Machiavellian prototypical political propensities
Ape tools, plans, foresight, intentionality, premeditation, impartiality
Frans De Waal wrote:
[Mama’s Last Hug]
Today we dare speak of animal mental life only after a century of experiments on symbolic communication, mirror self-recognition, tool use, planning for the future, and adoption of another’s viewpoint. These studies have blown big drafty holes in the wall that supposedly separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom …
… We have quite a bit of scientific evidence for future orientation in primates, based on how they plan their travels or prepare tools for a task, but we rarely consider foresight connected to life and death. For obvious reasons, we lack experiments on this ability. If we call awareness of one’s own demise a sense of mortality—for the existence of which we have no evidence outside our own species—we may call Lassie’s recognition that Luke won’t return a sense of finality …
… A nine-year-old wild chimpanzee was happily smashing nuts with stones using a common hammer-and-anvil technique. One by one, he’d put the tough palm nuts on the flat surface of a large stone while holding a smaller one in his other hand, then hit them with it until they cracked. In the forest, it is not easy to find the right combination of stones for this task. The male’s mother glanced at his perfect tools before walking up and grooming him. This is often an invitation for return grooming, so when she finished, she stood there waiting for him to spin around and groom her. Doing so, he left his stones unattended, and within a few seconds his mom reached over and snatched them. It looked intentional, as if her approach and brief grooming had been a way to distract him. The very moment she collected his tools, you could hear and see her softly laugh to herself, delighted that her little scheme had worked …
… In Japan, Shinya Yamamoto conducted a test in which chimps could help each other, but only if they’d adopt the other’s perspective. His results were similar to the anecdotes recounted above about chimps understanding when others needed food or water, or were about to make a stupid move on a snake. Yamamoto brought this kind of insightful assistance under experimental control. He gave an ape two ways to obtain orange juice: she could use a rake to bring a container close, or she could use a straw to suck juice through. But she didn’t have either a rake or a straw available. Next to her, in a separate area, sat another chimp who had a whole set of tools. After taking one look at her problem, he’d pick out the right tool for the task and hand it to her through a small window. If he had been unable to see her situation, however, he’d pick tools at random, indicating that he had no idea what she needed. So chimps not only readily assist others but are capable of taking their specific needs into account. We still know little about these capacities, but clearly apes are not nearly as selfish as assumed …
… It is well established that apes and some large-brained birds do not live purely in the present. Wild chimpanzees plan ahead by picking up tools hours before they arrive at the termite hill or beehive where they will use these implements. While collecting them, they must know where they are going. Similar planning has been demonstrated in primates and corvids, showing they may ignore immediate gratification to reap future benefits. Given a choice, apes will forgo a juicy grape placed right next to a tool that they can use only hours later for a better reward. This takes self-control. Planning is harder to prove in the social domain, even if the political battles among male chimpanzees are suggestive. When a young adult male challenges the established boss, he may lose about every confrontation and sustain frequent injuries. Yet he will keep going day after day without any immediate rewards. Only months later he may finally have a breakthrough and get support from others who help him topple his adversary. And even then, as was the case with Nikkie, the young male may still meet resistance before he is fully accepted. It may take years before his position is truly secure. Was this his plan all along? And if not, why go through this hell? It is hard to watch these strategies, as I have done so many times in my career, and not think that they are built on hope …
… Ever since the incident at Burgers Zoo, I have looked at the old male, Yeroen, as a murderer. He was the most calculating chimp I have known, a true Machiavellian. He was a great leader so long as he was firmly in the saddle, but became ruthless if anyone stood in his way. I’m sure he was behind the attack on Luit, using the younger male as a pawn. To call an animal a “murderer,” however, is of course not something we typically do, because the term implies premeditation …
… [W]hen it comes to chimpanzees, the word I hear most often from those who have witnessed assaults on their own kind is how “intentional” their behavior looked. They speak in shocked tones of the extreme brutality, such as attackers who drink the blood of their victims or deliberately try to twist out a leg. Chimps seem determined to terminate the other’s life, and they keep going until this goal is achieved. Reportedly they often return to the bloody scene of the “crime” days later, perhaps to verify the effectiveness of their handiwork and make sure of their rival’s demise. Finding the body of their victim where they left it, they show no surprise or alarm, which can only mean they expected to see it …
… We shouldn’t be too surprised by intentional killing as predators do it all the time to different species than their own, which is why we don’t call it murder. A predator often doesn’t relent until the prey’s last breath. When a tiger suffocates a massive gaur — an Indian bison — by clamping its jaws around its throat; when an eagle drags a mountain goat off a cliff so that it falls to its death; or when a crocodile drowns a zebra in the river with a powerful “death roll,” they kill their prey deliberately. If the prey shows any sign of life, the predator will resume its assault. Chimpanzees bring the same kind of intentionality to killing their own kind, which is why I don’t feel the term murder is out of place …
