Recognising that animals are intelligent beings with inner lives, emotions—even personalities—has a troubled place in the history of ethology, the study of animal behaviour. For most pet owners, these things will seem self-evident, but ethologists have long been hostile to the idea of anthropomorphising animals by attributing human characteristics to them. The tide is turning, though, and on the back of decades-long careers, scientists such as Frans de Waal, Marc Bekoff, and Carl Safina have become well-known public voices breaking down this outdated taboo. In preparation of reviewing Safina’s new book Becoming Wild, I decided I should first read his bestseller Beyond Words. I have to issue an apology here: courtesy of the publisher Henry Holt I have had a review copy of this book for several years that gathered dust until now. And that was entirely my loss, as Beyond Words turned out to be a beautiful, moving book.
Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel, written by Carl Safina, published in Europe by Souvenir Press in September 2016 (hardback, 480 pages)
A plain summary of this book could run something like this: a large book in four parts in which ecologist Carl Safina delves into the inner worlds of elephants, wolves, and orcas, with frequent comparisons to other animals. This is based on interviews with biologists, time spent with them in the field observing their study animals, and close reading of both the books they wrote and the primary scientific literature. In Africa, he speaks to Iain Douglas-Hamilton and Amboseli Elephant Research Project leader Cynthia Moss. In Yellowstone National Park he spends time with long-term wolf-watchers Laurie Lyman, Doug McLaughlin, and Rick McIntyre. The latter has since started chronicling the lives of Yellowstone’s alpha wolves in a yet-to-be-completed trilogy. And on the Pacific coast between the USA and Canada he accompanies Ken Balcomb who has dedicated his life to observing orcas, while listening closely to Erich Hoyt, Alexandra Morton, Denise Herzing, and Diana Reiss.
This summary would tell you of the long-term studies and numerous observations that have revealed so much. How elephants in a herd defer to the leadership of a matriarch, who is a walking memory bank of valuable knowledge on e.g. the location of food and water holes in times of famine and drought. How they show empathy by caring for their wounded and sick, even grieving their dead, paying close attention to bones long after the death of their owner. How they communicate, using infrasound to cover long distances, and how the slaughter for ivory causes life-long havoc by destroying family structures.
The wolves reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park have revealed how the different alpha males and females have their own personalities, some ruling their pack calmly, others tyrannically. These are clever carnivores who outsmart competitors threatening their pups, and cooperate in a complex fashion to bring down large prey. Here, too, human hunters killing wolves causes collateral damage that reverberates down the social hierarchy, breaking up and reshuffling packs, often costing more lives.
“Not assuming that other animals have thoughts and feelings was a good start for a new science. Insisting they did not was bad science.”
And killer whales? These highly social and long-lived marine mammals live in pods that, like other cetaceans, show what can only be called culture. Such as their exceptional dietary specialisation that is taught to youngsters. These echo-locating predators show refined, cooperative hunting techniques and are intensely social, mothers contributing to the survival of their children and grandchildren well after menopause. Just as elephants and wolves, they recognize other individuals after prolonged periods of separation (and show it too). As told elsewhere, we learned much of this the hard way by catching killer whales for display in marine theme parks. Suffice to say that breaking up families and isolating individuals in small pools has turned out to be extremely traumatising.
But this way of reviewing the book would neglect much of what makes it such an exceptional read. And I am not talking about all the other intelligent beings populating these pages: the primates, dogs, dolphins, and birds.
Take the much-needed history lesson of why scientists have been so shy to grant animals a measure of agency and intelligence: the mere mention of it could kill your academic career. In Mama’s Last Hug, Frans de Waal called this resistance to anthropomorphising “anthropodenial”. Safina agrees that we have taken it to the other extreme: “Not assuming that other animals have thoughts and feelings was a good start for a new science. Insisting they did not was bad science” (p. 27). Notably, though, where De Waal makes a careful distinction between emotions and feelings, Safina uses these two words interchangeably.
“Peel back the skin and underneath we find similarities everywhere […] and why would we expect anything else? We know that evolution excels at reusing, repurposing, and rejiggling existing structures and processes.”
Or what of the gentle skewering of academic concepts such as “theory of mind”, the realisation that others have their own motivations and desires? Those who continue to deny animals this should get out more, for they show “that many humans lack a theory of mind for non-humans” (p. 253). In Safina’s hands, the mirror mark test, that supposed litmus test of self-awareness, looks daft. Animals failing to recognize their own reflection only show that they do not understand reflection, without it, well, reflecting on self-awareness. In the wild, both self-awareness and gauging another’s state of mind are often a matter of life or death.
