasionally carry out brutal attacks over territory. This fact has tainted their image, even though lethal combat is so rare that it took decades for scientists to agree on its occurrence. The rate of fatalities at any given field site is on average once every seven years.43 Moreover, it is not as if this behavior sets chimpanzees apart from ourselves. So why is it used as an argument against their cooperative nature, whereas in our own species intergroup warfare is rightly viewed as a collective enterprise? The same holds for chimpanzees—they almost never attack neighbors on their own. It is time for us to see them for what they are: talented team players who have no trouble suppressing conflicts within their group.
A recent experiment at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago confirmed their cooperative skills. Scientists let a group of chimpanzees fish with dipsticks for ketchup that was stored in the holes of an artificial “termite” mound. At the beginning of the experiment, there were enough holes for all members to feed independently, but then the number of holes was reduced by one each day, until there were very few left. Since each hole was monopolizable, it was thought that the chimps would compete and squabble over access to the dwindling resource. But nothing of the kind happened. They adjusted to their new situation by doing the exact opposite: they peacefully gathered around the remaining holes—usually two at a time, sometimes in trios—dipping their sticks into them in alternation, each chimp politely awaiting his or her turn. Instead of a rise in conflict, all the scientists observed was sharing and turn taking.44
When two or more intelligent, cooperative species meet around food resources, the outcome may also be cooperation rather than competition. Each species knows how to take advantage of the other. Fishing cooperatives, in which humans and cetaceans (whales and dolphins) work together, are probably thousands of years old, having been reported from Australia and India to the Mediterranean and Brazil. In South America they operate on the mud shores of lagoons. Fishermen announce their arrival by slapping the water, upon which bottlenose dolphins emerge to herd mullet toward them. The fishers wait for a signal from the dolphins, such as a distinctive type of dive, to throw their nets. Dolphins also do such herding among themselves, but here they drive the fish toward the fishermen’s nets. The men know their dolphin partners individually, having named them after famous politicians and soccer players.
Even more spectacular are the cooperatives between humans and killer whales. When whaling still occurred around Twofold Bay, in Australia, orcas would approach the whaling station to perform conspicuous breaching and lobtailing that served to announce the arrival of a humpback whale. They would herd the large whale into shallow waters close to a whaling vessel, allowing the whalers to harpoon the harassed leviathan. Once the whale was killed, the orcas would be given one day to consume their preferred delicacy—its tongue and lips—after which the whalers would collect their prize. Here too humans gave names to their preferred orca partners and recognized the tit-for-tat that is the foundation of all cooperation, human as well as animal.45