special issue – November 2008
research eu
European Commission
© Chris Herzfeld, Tua, Philadelphia Zoo
ISSN 1830-7981
the magazine of the european research area
research*eu is the European Union’s research magazine, written by independent professional journalists,
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edito
research*eu
Editor in chief
Michel Claessens
The value of life
What is it that distinguishes man from animals, or more accurately, from other animals?
Recent research, in particular from Europe, has shed interesting light on this longdebated question. This research tells us that culture, conceptualisation and reasoning
are not specific to humans. But while mankind’s animal side is unquestioned, the
humanity of animals is still to be defined. The pages of this special issue are not therefore to be read as an ode to ‘animal emancipation’. Such an attitude is as “ill informed”
as denying any intelligence to non-humans. Animals and mankind are, if not fellow creatures, at least partners
on Earth.
This special issue, however, does run counter to another strong societal current. Driven by commercial logic
and a tendency to reduce biological beings – animals in particular – to mere objects, humanity is also breeding
large numbers of chickens, calves and pigs in industrial conditions, reducing them to the status of consumer
gadgets. Can one expect a civilisation that is wasteful of the fruits of nature, from oil to biodiversity, to attach
proper value to life?
Michel Claessens
Editor in chief
Language version proofreaders
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Jean-Pierre Geets, Charlotte Lemaitre
Editorial coordination
Didier Buysse, Jean-Pierre Geets
Journalists
Didier Buysse, Delphine d’Hoop,
Marie-Françoise Lefèvre,
Christine Rugemer, Julie Van Rossom
With special thanks to Patrice Christmann
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Andrea Broom (EN), Martin Clissold (EN),
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Christine Rugemer
Web version
Charlotte Lemaitre
Dominique Carlier
The opinions expressed in this editorial and in the articles in this
issue do not necessarily represent the views of the European Commission.
Cover page
Tua, orang-outan from the
Philadelphia Zoo
© Chris Herzfeld, Tua, Philadelphia Zoo
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
4 An increasingly blurred borderline
THOUGHT
18 What animals cannot conceive
Various European research teams are
becoming interested in abstract language,
embodiment, the processing of signs and
the specific asymmetry of the human brain.
20 In brief
5
man and beast
HISTORY
6 Evolving divides
Are humans superior to animals? Or are they
animals like the rest? A glance at the shifting
conceptions of western history.
21
COGNITION
INTERVIEW
8 Strategies of life
Meeting with philosopher Dominique
Lestel, author of les origines animales de
la culture (The animal origins of culture)
and other works.
10 In brief
aptitudes & attitudes
22 No monopoly on thought
Might animals have powers of abstraction
and be capable of mental operations?
Different viewpoints on these aptitudes.
SOCIALISATION
24 Oneself and others
We zoom in on socialization, life in couples
and family life, as well as the “group effect”
noted in certain species.
IMITATION
11
frontier
LANGUAGE
16 How word came to us
Why is language specific to human beings?
We examine the Hand to mouth and Calacei
projects.
ZOONOSES
34 Fragile species barrier
Over 60 % of the microbes at the root of
human infectious diseases can pass from
animals to man. The European Med-Vet-Net
network is devoted to preventing and
controlling these zoonoses.
ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION
35 Contentious alter of progress
Can we do without animal experiments?
Alternative methods exist, and Europe
has decided to support them.
INTERVIEW
36 Ethics for animals?
Interview with Jean-Baptiste Jeangène
Vilmer, author of Ethique animale (Animal
ethics): a work that brings together law,
philosophy, history and examples of
practice in the treatment of animals.
38 In brief
COMMUNICATION
27 The meaning of sounds
Animals communicate by gestures, cries,
looks – but also by sounds that can be
surprisingly complex.
28 In brief
GENETICS
14 The 1% that changes everything
The sequencing of the human and
chimpanzee genomes offers new avenues
to researchers in the European PKB 140404
project.
32 “Animal production is the opposite
of husbandry”
Jocelyne Porcher studies suffering, both of
humans and animals, in livestock farming.
26 Who’s aping whom?
Mimicry, the key to learning, analysed by
researchers from the Edici European project.
PALEONTOLOGY
12 Tracking our origins
The discovery of Toumaï (7 million-year-old)
in Chad, has overturned the previously
accepted chronology of the Homo genus –
and palaeontologists can expect further
surprises.
PORTRAIT
39
imagination
WESTERN WORLD
40 The bear and the wolf
The wanderings of two familiar figures.
ELSEWHERE
42 Black Africa’s anima
Examples in pictures.
ETHOLOGY
29
usage & abusage
44 The reindeer system
COHABITATION
30 Cunning canines…
Dogs are past masters in the art of
understanding human communication,
thanks to a long cohabitation.
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
3
I
n a posthumous book(1), philosopher Jacques
Derrida recounts a personal experience. Being
naked, he suddenly catches sight of his cat
staring at him. He feels very ill at ease, both
ashamed of his nudity and ashamed of this
sense of shame. “Ashamed of what, and naked
to whom? Why do I allow myself be overcome
with shame? And why this shame that blushes
at being ashamed? In front of the cat which is
looking at me naked, should I be unashamed
like an animal that has no longer any sense of its
nudity? Or on the contrary, should I be ashamed
like a man who has retained a sense of nudity?
What does this make me? Who am I? Whom can
I ask, if not someone else? The cat, perhaps?”
These questions may seem strange. They
clearly reflect, however, the questions on the
status of the self and the other which, from time
immemorial and in every situation, have traversed the interpenetration of what is called
humanity and ‘animality’, culture and nature,
reason and instinct.
What is the current situation here in the
Western world? Several recent European scientific projects have, it seems, seriously dented traditional ideas of ‘human specificity’. Palaeontologists
and ethologists now refer to human primates and
non-human primates. People are now daring to
pronounce the words ‘intelligence’, ‘language’,
‘self-awareness’, ‘socialisation’, ‘individuality’, ‘suffering’ and ‘rights’ in relation to animals.
Geneticists find themselves confronted with
DNA codes that are so indistinctive, despite
being from animals that look so dissimilar, that it
becomes difficult to deny the commonality of
living animals. Perhaps we are beginning to
understand – or admit – that humans and animals
have for a long time shared a common destiny
and that we are no more than a piece of that
primitive life in which we are also mirrored.
4
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
© Patrick Ageneau/
An increasingly blurred
borderline
But what is this primitive life becoming?
Looking on the larger scale of the world, which
it is becoming impossible to ignore – the situation is hardly cause for rejoicing. The IUCN
(International Union for the Conservation of
Nature), which keeps the world register of the
state of health of animals and plants based on
data supplied by thousands of scientists and
conservationists the world over, is producing
more and more admonitory reports every year.
In 2007 the organisation listed 41 415 species,
16 306 of which are threatened with extinction
(compared with 16 118 one year before). The
total number of extinct species reached the figure of 795 and another 65 exist only in captivity.
One mammal in four, one bird in eight, onethird of all amphibians and 70 % of all plants in
the IUCN’s ‘red list’ of most fragile beings are
endangered.
The one species which is not in the process of
disappearing is humans. The global population
has risen from about 1.65 billion in 1900 to 6.3 billion today, and the United Nations expects this
figure to reach 9 billion in 50 years. Is this something to rejoice?
Christine Rugemer
(1) Jacques Derrida, L’animal que donc je suis, Galilée, Paris, 2006.
The spirit of Mimi and the python – Painting on
eucalyptus bark by Peter Nambarlambarl –
Australia, mid 20th century. Musée des
Confluences, Lyon (FR).
man and beast
“Animals, whom we have made
our slaves, we do not like to consider
our equal.”
Charles Darwin
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
5
HISTORY
Evolving divides
What do humans and animals share?
And what sets them apart? Over the centuries,
attitudes towards these two questions have
varied. The perceived gap between the species
at times widened and at times narrowed,
before their disquieting proximity and the
reality of animal intelligence and cultures
was finally acknowledged. We take a look back
at the nature of these changes.
W
hat is humanity’s position within the living world? The question is not insignificant; it is
asked in all civilizations. In
ancient Greece, philosophers were already
divided into two camps. There were the ‘dualists’, who believed in an ontological separation between the species, and the ‘continuists’
who did not wish to place humans and animals in opposition. Among the former, the
Stoics believed that humans possessed the
superiority of reason while animals drew on
instinct alone. The latter camp included most
notably Aristotle, who believed that the living
world as a whole possessed a psyche.(1) This
theory accounted for a hierarchical continuum
extending from plants to humans, by way of
animals. Capable of sensation, desire and
movement, animals would nevertheless be
inferior to humans who possessed the prerogative of thought.