Probably one of the most convincing threads that runs through this book, and to which Safina returns frequently, is that of evolutionary legacy. Consciousness, emotion—the mental traits that we long thought as uniquely human—have deep roots. Peel back the skin and underneath we find similarities everywhere: the same neurological circuits, the same hormones, the same physiological pathways. And why would we expect anything else? We know that evolution excels at reusing, repurposing, and rejiggling existing structures and processes.
So, he happily goes against the grain and speculates about animals’ mental experience in this book, though always with one eye on evidence, logic, and science. (He helpfully bundles up the more unbelievable ones on cetaceans in a chapter called “Woo-Woo”.) To really see animals not for what, but for who they are, observations outside of the artificial environments of laboratories and captive enclosures are vital. Consequently, as Safina admits, much of what he relates here is anecdotal. As many sceptical scientists, myself included, like to say: “the plural of anecdote is not data”. But the bin in his mind labelled “unlikely stories” is getting cluttered. Anecdotes can only keep piling up for so long before you can no longer ignore them.
“[T]his book would not have the impact it has had if it was not for the writing. It is easy to see why Safina’s oeuvre has garnered literary awards.”
Finally, this book would not have the impact it has had if it was not for the writing. It is easy to see why Safina’s oeuvre has garnered literary awards. His many, short chapters are threaded together suspensefully. His wordplay sometimes borders on brilliant: when observing our shared evolutionary history and legacy: “beneath the skin, kin” (p. 324); when pondering our endless cruelty towards animals: “the next step beyond human civilization: humane civilization” (p. 411). And if the many stories do not already move you, I will leave you with a quote that choked me up, where he makes the point that the study of animal behaviour is not a mere “boutique endeavour”:
“Anyone can read about how much we are losing. All the animals that human parents paint on nursery room walls, all the creatures depicted in paintings of Noah’s ark, are actually in mortal trouble now. Their flood is us. What I’ve tried to show is how other animals experience the lives they so energetically and so determinedly cling to. I wanted to know who these creatures are. Now we may feel, beneath our ribs, why they must live.” (p. 411)
Beyond Words is a heartfelt gem of a book. Whether you are fascinated by the lives of charismatic megafauna such as elephants, wolves, or killer whales, or have an interest in animal behaviour, pick up this book. It is never too late to read a bestseller that you have ignored so far.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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“Mama’s Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Teach Us about Ourselves”, written by Frans de Waal, published in Europe by Granta Books in March 2019 (hardback, 348 pages)
The book opens with the final meeting between the titular Mama, an old chimpanzee matriarch on her deathbed at Burgers Zoo in the Netherlands, and Dutch biologist Jan van Hooff, whom she had known for some 40 years. The video clip shows a touching moment of cross-species affection as Mama wakes up and suddenly recognizes Jan, hugging him. (As an aside, I do feel the book provides useful context you might not get from just watching it – most people, myself included, would not be able to interpret chimpanzee behaviour properly.)
Should we be surprised by Mama’s capability to recall Jan? De Waal is strongly of the opinion that the school of behaviourism pioneered by the likes of B.F. Skinner and others has cast a long shadow over the study of animal behaviour. They see animals merely as stimulus-response machines driven by instincts and simple learning, and De Waal’s previous book Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? was a passionate riposte to this mode of thinking. Mama’s Last Hug is the companion to that book, dealing with emotions, which De Waal considers fully integrated with cognition and intelligence (see also Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain).
Before we proceed there is an important distinction to be made that De Waal returns to throughout the book. Emotions and feelings are not the same things, though they are often conflated in day-to-day speech. Emotions are bodily and mental states (fear, anger, desire) that drive behaviour. They show as facial expressions, gestures, odours, or changes in skin colour or vocal timbre. Feelings are subjective internal states only known to those who have them. Or as De Waal poetically puts it: “We show our emotions, but we talk about our feelings”. Emotions, therefore, can be observed and measured in the wild or in experimental settings. Feelings… well, making claims on what animals feel is a bridge too far even for De Waal. He thinks it is likely animals related to us have similar feelings, but he also recognises that this is pure conjecture for the moment.
“Emotions and feelings are not the same things […]: “We show our emotions, but we talk about our feelings””
And with that, De Waal launches into his book. In seven chapters he wanders widely, discussing his own and other’s research on primates and other animals; recounting engaging anecdotes of observations made in the wild or in captivity; and weaving in history lessons, explaining how the academic landscape of ethology (the study of animal behaviour) started, how it developed, and what has changed over the many decades of his own research career.