… In my experience, the better the leader, the longer his reign will last, and the less likely it will end brutally. We don’t have good statistics on this, and I’m aware of exceptions, but generally a male who stays on top by terrorizing everyone else will reign for only a couple of years … With a bully for a leader, the group seems to wait for a challenger and eagerly support him if he stands a chance. In the wild, bully males are expelled or killed, like Goblin and Foudouko, whereas in captivity, they may have to be taken out of the colony for their own safety. Popular leaders, on the other hand, often stay in power for an extraordinarily long time. If a younger male challenges this kind of alpha, the group will side with the latter. For the females, there is nothing better than the stable leadership of an alpha male who protects them and guarantees a harmonious group life. This is the right environment to raise their young in, so females generally want to keep such a male in the saddle …
… If a good leader loses his position, he is rarely expelled. He may drop just a few notches on the ladder and then age gracefully within the group. He may also still enjoy quite a bit of influence behind the scenes. I have known one such male, Phineas, for many years. After his alpha position was usurped, he settled in third place and became the darling of the juveniles, romping around with them like a grandpa, as well as a popular grooming partner for all the females …
… Capuchins are remarkable monkeys, which became clear when it was discovered that they use stones to crack open nuts in the forest. They bring hammer stones and nuts from far away to rock outcrops that serve as anvils. Stone tool technology had been hailed as an extraordinary hominid achievement that we shared only with chimpanzees. Now the lithic club had to admit these little monkeys with prehensile tails. Relative to their cat-size bodies, capuchin brains are as large as those of chimpanzees, however, and they live extraordinarily long lives …
Having noticed that our monkeys got upset whenever their rewards fell short, we decided to take a closer look. This led to a relatively simple experiment that exploited the talent of capuchins for barter, which they do spontaneously. If you ever forget a screwdriver in their cage, you need only point at the tool and hold up a peanut, and they will hand it to you through the mesh. They are so fond of barter that they will even bring you a dried orange peel in exchange for a pebble, both useless items. More remarkable still, after they place the object in your palm, they may grab your fingers with their tiny hands to bend them inward, thus closing your hand around the object, as if saying, There you go, hold it tight! …
… Episodic memory must be at work when foraging wild chimpanzees visit about a dozen fruit-bearing trees each day. The forest has far too many trees for them to go about it randomly. Working in Taï National Park, in Ivory Coast, the Dutch primatologist Karline Janmaat found the apes to have an excellent recall of previous meals. They mostly checked trees from which they had eaten in previous years. If they ran into copious ripe fruit, they’d gorge on it while grunting contentedly, and made sure to return a few days later. Janmaat describes how the chimps would build their night nests en route to such trees and get up before dawn, something they normally hate to do because of the danger of meeting a leopard. Despite their deep-seated fear, the apes would set out on a long trek to a specific fig tree where they had recently eaten. Their goal was to beat the early fig rush by other animals, from squirrels to hornbills. Remarkably, the chimps would get up earlier for trees far from their nests than for those nearby, arriving at about the same time at both. This suggests calculation of travel time based on distance. All this makes Janmaat believe that Taï chimpanzees actively recall previous experiences in order to plan for a plentiful breakfast …
[Chimpanzee Politics]
But it was not only Luit's outward appearance and the way he bluffed that had changed, he also had adopted a brand-new policy. (The word policy is used here to denote a consistent social behavior with a view to achieving a certain aim, quite apart from whether this behavior was determined by innate tendencies, by experience and foresight, or both.) To begin with, Luit, assisted by Nikkie, followed a policy that led to Yeroen’s dethronement. As soon as this particular power takeover was behind him, Luit's social attitude altered totally. His new policy seemed to be aimed at a completely different objective, namely to stabilize his newly acquired position. He changed his attitude toward the adult females, toward Yeroen, and toward Nikkie.
Luit's new attitude toward the females was obvious from his behavior whenever serious quarrels broke out. For example, on one occasion a quarrel between Mama and Spin got out of hand and ended in biting and fighting. Numerous apes rushed up to the two warring females and joined in the fray. A huge knot of fighting, screaming apes rolled around on the sand, until Luit leapt in and literally beat them apart. He did not choose sides in the conflict, like the others; instead, anyone who continued to fight received a blow from him. I had never seen him act so impressively before. This particular incident took place in September 1976, only a few weeks after he had become leader. On other occasions he put a stop to serious conflicts less heavy-handedly. When Mama and Puist were locked in a fight he put his hands between them and simply forced the two large females apart. He then stood between them until they had stopped screaming.
Besides such impartial interventions Luit also intervened on behalf of one or other party. Once again, however, his policy changed. Instead of a winner-supporter, he became a loser-supporter. The term "loser-supporter" is used to describe a third individual who intervenes in a conflict on the side of the party who would otherwise have lost; for example, if Nikkie attacked Amber, Luit would intervene to help Amber chase Nikkie away. Without Luit’s assistance, Amber would never have beaten Nikkie. If Luit's interventions were purely arbitrary, he would be found to support losers about 50 percent of the time and winners the other 50 percent of the time. In fact, after his rise to power Luit began to show solidarity with the weaker party. Before, he had supported losers 35 percent of the time, but after his elevation the figure increased to 69 percent. The contrast between these two figures reflects the dramatic change in Luit's attitude. A year later Luit's support for losers had increased still further to 87 percent.
The Sources:
Frans De Waal, Mama's Last Hug : Animal and Human Emotions, Norton & Company 2019 [pp. 10, 33, 55, 68, 79, 107-108, 118, 119, 143]
Frans De Waal, Chimpanzee Politics, revised edition, John Hopkins University Press [1982] 1998
[MGH: Not unlike the big-brain magpie families rearing offspring in my back garden!]
Diagram source: C. Boehm, Moral Origins, Basic Books 2012
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