Thought immediately constitutes the dividing
line. Montaigne, in the 16th century, shed his
own light on the concept. He marvelled at the
song of the blackbird and the way the spider
wove its web, asserting that there were at
times more differences between two people
than between a person and an animal. Animals
could reason, even engage in discourse and
learn. To his mind, human superiority seemed
overrated. However, only humans can arrive at
6
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
universal notions through observations of the
singular – in other words, engage in intellectual activities.
From Descartes to Darwin
But Descartes (1596–1650) soon occupied
centre stage and his view that relegated the
animal to the lower echelons dominated for
a long time. This was the time of the first
automatons, the anthropomorphic machines
activated by hydraulic systems, and it was in
such terms that the philosopher saw the animal-machine: mechanisms reduced to a body
and in the service of humanity who is possessed of reason. “What seems to me a very
strong argument to prove that the reason animals do not speak as we do is not that they
lack the organs but that they have no
thoughts,” he wrote. Kant and Heidegger
shared this view, as did the generations of
human beings for whom the animal object
represents an instrument in their everyday life,
for their profession or for pleasure. (2)
We had to wait for Darwin (3) before this
conception was swept aside. The main turning
point came with the publication of his reference work on evolution, The Origin of Species
(1859), in which he argued that living species
have a common origin, and that evolution is
governed by the mechanism of natural selection. Darwin, a Malthusian, based his theories
on painstaking observations made during his
famous trip, lasting nearly five years, on board
The Beagle; during which he visited the Cape
Verde Islands, the coast of South America, the
Galapagos Islands, Australia and Tasmania.
The observations were recorded in his Journal
of researches. Darwin saw competition as the
motor for survival (“It is not the strongest of
the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change”).
He then published Descent of Man in which
he shows the proximity of human and animal
species via an ancestor linked to the
catarrhine monkeys. (4)
A giant step in humanity’s thoughts on life
had been taken. It was not until much later
that genetics revealed that we share 99 % of
our genes with chimpanzees. Yet this has not
prevented creationist movements – who see
life as governed by a superior causality and
goal that is attributable to an ‘intelligent
design’ – from today contesting Darwinism.
Psychologists and ethologists
Darwin inspired passionate interest among
psychologists who, during the 20th century,
favoured laboratory observations. The most
famous experiment is no doubt the one concerning Pavlov’s dogs. Salivation was provoked when the dogs were shown food but
when this stimulus was replaced by a visual or
acoustic signal, the same salivation was triggered. This provided researchers with a means
of testing the sensorial activities of animals.
For behavioural psychologists, the favoured
‘guinea pigs’ were white rats presented with
labyrinths. These experiments were not
designed to speculate on animal consciousness
but to observe behaviour under controlled conditions, some of which were decidedly cruel.
The Cartesian animal-machine reacting to
stimuli and without any capacity to take its
own initiative remained very much present.
In the 1930s, the first ethologists returned to
the study of the natural environment, viewing
the animal as a living being. At his house in
Altenberg, on the banks of the Danube and
surrounded by birds, the Austrian Konrad
Lorenz (winner of the Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine in 1973) led the field in
these observations. The jackdaw Tschok and
the goose Martina became stars. It is the
behaviour of the latter that his ‘master’ had to
HISTORY
© GNU FDL
thank for one of his most famous theories.
Lorenz watched the wild goose hatch, waiting
a while before entrusting it to one of his
domestic geese and noticed that the gosling
rejected this unknown guardian and preferred
to follow him. His theory of imprinting, that is
© Courtesy of the Konrad Lorenz Archive, Altenberg
Konrad Lorenz
and his geese, in 1967.
Amblyrynchus Demarlii,
plate of a reptile
taken from The zoology
of the voyage of H.M.S.
Beagle, 1843.
Reproduced with permission
from John van Wyhe ed.,
The Complete Work of Charles
Darwin Online
(http://darwin-online.org.uk/)
René Descartes
painted by Frans Hals.
the existence of a very brief learning period
during which animals attach themselves to the
first object they see at birth, was published in
1927. Together with his friend, the Dutchman
Niko Tinbergen, Lorenz also studied the concept of instinct by studying innate behaviour.
Their contemporary, Estonian zoologist
Jacob von Uexhüll (1864–1944), marked a new
stage when he turned his attention more to the
significance of behaviour than its causes. He
analysed the notion of Umwelt, the ‘surrounding
world’ experienced by the animal that captures things due to its particular sensorial
apparatus. It is a world of signals. The animal
is not a machine but is operating the controls.
One of his favourite examples is the tick,
which is blind and deaf, and whose thermal
sense enables it to detect the presence of a
hot-blooded mammal close by, onto which it
allows itself to fall and attach itself, suck its
blood, and as result enable its eggs, encapsulated since the time of mating, to develop.
Ticks possess remarkable patience as some
laboratory specimens waited 18 years before
finding prey.
Animal intelligence
These experiments heralded cognitive
ethology that over recent decades has revolu-
One of the dogs used by Pavlov for his
experiments (probably Baikal). A tube to
collect his saliva was inserted surgically into
his mouth. Photo kept at the Pavlov Museum
in Ryazan (Russia).
tionised the approach to ‘animal intelligence’.
Today we know far more about the learning
processes, sex life, social relationships, tool
use, inventiveness, self-awareness and socialisation of non-humans. What is more, these
virtues are not the prerogatives of the great
apes. In certain fields, the corvids would easily beat the chimpanzees. Elephants can recognise themselves in a mirror. London blue tits
can open milk bottles placed on the doorsteps
of houses. The killer whales of Canada have
developed a surprising hunting technique that
involves regurgitating their fish meals onto the
surface of the water and waiting for a gull to
swoop down, at which point they promptly
devour it in turn. Alex, the grey parrot kept by
Irène Pepperberg, a researcher at the University
of Tucson (USA), was able to answer (by
speaking, for course) the question of how
many blue objects there were on a tray. In 2007,
Japanese researchers showed, using videos,
that chimpanzees beat students in a visual
memory exercise that involved repositioning,
in order, a set of numbers from one to nine.
These are just some of the many examples
that could be cited – while not falling victim to
the trap of egalitarianism. “You have to be a
brute not to attribute suffering, interiority, subjectivity, and understanding to animals. But one
risks falling prey to stupidity by continuing to
deny that men feel, communicate, express
themselves, and produce differently and better
than even the most human of animals,” believes
Elisabeth de Fontenay, philosopher and author
of Le silence des bêtes (The silence of the beasts),
who has been working for many years on the
relationship between humans and animals.(5)
Didier Buysse
(1) Term translated into Latin as anima, origin of the word
animal.
(2) It was not until much later that animals were attributed
rights. One of the first to express this idea was the
American Thomas Regan (The case for animal rights –
1984) who defended the existence of moral rights for
animals that, on the other hand, do not have obligations
(see article page 34).
(3) See page 10.
(4) The catarrhines (from the Greek cata, meaning downwards,
and rhinos, meaning nose), also known as Old World
monkeys, are mainly present in Africa and Asia, whereas
the platyrrhines, or New World monkeys, live mainly on
the American continent. The former have nostrils that are
close together and directed downwards while the latter
possess nostrils that are far apart and directed sideways.
(5) Philosophie magazine, n°2, July 2006.
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
7
INTERVIEW
Strategies of life
“Animality haunts the human, and defining
humans independently of the animal does not
make much sense,” writes Dominique Lestel.
This ‘field’ philosopher, who does not hesitate
in observing primates in their natural
environment and advising his doctoral
students to do the same, is a senior lecturer
at the ENS (Ecole normale supérieure) in Paris
and director of the eco-ethology and cognitive
ethology team at the Natural History Museum.
© Gamma/Frédéric Souloy
You have written a book entitled
The animal origins of culture – and not
“Animal culture” or “Animal cultures”.
Is it not rather iconoclastic to award
‘animality’ a prerogative that many
continue to regard as reserved for the
human species?
Writing a book on animal culture would
have meant that I was taking the human as the
point of departure for understanding it.