In passing, he deals with a range of emotions. Grief is particularly well publicised for elephants (see How Animals Grieve). Laughing and smiling are argued by Van Hooff to express different emotions in primates, but to have grown closer and often blend in humans. Empathy (sensitivity to another’s emotions) is widely documented in primates, where group members regularly comfort each other (see also De Waal’s earlier book The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society). And the list goes on: disgust, shame, guilt, pride, hope, wrath, forgiveness, gratitude, envy… De Waal shows how all of these have been observed primates and other mammals (see also Animal Wise: How We Know Animals Think and Feel). And where researchers have cared to look, some also show up in birds and fish (see Gifts of the Crow: How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans and What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins).
This facet of the book is incredibly engaging and entertaining. But if I had to criticise something, it feels somewhat unstructured. De Waal wades in enthusiastically as there is so much to tell. He threads together one example and one emotion after another. But is this book more than just a collection of case studies? Yes, it is, but upon gathering my thoughts for this review I found I had to read between the lines to uncover what seems to be one of the main arguments. The blurb on the dustjacket mentions it quite prominently, but De Waal does not bring it up until halfway the book, on page 165. Emotions, he proposes, are like organs. Each one of them is vital and we share them with all other mammals.
“Emotions, [De Waal] proposes, are like organs. Each one of them is vital and we share them with all other mammals. What this boils down to is a reversal of the burden of proof.”
What this boils down to is a reversal of the burden of proof. Rather than the default assumption of no animal emotions, we should assume that animals have emotions – those who wish to make the case they do not should be backing up that claim with evidence. Some may find this controversial, but from an evolutionary standpoint, it makes sense.
“Just look how similar our bodies are!”, exclaims De Waal. The musculature of primate and human faces – so important in emotional expression – is indistinguishable. When we eat something disgusting, both monkeys and humans pull the same face and the same brain area is active. The same antidepressants that work in humans can liven up bored fish, while rats and humans (and their brains) respond the same to drugs that induce a euphoric state. And remember all the hoopla around mirror neurons? They were discovered in macaques. (See also Mirrors in the Brain: How Our Minds Share Actions and Emotions and The Myth of Mirror Neurons: The Real Neuroscience of Communication and Cognition for a critique). De Waal mentions Sapolsky’s point that evolution strapped human emotions onto ancient emotions shared with other animals (see Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst). All of these examples reiterate the deep shared roots of the vertebrate neurological system, and make the presence of animal emotions the more parsimonious explanation.
It is not anthropomorphism we should worry about, but what De Waal calls anthropodenial. To assume that we are the only animals to experience emotions denies us our animal roots, reeks of human exceptionalism, and requires a belief in a unique cognitive spark, “a pretzel-like twist rather than the usual slow and smooth course of evolution […] only because science has neglected what animals are capable of.”
“It is not anthropomorphism we should worry about, but what De Waal calls anthropodenial. […] science has neglected what animals are capable of.”
This is another aspect of the book I thoroughly enjoyed: De Waal is outspoken. He rails against gratuitous anthropomorphism in the popular press, against dogmatic sociobiological theories that only recognise selfish motives behind actions, against colleagues who are so scared of anthropomorphism they deny animals all emotions, against the mechanistic view of behaviourism, against the cultural and religious prejudices that seek to separate mind and body, against moral philosophers who ignore emotions in their theories, against those who object to behavioural research on animals as cruel and unnecessary. If I make him sound like an angry man, no, his disagreements are always reasonable and well-argued, but he has his opinions and is not afraid to voice them.
So, what does Mama’s Last Hug teach us about ourselves? That we are far less unique and share far more with our animal relatives than we think. That there are important lessons to be drawn on how we treat animals. And that we tell ourselves misleading stories about our past. He singles out Richard Wrangham and Steven Pinker who would have us believe we have always been a violent rather than a peaceful species (see Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence, my review of The Goodness Paradox: How Evolution Made Us Both More and Less Violent, and The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined). As I also mentioned in my review of The Creative Spark: How Imagination Made Humans Exceptional, the recent decline in violence might be true, but the archaeological evidence does not support a deep history of perpetual warfare.
De Waal brings a wealth of experience to the table and his writing is entertaining, stimulating, and thought-provoking. It makes Mama’s Last Hug a wonderful induction into the world of animal and human emotions.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however. You can support this blog using below affiliate links, as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases:
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“The Enlightened Gene: Biology, Buddhism, and the Convergence That Explains the World“, written by Arri Eisen and Yungdrung Konchok, published by ForeEdge Books (a University Press of New England imprint) in November 2017 (hardback, 260 pages)
Written primarily from the perspective of Eisen, with reflections by Kongchok sprinkled throughout the text, The Enlightened Gene reflects on what science can learn from Buddhism and vice versa. We read how the monks and nuns are amazed when learning more about cells, pondering whether or not they should be considered sentient. The way slime moulds organise in larger multicellular structures in times of food shortage and sacrifice part of the colony to ensure survival of the rest resonates strongly with the Buddhist concept of Samsara. This is the continuous cycle of birth, sickness, death, and rebirth that places importance on the virtues of self-sacrifice and altruism. And from this point of view, it reiterates that many things in biology are as much about death as they are about life, whether it is programmed cell death during embryonic development, the continuous turnover of all sorts of cells in a body, or the realisation that every cell division is, in essence, a form of sacrifice from the point of view of the parent cell.