Speaking of the animal origins of culture indicates, on the contrary, that culture really does
8
Dominique Lestel:
“Humans have not
emerged from the state
of nature but has
explored an extreme
niche of that nature.”
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
come from the animal and is not specific to
the human but is rather a ‘strategy’ that living
creatures adopt to be able to develop. This
apparent paradox calls into question our own
identity, in particular through the relationships
we can establish with the animal and the way
we conceive of them.
Globally, two conceptions have co-existed
since antiquity. One considers humans to be
essentially different to the animal, while the
other, established scientifically by Darwin,
who considered humans as having descended
from the animal, argues that what distinguishes
humans from other species is simply a question
of degree. As our knowledge of palaeontology
and genetics progresses, this continuity
between human and animal is becoming
increasingly evident. With the development of
the cognitive sciences, humans are no longer
seen as being of a different nature but rather
as equipped with a more complex body that,
for example, gives him an ability to communicate more symbolically and with a propensity
to retain traces of themselves.
During the late Palaeolithic period, Homo
sapiens took an unprecedented direction, the
notable feature of which was the invention of
© Chris Herzfeld, Wattana, Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes (MNHN, Paris)
a particular culture. Does this attitude mark a
break with nature and with ‘animality’? To me,
culture seems to be a phenomenon particular
to life that Homo sapiens pushed much further
than other species; but which is also to do with
the freedom certain animals gradually acquire
over their organic constitution and the constraints of their environment. Even if they have
a particular status, human cultures should not
be credited with exceptional status from an
evolutionist perspective. Humans have not
emerged from the state of nature but have
explored an extreme niche of that nature.
Animal and human cultures are separated by
undeniable differences but they are comparable to what distinguishes a society of ants
from a society of chimpanzees.
Today there are many books,
debates and exhibitions on the subject
of animals. Why this fascination?
It is a subject that calls into question our
own identity. An identity that is conceived
largely through the characterisation of the animal as an otherness with which humans develop sometimes very intense and sometimes very
complex relationships. To define ourselves,
humans need other points of reference in the
living world, in particular animals with which
we have always co-existed. Anyone who has
lived with parrots or crows will tell you that it
involves engaging in a continuous and very
elaborate process of negotiation. Anthropologist Marcel Mauss already wrote that
humans domesticated the dog but that the cat
domesticated humanity.
Animal is not the machine to which
Descartes reduced it – humans with a soul and
thought, and animals with an exclusively phys-
INTERVIEW
Wattana is able to tie and untie very complex
knots. She seems to like doing it and nobody ever
really taught her. She probably imitated what she
saw her keepers doing. Two films on this subject
were made in 2008 by Florence Gaillard & Chris
Herzfeld: Funktionslust. Les nœuds de Wattana,
orang-utan, Paris and Knotting Apes. The Case of
Wattana, the orang-utan, Paris.
ical function that reduces them to automatons.
The notion that animal is a machine makes no
sense at all. Animals are a generator of meaning
and remind us of what is common between us,
of a dimension that humans conceal from themselves – especially the western intellectual – by
neglecting their bodies and magnifying their
minds and rationality, for example.
The domesticated animal – which goes
beyond the notion of a pet – helps humans to
conceive of their own place in the living world.
It is also notable that when animals of different
species live together – dog and sheep, dog and
cat – it is through the intermediary of humans.
You are also interested in what
you refer to as “singular animals”.
We have been programmed to think of animality in terms of groups – zebras, magpies,
bonobos, etc. But some animals cannot be
reduced to the common competences of their
species. One such example is Wattana, currently in the Netherlands and formerly at the
zoo of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. This
female orang-utan is able to tie and untie even
complex knots. She simply likes doing it.
Nobody really taught her how to do it and no
other orang-utan does it. Certain individual animals have capacities – or rather ‘capabilities’(1)
– that fellow members of their species do not
possess. This means there is scope for cognitive innovation within a same species. It is
interesting to ask the question as to whether
these animals can benefit from this capacity to
acquire behaviour, strategies or relationships
with their environment that are different to
those of others. One could imagine that these
individuals play a major role in the group or
species dynamic.
Wattana is in a zoo. The male who shared
her cage showed a passing interest in knots,
failed to have any success with them, got
angry and started hitting her. Animals act or
they do not act. They do not attempt the
impossible…
Nobody taught Wattana to tie knots.
But some researchers learned to ‘talk’ to
monkeys. What conclusions can we draw
from this?
Beginning in the 1960s, experimental
psychologists wanted to teach the great
apes a symbolic language, as we know they
are anatomically incapable of speech. So the
choice was either for the sign language as
used by the hearing and speech impaired or a
symbolic language created for research needs.
Warshoe, for example, a young chimpanzee,
was taught over 130 signs by the American scientists Allen and Beatrix Gardner.
But there is also the question of what the
primate actually does with this language. In
fact it uses it principally as a tool with which to
modify behaviour, whether of its fellow animals
or humans. There are some intriguing aspects.
For example, the chimpanzee always ‘speaks’
in the present.
So you are saying that these
chimpanzees do not relate stories
with this language of which they have
acquired a rudimentary command…
Even chimpanzees – yes them again,
although they are not alone – are incapable of
telling a ‘story’ in the third person in which the
subject of the story and the narrator are not
the same. A primate that pretends to be an
individual other than itself, to delude a third
party, enters into a narrative structure, but the
hero of the story is always the narrator. Nonhuman animals are also unable to tell stories
that evoke impossible or imaginary elements.
I believe that these very particular stories of
the human species have played a fundamental
role in the unique structure of their society.
The big difference between human societies
and other societies is certainly not culture, as is
often said, but the diversity of human cultures
compared to other animal cultures.
Is the raising of all these new questions
leading to a rethinking of ethology?
The question of animal cultures, and of
associations between humans and animals,
does indeed cause us to reconsider the meaning we give to ethology. When studying chimpanzees is it possible to ignore the relationship
that is established between their culture and
human culture? Do we not need to rethink
ethology by extending it to the plant and the
artefact? And why not open up ethology to
animal culture? All these questions remain
open. As a general rule, the dominant paradigm in ethology today, which is both realist
(there is a reality that is independent of the
observer) and Cartesian (the animal is a
machine), is unsatisfactory. There is at least one
other alternative, a constructivist alternative
that considers the animal as a subject that interprets its senses and that creates its environment as much as it adapts to it.
Interview by Christine Rugemer
(1) Capability is a competence, also a cultural one, whereas
capacity is to do with the cognitive field.
(2) Some works by Dominique Lestel: Les origines animales de
la culture, Flammarion, 2001 – L’animal singulier, Seuil,
2004 – Les amis de mes amis, Seuil, 2007.
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
9
Reproduced with permission from John van Wyhe ed.,
The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online
(http://darwin-online.org.uk/)
different editions of the work. This
represents a major effort to make
Darwin’s thinking accessible to the
general public and is particularly
timely given the recent upsurge
in creationist ideas. The Institut
Charles Darwin International (ICDI)
website also provides – in five
languages and with easy
navigation – extensive information
on this scientist whose
bicentenary will be celebrated in
2009, designated ‘Darwin year’. The
Institut director Patrick Tort will
publish L’effet Darwin – sélection
naturelle et naissance de la
civilisation (The Darwin effect –
10
Jane Goodall with an orphan chimpanzee
at the Tchimpounga sanctuary
natural selection and the birth of
civilization) (éd.du Seuil, Paris) on
the same occasion.
darwin-online.org.uk
www.darwinisme.org
Leakey’s three
angels
Palaeontologist Louis Leakey
convinced all his family to devote
themselves to this speciality. He is
no doubt best known for having
launched his ‘three angels’ as
symbols of female ethology in the
late 1960s. Dian Fossey studied
gorillas in Rwanda, Jane Goodall
chimpanzees in Tanzania and
Biruté Galdikas orang-utans in
Borneo. They lived among these
primates, adapting to them, even
adopting them, and observing
them at great length in order to
understand them. Biruté’s son,
Binti Paul, grew up with orangutans as his friends. Jane Goodall
observed for the first time
a chimpanzee using a tool – a stick
enabling it to trap and then eat
termites. She continues her work
to this day and has received many
honours – including being
appointed UN Messenger for
Peace. Dian Fossey, who was
murdered in 1985, was buried in
“her” gorilla cemetery. All three
have written about and defended
the cause of the great apes
threatened by deforestation and
poaching, setting up foundations
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
to protect them. But first and
foremost they are renowned as
researchers, carrying out
innovative work in the long term.
In the past, scientists studied
primates for a few months and
concentrated on the hierarchy of
authority within the group. Thanks
to the ‘angels’, this vision has
changed. The patience of the
observer has been rewarded with
new insights into concepts such as
alliances and friendship. These
have also been observed in other
animal societies, such as those of
elephants, dolphins and certain
species of birds.
The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund
www.gorillafund.org/
Birute Galdikas
www.orangutan.org/
Jane Goodall Institute
www.janegoodall.org/
Stepping outside
of duality
Nature/culture, human/animal,
wild/domestic… Western culture
finds reassurance in opposition.
Yet increasingly observations and
research on the great apes are
calling into question this divide
between human and non-human.
Philosopher and science historian
Chris Herzfeld (Centre KoyréEHESS & MNHN, Paris) and
historian Patricia Van Schuylenbergh
(Royal Museum for Central Africa,
BE) are engaged in research on the
© Orangutan Foundation
International
The works of Charles Darwin
(1809–1882) first began to be
placed online in 2002, at the
initiative of Cambridge University
(UK). In 2006, this first pilot site
was followed by darwin-online.
org.uk that recorded millions of
hits within the first 48 hours of its
launch. This ‘virtualisation’ of
Darwin’s entire body of work
(publications, letters and
unpublished writings, drawings,
photographs, etc.) means that it
is now possible to download
50 000 pages of text and
150 000 illustrations. The first draft
of The Origin of Species, dated 1840
(20 years before publication),
can be consulted as well as six
© Jane Goodall Institute/ Michael
Neugebauer/www.janegoodall.org
The complete
Darwin for all
© The Dian Fossey Gorilla
Fund International
IN BRIEF
Dian Fossey
Birute Galdikas
development of collective
representations of differences
between humans and nonhumans. They do not see relations
between humans and the
primates in terms of a vertical
hierarchy, but rather in terms of an
interpenetration and circularity
between their worlds. “When they
are close to humans,” they explain,
“the primates acquire certain
practices and abilities,
experimenting with them in their
own way and transforming them
in accordance with their needs.
Humans are in turn influenced by
the way monkeys relate to the
world and their extraordinary
capacity to acquire abilities that
one would assume to be very
remote from their usual knowhow. However, this is only the case
of certain great apes raised in
sanctuaries or zoos where they live
in close proximity to humans”.
Although perceptions of the great
apes have undeniably evolved in
the west over recent decades,
the dualist view has not yet been
laid to rest. For that there is a need
to “create a vocabulary that lies
outside the categorical
oppositional system and to
increase our awareness of our
blinkered thinking in terms of
divisions that, for too long, we
have allowed to cut us off from the
world”. In other words, we must
continue along the path of Darwin
and think of the human as part of
the living world as a whole.
© Chris Herzfeld, Semendwa, “Lola ya Bonobo”, Chutes de la Lukaya (RDC)
frontier
“Animals know, of course. But
they certainly do not know that
they know.”
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
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11
PALAEONTOLOGY
Tracking our origins
Since 2000, following a few decades of calm,
human palaeontology is again beginning to
make headlines. For example, the dominant
paradigm for explaining the separation of the
human branch from that of the great apes
fell apart in 2002, blown to pieces with the
discovery in Chad of a 7 million-year-old
hominid cranium.
Franco-Chadian palaeontological mission
(MPFT) lead by Michel Brunet in the Djurab
desert (Chad).
their two hind legs, thus becoming bipedal
and marking the start of the human adventure.
Lucy trumped by Toumaï
However, the Chad cranium, unearthed by
the Franco-Chadian palaeoanthropological
mission led by Michel Brunet (1) and baptised
Toumaï by the president of the Republic of
Chad, lay 2500 km west of the supposed cradle
of humanity. Certain features (dentition, position
of the occipital bone in which the spinal column is anchored, inclination of the neck) are
recognised as pre-human by the large majority
of the scientific community, despite Toumaï’s
canonical age of 7 million years, recently confirmed by radiochronology. “Do you realise
© Michel Brunet
T
his dominant paradigm, referred to
as the East Side Story, had been
popularized across the world by its
emblematic heroine, the young
Australopithetus fossil Lucy, aged 3.2 million
years. When discovered in 1974 in the region
of Afar (Ethiopia) by Yves Coppens, Maurice
Taïeb and Donald Johannson, Lucy was the
oldest known Homininae fossil. According to
the East Side Story popularised by Coppens,
Lucy demonstrated that the human line started
in East Africa, to the east of a tectonic fault
known as the Great African Rift. East of this
rift, forest gave way to savannah as the climate
became dryer. In the absence of trees, our
ancestors from the east began walking on
what this means? Lucy, who used to be called
the grandmother of the human race, was closer to us in time than Toumaï,” Michel Brunet
explains. This again confronts us with the
mystery regarding the dates of our separation
from the apes. The scattered pieces of the
puzzle do not fit together. Despite a handful
of recent discoveries, such pieces remain
extremely rare: apart from Toumaï, only two
fossil pre-humans are older than 5 million
years. The first is Orrorin tugenensis, found in
Kenya in 2000 (hence its nickname Millennium
ancestor) and about 6 million years old, whose
femur undoubtedly proves that he was bipedal
and belonged to the human branch.
He is joined by Ardipithecus kadabba, also
more than 5 million years old, found in
Ethiopia in 2001.
Who is related to whom?
Palaeontologists’ tasks are not facilitated by
the more than elusive relations between these
various Homininae. What fossils have been
found are particularly fragmentary and, in certain cases, seriously deformed. Highly complex
virtual imaging techniques had to be used, for
example, to reconstitute the original shape of
the cranium of Toumaï – one of the best conserved fossils of all – which had been deformed
and fractured by pressure and movements of
the surrounding sediments. From one fossil to
the next, the bones that have been conserved
are generally not the same. This prevents
direct comparisons. The ancestors of the
Homo species therefore retain part of their
mystery – a mystery to which we can hope
that Africa’s vast and still largely unexplored
fossiliferous tracts will deliver the keys.
Out of Africa
What is certain is that these discoveries
have made the human branch much older. “All
this is pushing back the separation of our line
to 8 or perhaps 10 million years ago,” says
Michel Brunet, who has already left in pursuit
of Toumaï’s ancestor whom he hopes to find
somewhere between Libya and Chad. “This
12
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
makes the African stage of human history
particularly long,” he comments, since it was
probably around 2.5 million years ago that our
ancestors, already belonging to the Homo
genus, left the Black Continent.
This exit from Africa and the ensuing conquest of the world are also stages in our history
that are being enriched by new knowledge.
Until about a decade ago most specialists
thought this episode took place around 1 million years ago, and that it was the work of
Homo erectus, the most ‘intelligent’ species of
the Homo genus. But then an exception fossil
site in the Georgian town of Dmanisi began to
deliver large numbers of fossils of the Homo
genus dating from 1.8 million years ago,
pointing to a much earlier departure from
Africa. Another surprise was the anatomy of
these conquerors. “They differ in several
aspects from the classical morphology [of
Homo erectus],” David Lordkipanidze, director
of the Georgian National Museum, recently
wrote. “In particular, these specimens have a
very low cerebral capacity, of around 750 cm3
for the largest, and just 600 cm3 for the smallest
– in other words more or less the average of
Homo habilis, a more primitive species.” These
Europeans also have a greater number of
primitive features than Turkana man, a Homo
erectus 1.6 million years old found in a very
good state of conservation in Kenya. Even
technologically, these “Georgians” surprised
the scientific community by the very primitive
character of their tools. They were apparently
without bifacial technology (tools fashioned on
both sides) and made do with much simpler
splinters and flat stones.
Why him?
All these surprises are leading certain scientists to question the dogma that the exit
from Africa was the work of erectus. It has
even been proposed to baptise our Dmanisi
ancestor Homo georgicus, so as to distinguish
him from our other forebears. Most palaeontologists refuse, however, to take this step,
preferring rather to stress the large degree of
variability of these primitive men and to speak
of Homo erectus, largo sensu.
The question remains why of the many
known species of Australopithecus and of
Homo (H. habilis, H. rudolfensis, H. erectus)
which populated Africa 2 million years ago
© Michel Brunet
PALAEONTOLOGY
The 7 million-year-old
Toumaï presents pre-human features.