Similarly, the dependency of life forms on each other is a cornerstone of both ecology and Buddhism. Where many ecologists bemoan how the industrialised world is destroying ecosystems worldwide, Buddhist adherence to values of compassion and empathy offer answers on how to live a meaningful life that science cannot necessarily provide. In turn, biology supplies findings to suggest that we are naturally inclined to these values. This includes findings from behavioural biology on empathy in a wide range of animals, notably by Frans de Waal and collaborators (see e.g. The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society), and from neuroscience, especially the slightly hyped discovery of mirror neurons (see Mirrors in the Brain: How Our Minds Share Actions and Emotions). These neurons fire both when an animal acts and when it observes the same action performed by another animal, and were quickly touted as the neurological basis of empathy in humans (but see The Myth of Mirror Neurons: The Real Neuroscience of Communication and Cognition for a critique of this).
“many things in biology are as much about death as they are about life”
And The Enlightened Gene unsurprisingly spends many pages on recent discoveries in the fields of epigenetics and the microbiome. Epigenetics studies heritable changes in an organism’s phenotype due to changes in gene expression or activity rather than gene sequence (see Epigenetics: How Environment Shapes Our Genes, The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology is Rewriting Our Understanding of Genetics, Disease and Inheritance, and Lamarck’s Revenge: How Epigenetics Is Revolutionizing Our Understanding of Evolution’s Past and Present for more). Epigenetics provides a mechanism for past stresses and hardships to influence the present, which resonates with the Buddhist concept of karma. The microbiome is the community of microorganisms living in and on us (see Welcome to the Microbiome: Getting to Know the Trillions of Bacteria and Other Microbes In, On, and Around You and I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life for readable introductions) and have been implicated in the current epidemic of “Western” diseases such as diabetes, obesity, cancer, autoimmune diseases, Alzheimer’s etc. (see The Human Superorganism: How the Microbiome Is Revolutionizing the Pursuit of a Healthy Life and 10% Human: How Your Body’s Microbes Hold the Key to Health and Happiness for more specifically on that link). There is currently an active field of research on the potentially beneficial effects of the Buddhist practices of mindfulness and meditation on the triad of immune system, nervous system, and microbiome.
Eisen is not the first biologist to cosy up to Buddhism, but the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative described here is eye-opening and makes for a remarkable book. In chronicling his teaching experience, Eisen does not necessarily provide an exhaustive overview of the commonalities between biology and Buddhism (Barash’s Buddhist Biology: Ancient Eastern Wisdom Meets Modern Western Science might), and he acknowledges these are more philosophical than scientific or utilitarian. But it goes to show that, if both sides are willing and open-minded, there can be a dialogue between science and religion.
“Eisen is not the first biologist to cozy up to Buddhism”
Coming from me, that is a huge compliment. If you catch me on a good day, I might settle for Gould’s view of non-overlapping magisteria, with science and religion each representing different areas of inquiry, facts vs. values (see his essay in Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life). But mostly I veer towards militant atheism and have Dawkins’s The God Delusion happily rubbing shoulders on my bookshelf with Gingras’s Science and Religion: An Impossible Dialogue. I maintain that the dogmatic outlook of most religions is utterly incompatible with evidence-based science, and this book has not changed my mind. Often, rapprochements of religion towards science are just a cheap ploy to push a religious agenda, as exemplified through that monstrosity of Intelligent Design. That makes the genuine and heartfelt initiative described here all the more noteworthy. Even Eisen has to admit in his last chapter that, where religions are concerned, Buddhism seems to be an outlier (Barash notes this too in Buddhist Biology). In that sense, my impression of Buddhism is more that of a spiritual movement than that of a typical monotheistic religion.
Of course, I know that in my militant atheism I get worked up about the extremes of religion and that there is plenty of room for more moderate outlooks – plenty of scientists were, and are, religious after all. I like to think of myself as open-minded, but not so open-minded that my brain falls out (I will at every turn oppose the pseudoscientific hogwash that unfortunately accompanies most religious and spiritual movements). The Enlightened Gene is a welcome foray into such open-minded inquiry, and Eisen has managed to instil in me a renewed sense of respect for Buddhism. Don’t expect me to sign up with the nearest temple, but this book was never about converting people in the first place.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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