Discovered 2 500 km west of what had until
then been considered the original cradle of
our race, he supplanted Lucy (3.2 million
years old, Ethiopia) as the most senior of
our ancestors.
just one succeeded in leaving the continent
and spreading across the world. Part of the
answer probably lies in the specific nature of
its skeleton: the bipedality of Australopithecus,
and even that of species like habilis, was probably too primitive to allow them to cross large
treeless expanses, whereas erectus was apparently capable of covering large distances. We
can also consider that the level of complexity
of the tools played a part. David Lordkipanidze
points to another factor: on the Dmanisi site
researchers found the skull of an individual
with resorbed tooth cavities. This means he or
she must have lived toothless for several years.
Their conclusions are particularly interesting:
“It is obvious that this individual would not
have survived without the help of his or her
fellow humans. Very likely they gave their
companion the softest parts of the animals to
eat. Maybe they shared already masticated
food.” This ‘compassionate attitude’ and ‘genuinely human behaviour’, which confer a great
degree of cohesion on groups, could be the
key to understanding the achievements of
these very first humans.
Yves Sciama
Terminology
Hominidae
This African group, which became individualized round about 12 million years ago, covers
the members of the human line (Homininae) as
well as the large anthropoid apes (or panini),
that is, gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos.
Homininae
These are all the members of the human line
after the separation from the panini. As well as
Orrorin, Toumaï and the two Ardipithecus
(A. ramidus and A. kabbada), it also includes the
Australopithecus and the members of the
Homo genus. Bipedality is probably a common
characteristic of this group, albeit in apparently
fairly diverse forms.
Homo
The various species of the Homo genus present major morphological differences between the
most primitive among them (H. habilis) and the
most recent, that is Neanderthal man and modern
man (H. sapiens). The latter, our own species,
appeared around 200 000 years ago and is now
the sole representative of the Homo genus.
(1) Michel Brunet, of the University of Poitiers (FR), is also
a professor at the Collège de France where he holds the
chair of Human Palaeontology.
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
13
The 1% that changes
everything
A
An orang-utan meets children at Basel Zoo (CH).
The sequencing of the
human and chimpanzee
genome enables us to
compare their DNAs
and understand the
genetic foundations of
the divergence of these
two lines 8 or 10 million
years ago. It also gives
us the tools to search
in our genes for keys to
the formidable growth
in cognitive capacities
which distinguishes
our species.
14
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
s a child he dreamed of becoming
an archaeologist. He became a
biologist instead. But it is the same
passion that drives Svanto Pääbo,
director of the Max Planck Institute of
Evolutionary Anthropology at Leipzig (DE).
He studies DNA in the same way as others
excavate archaeological remains: travelling
back in time to reconstitute the history of
humanity. Pääbo became famous by isolating
the DNA of Egyptian mummies, followed by the
fossils of Neanderthal Man. His new challenge
is to “reconstruct the history of the evolutionary
changes that have led to the appearance of the
human spirit as we know it today.”
Two chromosomes,
or one chromosome 2
Between humans and chimpanzees, which
separated around 9 million years ago, the difference in genetic heritage is just 1 to 2 %. This
figure, which has been known for more than
30 years, can be found in any modern textbook.
But the nature of this difference remained an
enigma until a first primitive genome of our
© Michel Vanden Eeckhoudt
GENETICS
closest cousin was sequenced in 2005 by an
international consortium including researchers
from the Max Planck Institute. What did this
work teach us? That these 1 to 2 % of genetic
differences divide into two major categories.
The first consists of occasional substitutions of
one nucleotide (those four chemical letters
which constitute the alphabet in which DNA is
written) by another within genes whose
sequence is globally conserved. Between
humans and chimpanzee, there are about 35 million such substitutions, out of a total of over
3 billion nucleotides. But their role is difficult to
understand, given the large number of variations
that also exist within the human species. The
second category is made up of local changes in
the structure of the genes themselves or of their
sequencing, with deletions, duplications or
inversions of DNA sequences, which can go as
far as the merger of two chimpanzee chromosomes to form the human chromosome 2.
Gene doubling
This latter category of reshuffling is of particular interest to the German, British and
GENETICS
Swiss researchers in the PKB 140404 project
(Molecular Evolution of Human Cognition) led
by Svante Pääbo. Or to be more precise, a subcategory of retrogenes, duplicated by DNA or
RNA copying. Molecular geneticists have long
suspected these curious biochemical events
that end up with the doubling of a gene, of
playing a role in the appearance of new animal
species. But the question continues to be
debated. With the habitual biological role taken by the first copy, the second is certainly
capable of evolving more ‘freely’. This can
lead to the appearance of new functions for
the protein that it codes. But inversely, the second copy can potentially, by integrating randomly into the genome, upset its expression,
like a photocopied page of a book upsets the
reading of it if inserted at random.
Did these genetic duplication phenomena
play a role in the emergence of our species?
Yes, says Henrik Kaesmann’s team at the
University of Lausanne (CH), a partner in the
PKB 140404 project, which has identified in
the human genome some 60 functional retrogenes, which have appeared at a rate of one
per million years in the primate line. What
functional role do they play? By studying the
organs in which they are expressed, Kaesmann
and his team were surprised to observe that
most of them are specifically active in the testicles, whereas the genes from which they
derive are active in a wide variety of organs.
“The retrogenes appear in the testicles, probably
because they play a role in spermatogenesis. But
thereafter they evolve strongly and are frequently expressed in a diversity of sites”,
Kaesmann explains.
From GLUD1 to GLUD2
A spectacular example of such diversification is the GLUD2 gene, which appeared by
duplication in the common ancestor of humans
and primates 18 to 25 million years ago. Its
particular interest lies in the fact that it is one
of the handful of retrogenes that are expressed
in humans not only in the testicles but also in the
brain. The protein it codes participates in the
regulation of the brain’s energy metabolism
via the astrocytes, the cells that feed and protect the neurons. More importantly, compared
with the ancestor GLUD1 from which it derives,
the new gene is better able to feed the neurons
with energy in the case of intense electrical
activity. This could possibly constitute one of
the necessary molecular bases for the growth of
brain activity, observed as we approach humans
along the line of descent from the primates.
Nobody, however, believes that it is the
action of a few dozen recently appearing
genes that have produced humankind as we
know it. The search for the ‘specifically
human’ at the genetic level is not limited to the
study of the DNA sequence, but also requires
us to examine the RNA and proteins that give
it its particular function. “We are systematically
researching those genes in humans and the
great apes which present different levels of
genetic expression, because differences in
expression can lead to functional modifications,” Svante Pääbo explains. With his colleagues he has therefore compared the levels
of genetic expression in the prefrontal cortex
– the area of the brain most developed in
Homo sapiens compared with his ancestors –
of humans and of chimpanzees. The big difficulty in this type of analysis lies in interpreting
the differences that are observed. Are these
simple variations from one individual to
another, making two chimpanzees just as different from one another as two human beings?
Or are these functional differences which
change the way cells or organs function?
Using a new statistical method, Pääbo and
his team have identified a sub-group of genes
whose expression in RNA in the human brain
differs most from that of other primates.
Analysis of their function is ongoing and will
involve moving from the global analysis of the
RNA of the prefrontal cortex to that of the proteins at neuron level. But the preliminary
results are already showing that many of these
genes play a part in the energy metabolism.
These observations make sense if we remember
that bipedality allows humans to traverse the
same distance with much less energy. These
energy savings are then available to feed the
brain which alone consumes one-quarter of the
energy of the human body.
genetic expression in brains of schizophrenia
or bipolar disorder patients with those of control brains, they are hoping to identify the
genes involved in cognition, deficiencies
which could be at the root of such disorders.
In the longer term, researchers are planning
to introduce the genes, which have been identified for their potential role in cognition, into
the mouse genome. “These experiments will
serve to test their function by one of our three
approaches – using either retrogenes, genes
presenting a different expression in the cortex,
or genes presenting a malfunction in schizophrenic patients – for their potential role in
cognition. In this way we will be comparing
the anatomical, biochemical and behavioural
consequences of introducing into the mouse a
human gene and the equivalent gene from the
great apes,” Pääbo explains.
Experiments have begun with four genes,
the specificities of which in humans could
explain the tripling of cerebral volume that
marks the passage from great apes to humans.
One of these is the ASPM (Abnormal Spindlelike Microcephaly Associate) gene. Its deficiency
in humans produces mental retardation associated with a drastic reduction in brain size.
Comparison of the accumulation of mutations
in this gene in humans and in primates has
shown that ASPM has undergone a positive
selection in the course of evolution. In
humans we also find a greater number of
mutations that confer new properties to the
gene – which means they could have contributed to increasing brain size – than neutral
mutations with no functional consequences.
Other still preliminary results point to the
fact that inserting the GLUD2 retrogene found
in primates into mice changes the concentration of several neurotransmitters in the latter’s
cortex… and seems to make it inclined to
explore new environments. From there to
conclude that it has become as cunning as a
monkey is a line that researchers are careful
not to cross...
Mikhaïl Stein
On the tracks of mental illness
Another comparative approach that targets
genetic expression, this time in the context of
mental illness, is being undertaken as part of
the PKB 140404 project by researchers from
the Babraham Institute in Cambridge (UK). By
means of the post mortem comparison of
(1) The PKB 140404 project (Molecular Evolution
of Human Cognition) is part of the European initiative
Nest Pathfinder, What it means to be human.
ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/nest/docs/
4-nest-what-it-290507.pdf
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15
LANGUAGE
© CNRS Photothèque/INRAP/Jérôme Chatin
How word came to us
W
And what if learning by imitation
was just as effective, if not more,
than oral learning, for example to
transmit skills like tool-making,
which has existed since pre-historical
times. Here, a Mesolithic flint
from the Fond des Blanchards
(Gron-Yonne-FR).
“Speak and I will baptise you,” Cardinal
Polignac is supposed to have said in the 18th
century to an orang-outan newly delivered to the
King of France’s zoo. Every human being speaks
at least one of the 4 000 languages that have
been inventoried on Earth. Enquiring into what
makes us human beings requires us to reflect on
the appearance of language, both in the course
of evolution and in that of a child’s development.
16
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
e have known for more than a
century that the production of
language requires the integrity
of a region of the brain’s left
cortex. Neurologist Paul Broca discovered this
area, which today carries his name, when
examining a patient suffering from aphasia, the
autopsy of whom revealed the destruction of
this region of the brain in a vascular accident.
Modern neuroimaging methods confirm that
Broca’s area is activated when we speak. It
would therefore be tempting to tackle the
question of the birth of language in terms of
the appearance of this cerebral zone, which
does not exist in primates. Tempting, but difficult, because the brain consists of soft matter
that does not fossilize. Examining moulds of
hominid crania does not therefore allow us to
say with certainty whether this all-important
Broca’s area did or did not exist in our ancestors’ brains. Some scientists believe that it
existed from the Homo habilis stage (4 million
years ago) onwards, while others say that it
appeared only with Homo sapiens (a hundred
thousand or so years ago), with earlier species
having only a rudimentary protolanguage at
their command.
The position of the larynx
Palaeontologists have, however, found
another way of tackling the question about the
advent of articulated language. Speaking
requires Broca’s area, but it also calls for a
vocal apparatus consisting of the tongue, the
larynx (the membranous folds of which form
the vocal chords) and the pharynx, which
draws the air from the larynx towards the
mouth and the nose. The longer the pharynx,
the longer the air can vibrate, and the greater
the possible range of sounds. In adult humans,
the larynx is situated low down, at the bottom
of the throat. In the great apes, on the other
hand, it is situated at the top. “In this way
humans can form vowels by modifying the
shape of the tongue in two dimensions – vertically, at the base of the tongue at the bottom
of the throat and horizontally, at its extremity
LANGUAGE
in the mouth – which increases the range of
sounds,” explains James Steele of the Institute of
Archaeology at University College London,
who coordinates the Hand to Mouth (1) project. Does this make the descent of the larynx
to the bottom of the throat the anatomical signature for the appearance of language? It is on
this hypothesis that researchers are working. By
reconstructing in a computer model the shape
of the vocal tract of hominid fossils, they hope
to be able to date the appearance of a larynx
sufficiently low to permit the production of
articulated language.
Just how useful is language?
Another way of postulating the problem is to
ask in what way language could have been useful to our distant ancestors. Speech has disadvantages as well as benefits. With a low larynx,
air and food can circulate at the bottom of the
throat, with a risk of suffocation if either takes the
wrong path. From an evolutionary viewpoint,
this danger has therefore to be counterbalanced
by other benefits. Which? For the Hand to
Mouth teams, this could be the production of
tools. “The manufacturing of tools is a social
activity that needs to be passed on from generation to generation by teaching,” James Steele
continues. “We are seeking to understand
whether this skill is acquired more effectively
by mere imitation, or by oral teaching.” The
question is widely debated. Japanese university professors have taught their students to
produce carved stone tools, both by demonstrating the processes in silence, and by giving
them precise oral instructions. The outcome:
both groups had comparable results, in both
cases very poor, given the complexity of the
task. It is this type of experiment, until now
inconclusive, that the Hand to Mouth project
is looking to pick up again using the expertise
of its archaeologists and anthropologists. The
theoretical context of this research has been
renewed with the recent discovery of mirror
neurons – which are activated only when a
subject reproduces an observed action – in a
region of the brain that is involved in speech.
For James Steele, “this discovery suggests the
appearance of certain properties of human
language to have been dependent on the preexistence of neuronal circuits which serve to
read other people’s behaviour by regarding
their movements.”
Wakening to language
The appearance of articulated language has
probably necessitated a series of anatomical
changes to the brain and the vocal apparatus
during evolution. And in small children? In a
baby, as in the great apes, the larynx is situated
high up, allowing it to suckle and breathe
simultaneously. It then moves down quickly,
whereby baby’s first burbling noises become
articulated words. This wakening to language
thrills parents as much as it fascinates scientists. In specialist terminology human language
is a generative system, which makes it possible
to construct an infinite number of sentences
from a finite number of words (50 000 to 100 000
in an average adult vocabulary), the meaning of
which is fixed by convention. If we don’t
know the meaning of a word, we look it up in
a dictionary. On the other hand, we can understand the meaning of any new combination of
words within a sentence, because this combination is governed by a set of rules, known as
syntax. From age 3 or 4, children master the
essentials of this syntax, without learning it.
We never learn at school that in the sentence
“This child has a ball. That one also has one”,
that ‘that’ designates another child and the
second ‘one’ another ball. Hence the idea,
advanced in the 1950s by American linguist
Noam Chomsky, of a human genetic predisposition towards language learning. Since then,
hundreds of researchers have attempted to
decrypt the foundational basis of this innate
‘universal grammar’, whose existence was
posited by Chomsky, but whose nature
remains enigmatic.
learn to speak.” Hence the hypothesis being
tested by Mehler and his team that consonants
are used by the brain to make out words in
prosody whilst vowels are used in particular
to make out the syntax.
The Calacei researchers are also interested
in the way a newborn child learns its native
language. Earlier work at Trieste had established that babies are sensitive to the rhythm of
words from birth. If a baby is made to listen to
different languages and we measure its attention by observing its eye or head movements,
we discover that it is already capable of segmenting words into consonants/vowels in
order to determine certain rhythmic properties
of languages. The Calacei team has been able
to show that a four day-old baby can already
distinguish the repetition of A-B-B type syllables from A-C-C type ones. This faculty implies
an activation of the Broca’s area, which matures
very early. From the age of three months, we
observe that a child reacts to a recording in its
native language; but not the same recording
when played backwards. Even more surprising is the fact that the detection of these
incongruities in successions of syllables elicits
a reaction of surprise from the baby, as if it
were expecting something to follow. This predictive faculty constantly develops with the
acquisition of language… and the appearance
of humour. As humourists will tell you, one of
the strongest sources of comedy consists of
verbal incongruities which throw off balance
a brain that had been expecting something else.
Wasn’t it François Rabelais who said, in the 16th
century, that “laughing is specific to humans”?
M.S.
Consonants and vowels
“The sound signal of the word does not
contain any evident information relative to the
lexicon or grammar of the language,” notes
Jacques Mehler, a specialist in cognitive sciences at the Scuola Internazionale Superiore
di Studi Avanzati in Trieste (IT) and coordinator
of the Calacei project. “Even if we presuppose
the existence of very powerful innate structures, we still have to explain the relationship
between the linguistic structure and the perceived signal. Recent research shows that the
signal is richer than we thought, containing
ample statistical information on the distribution of certain fundamental elements which
are perhaps detected unconsciously when we
(1) The Hand to Mouth and Calacei projects are part
of the European initiative Nest Pathfinder, What it means
to be human.
ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/nest/docs/
4-nest-what-it-290507.pdf
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
17
THOUGHT
What animals cannot con
“Thoughts without content are empty,
intuitions without concepts are blind,”
wrote Kant is his Critique of Pure Reason.
But how does the brain produce these concepts that are the tools of human thought?
Cognitive sciences are attacking this
question on the border of neurobiology
and philosophy.
A
nimals are perfectly capable of
learning to distinguish concepts.
Two American psychologists,
Richard Herrnstein and Donald
Loveland, demonstrated this in 1964 by teaching
pigeons to tap differently with their beaks
depending on whether a picture displayed in
front of them was a baby or an old man, a man
or a woman, seen from the front, from the
back or upside down… in short, in the same
way as a Homo sapiens. Can we conclude from
this that these birds had acquired the idea of
what is human? Researchers prefer to describe
this work as experiments in ‘concept discrimination’ – a term which, according to Denis
Mareschal of Birkbeck, University of London
(UK), “avoids giving the idea that the animal
has conceived and used a concept similar to
that used by the experimenter.”
For Mareschal, this work suffers from three
additional limitations when one seeks to
understand the specificity of human thought.
First of all, it was directed at birds rather than
mammals, despite the fact that the visual system is organised very differently between the
two groups. Second, they often took it for
granted that human beings could carry out the
tasks which the experimenters sought to teach
to the animals, which was far from evident.
Third, they neglected to look at the ability of
18
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
human beings with no command of language
– in particular babies – to carry out these exercises, whereas there are “many examples in
experimental psychology where children who
are unable to speak appear to behave more
like animals than adults.”
Accepted rules
The aim of the Far project that Denis
Mareschal coordinates is therefore to look at
the rules governing the acquisition of concepts.
“The use of language, mathematical logic and
abstract thought are three fundamental properties of human cognition which have in common
the fact that they are based on the use of
rules,” he explains in his project presentation.
The forming of these rules is not, however, the
only way of thinking that is available to the
human brain. In experiments with artificial
grammar, which consists of presenting people
with a series of apparently meaningless letters
which are interlinked by rules known only to
the experimenter, some people work hard to
discover these rules, while others look for similarities between the words presented to them.
But when asked, the subjects who have succeeded in mastering this artificial grammar all
describe the mechanisms they have used. “It
may be that these rules are artefacts produced
by the fact that we formalise them by using a
“The use of language, mathematical
logic, or abstract thinking are three
basic properties of human cognition
that are based on the use of rules.”
language which itself obeys rules,” Denis
Mareschal posits. In the context of Far, he has
designed experimental psychology procedures which make it possible to test the learning of rules in the absence of verbalisation.
Abstract language or corporal
inscription
“According to the so-called abstraction from
language hypothesis, concepts could be derived
from the statistical properties of language –
words frequently associated with oral use
being presumed to be linked to the same concepts. This would explain the existence of
concepts that are specific to each different language. But according to another hypothesis,
known as the embodiment hypothesis, these
come on the contrary from metaphors which
extrapolate into the abstract field an idea that
perception renders evident in the concrete
field.” In this way, for Stefano Cappa of Vita
Salute San Raffaele University in Milan (IT), the
expression “to float a hypothesis” is understood
by analogy with the idea of “to float a ship”.
How can these two hypotheses be tested
experimentally? The teams of the Abstract
project that he is leading have opted for an
approach that is at once inter-linguistic – comparing English, Hungarian, Spanish and Italian
– and multidisciplinary, bringing together
THOUGHT
© Shutterstock
© CNRS Photothèque/Hervé Thery
© CNRS Photothèque/Christophe Lebedinsky
ceive
More than in language, should
we not seek the specificity of
human thought in man's ability to
distinguish the sign – i.e. a word,
gesture or image – from what
it represents? Here, rock paintings in
the Serra de Ireri, near Monte Alegre
(Brazil).
experimental psychology, linguistics and neuroimaging to test out the respective predictions
of the abstract language and the corporal
inscription hypotheses. According to the first
theory, one would expect to observe an activation of the cerebral areas of language during tasks requiring the use of concepts,
whereas according to the second, one expects
an activation of the sensor-motorial areas.
For these experiments the researchers use
lexical decision tests. These measure the
speed with which subjects recognise whether
a series of letters presented to them does or
does not constitute a word. “Until now it was
believed that performance was always better
for concrete than for abstract words,” Stefano
Cappo explains, “but our work is showing that
this difference disappears when we take into
account the possibility of representing the
abstract concept with a mental image.”
Alex and signs
More than in language, should we not go
looking for the specificity of human thought in
man’s ability to distinguish a sign – i.e. a word,
gesture or image – from what it represents?
This was the hypothesis of the SEDSU consortium, led by Jules Davidoff of Goldsmiths,
University of London (UK), which undertook
a systematic comparative study of how signs
are processed by primates and by humans in
the course of their development. In particular,
researchers observed that when invited to
reproduce a movement of which only an
incomplete series of images is given, human
beings can do so and primates cannot. Only
one chimpanzee, named Alex, achieved this.
“The fact is that Alex had not been trained in
the practice of language,” Jules Davidoff points
out. “This shows, in line with our hypothesis,
that the understanding of images as signs does
not require the command of language.”
By understanding the meaning of this
sequence of images, Alex showed that he had
also, in a certain way, acquired a concept of
time. This exceptional case should not divert
attention from the fact that mastery of this concept appears to be one of the most specific
particularities of the thought of our species.
M.S.
(1) The projects Far (From Association to Rules in the
Development of Concepts), Abstract (The Origins,
Representation, and Use of Abstract Concepts), SEDSU
(Stages in the Evolution and Development of Sign Use),
Paul Broca II (The Evolution of Cerebral Asymmetry in
Homo Sapiens) and EDCBNL (Evolution and Development
of Cognitive, Behavioural and Neural Lateralisation)
are part of the European initiative Nest Pathfinder,
What it means to be human.
Left, right in the brain
A
left-hand brain, analytical and logical,
involved in language, and a right-hand
brain, empirical and intuitive, processing images. This is, put crudely, the concept
that neuro-psychologists have today of this
human asymmetry. But this functional lateralization is difficult to explain in terms of neuronal
circuits. It is to the elucidation of these neuroanatomical bases that the Paul Broca II project in
particular is devoted. “As the two hemispheres
are roughly identical in volume and mass, the
difference needs to come from the shape,”
explains project coordinator Timothy Crow.
“One new idea is that the cortex is thinner and
enlarged on one side only.” The structural deformation, which is imperceptible to the naked eye
but identifiable by computer reconstruction,
would then place architectural constraints on the
neurons, forcing them to create different circuits
in the two halves of the brain.
Another way of understanding the anatomical
foundations of cerebral asymmetry is to ask how
they evolved. “Although research into this area
has been going on for over 140 years, it is only
recently that scientists have discovered that this
asymmetry is not specific to human beings, as
had been thought until then,” says Luca Tommasi
of the University of Chiti (IT), who is coordinating the EDCBNL project. We now know that the
preferential treatment of certain visual or aural
information by one hemisphere rather than the
other is found in many vertebrates. Is this particularity genetic in origin? Is it acquired in utero,
as a function of the position of the foetus? Or
during development, under the influence of
hormones? All three hypotheses and others are
being analysed by the researchers of the EDCBNL
project, who are also hoping to find in the study
of the foundations of cerebral asymmetry new
avenues for understanding schizophrenia, autism
and depression.
ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/nest/docs/
4-nest-what-it-290507.pdf
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
19
IN BRIEF
The Flores enigma
© Peter Brown
Led by Peter Brown, in 2003 a team
of Australian and Indonesian
researchers discovered the skeleton
of an unknown, small (less than
one metre long) species on the
Island of Flores (Indonesia).
Neanderthal
reveals all
Neanderthal Man, discovered in
1856, poses a number of enigmas.
We know that he lived in Europe
and in western Asia about 400 000
years ago and that he disappeared
28 000 years ago, with Homo
sapiens then becoming the sole
representative of human primates.
Why did he become extinct? What
do these two species have in
common? Genetics is just starting
to lift the veil. In 2006, two groups
of researchers, one American
(led by Edward Rubin) and one
European (led by Svante Pääbo at
the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig)
carried out a partial sequencing of
Neanderthals’ nuclear DNA.
A Homo floresiensis skull (left)
compared with a modern-day
human skull.
Baptised Homo floresiensis,
Brown’s discovery created a stir
around the world. Fossils of
several other similar individuals
were later found in a cave. Around
18 000 years old, they pose
a number of questions. Does this
species derive from Homo erectus,
who is believed to have colonised
the world, or does it derive from
Homo habilis, whom it more
closely resembles? In this case,
how is it that no remains of the
latter have ever been found
outside Africa? Homo floresiensis,
which seems to have disappeared
about 12 000 years ago, was in any
event a contemporary of Homo
sapiens during tens of thousands
of years. Without doubt its
insularity preserved it from the
expansionism of our species.
www.nature.com/news/specials/
flores/index.html
www-personal.une.edu.au/
~pbrown3/palaeo.html
20
Reconstitution of the
Neanderthal child of Gibraltar
(Anthropological Institute,
University of Zurich).
“It is quite extraordinary that we
can obtain the genome of an
extinct species,” says Jean-Jacques
Hublin, director of the Human
Evolution Department at the Max
Planck Institute. “Until now we
were studying mitochondrial DNA,
which allows us to construct
phylogenetic trees, but which
does not provide any information
on the specific features of
individuals in the way that nuclear
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
DNA allows. This latter DNA is
particularly complex, with 3 billion
base pairs (compared with 16 000
in mitochondrial DNA). The Leipzig
team has sequenced almost 60 %
(2 billion base pairs), and is
determined to finish the job.
“Today we can compare the
genomes of man and chimpanzees,
our closest relative. The differences
are minimal. But these two species
separated 6 or 7 million years ago.
What we don’t know is when the
genetic features specific to Homo
sapiens appeared. Was it 100 000 or
was it 6 million years ago? The
decrypting of the Neanderthal
genome could provide part of
the answer.”
We already know that the FOXP2
gene, which plays a role in the
production of language, is
identical in Neanderthal and in
modern man, and that Neanderthal
Man had reddish hair – but that
the gene responsible for this was
structured differently to the gene
responsible for red hair in modernday European populations. “This
character of the genotype must
therefore have appeared at least
twice, in separate lines and with
different gene structures, probably
for identical reasons of adapting
to the environment.” Further study
of Neanderthal Man’s nuclear
DNA should make it possible to
determine other elements, like
the size of the population and
whether or not any cross-breeding
occurred with Homo sapiens.
www.eva.mpg.de/evolution/
Apes: genes and
cognition
How do we track down the genes
that are potentially involved in
cognition in humans? Ralf Sudbrak
of the Max Planck Institute of
Molecular Genetics in Berlin (DE)
has listed three categories of these
genes, each corresponding to a
form of apparition in the course of
evolution. The first are genes that
have taken on new functions
following remodelling of primates’
genes; the second are genes that
present an accelerated evolution
in human beings (detectable
by comparing their mutation
rates with those of homologous
primate genes); the third are
genes homologous to those
identified in mice for their role
in the differences in cognitive
performance between different
families of rodents. It is these
three properties that Sudbrak –
previously involved in analysing
the sequences of chimpanzee
chromosome 22 and human
chromosomes X and 3 –
is proposing to go looking for
in the genomes of human and
non-human primates as part of
the Apes consortium. Once these
candidate genes have been
identified by comparative analysis
of their sequences, it remains to
study their detailed structure,
more specifically that of the
promoters control gene expression,
and of course, the biological
function.
The Apes project is part of the
European initiative Nest Pathfinder,
What it means to be human.
ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/
nest/docs/4-nest-what-it290507.pdf
© Patrick Ageneau/Musée des Confluences, Lyon (FR)
aptitudes & attitudes
“To endow animals with human emotions has
long been a scientific taboo. But if we do not,
we risk missing something fundamental,
about both animals and us.”
Frans de Waal
Phyllium giganteum. The body of this Malaysian stick insect
has the peculiarity of being identical in every way to a leaf.
It is a perfect example of mimesis, the phenomenon by which
insects imitate plants.
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
21
COGNITION
No monopoly on
thought
factors led to this U-turn. Following years of
observation, American ethologist, Donald
Griffin, proclaimed the existence of an animal
consciousness. Elsewhere, theoreticians of
learning also started to study animals’ memory
and categorisation skills. In 1978, psychologist
and primatologist David Premack had no hesitation in asking the question: “Do chimpanzees
have a theory of mind?” In other words, are
they capable of imagining that others – fellow
creatures or experimenters – have knowledge,
intentions, or even beliefs? (2)
3
Research work being carried out at the Wolfgang Köhler Primate Research Center, part of the
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, situated in Leipzig Zoo. The research focuses
primarily on the great apes, studying in particular their cognitive development, learning and socialisation.
1. Chimpanzees in an observation chamber. The researcher is about to place a piece of banana in one
of the two cups to test the primates’ causal understanding.
2.3.4. A bonobo, orang-utan and gorilla in the primates’ enclosure, where some of the aspects being
studied are their social behaviour and their learning methods and abilities.
D
o animals think? The answer, for
many years a matter of philosophy
or religion, has varied through the
ages. Scientists began to study the
question in the 19th century, although this has
done nothing to subdue the arguments or prevent deviations. Behaviourism dominated
from the period between the two World Wars
until the 1970s. According to this theory, animal
behaviour can be explained by an unthinking
automatic response to external stimuli. This
22
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
response to the environment stems from animals’ innate genetic programming, or from
behaviour learned through repetition or conditioning, for example. There is no need to consider thought processes, and hence cognitive
intelligence, to explain the performance of rats
in a maze or chimpanzees finding hidden food.
“The cognitivist approach gained the upper
hand in the 1970s,” explains Josep Call (1) from
the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology in Leipzig (DE). A number of
The hunt for animal cognitive abilities was
on. But first it was necessary to agree on what
was meant by cognitive abilities. The first hurdle was to equate thought processes as diverse
as inference (understanding causal chains), the
construction of abstract rules, ‘mental time
travel’ (episodic memory and the ability to project oneself into the future), and the theory of
4
© MPI EVAN
2
Complexities of the mind
© MPI EVAN
© MPI EVAN
1
© MPI EVAN
Intelligence and the power of abstraction were
long considered a sole characteristic of human
beings. Animals were deemed to act like robots,
without thinking. In the 1970s, the cognitivist
approach began to raise doubts – and continues
to arouse disquiet.
mind or metacognition (being aware of what
one knows… and of what one does not
know). Josep Call refuses to establish a link,
much less a hierarchy, among these abilities,
which he does not consider to be comparable.
According to Julia Fischer, professor of cognitive ethology at the University of Göttingen
(DE), “inference is widespread in the animal
kingdom and can be explained by simple
mechanisms, as can the construction of rules.
Mental time travel appears to be more sophisticated. Some animals are not ‘prisoners of the
present’.” That being said, much of the time
the behaviourist theory is amply sufficient to
explain the observations in animals. “The main
methodological obstacle is still to definitely
rule out any ‘behaviourist’ explanation for the
performance observed. That is no easy matter,
especially for most experiments on the theory
of mind,” she adds.
What are the conclusions so far? The great
apes are in the spotlight, particularly chimpanzees, which are by far the most extensively
studied group. After noting their complex
social bonds in the wild and being astounded
to see them use tools, researchers subjected
them to more controlled experiments. In 2004,
one of the experiments concerned all four
species of great ape. The aim was to ascertain
whether they understood the concept during
an experiment where, of two choices, only the
one that made a noise when shaken contained
food and not the other. Great care was taken
to eliminate any possibility of a learned or
behaviourist response. Several chimpanzees,
bonobos (pygmy chimpanzees) and gorillas –
but no orang-utangs – understood immediately
that the food was causing the noise.
Of primates and rats
Thirty years after Premack asked his question,
it is now generally agreed that chimpanzees do
have a theory of mind, albeit incomplete. They
appear to understand what others see and
know and the purpose of their actions. That
being said, Josep Call claims: “There is no evidence that they attribute desires or beliefs to
others.” Not only do the great apes use tools,
they are capable of keeping them for later use
– at least this was true of the bonobos and
orang-utangs tested in 2006. The experiment,
conducted at the Leipzig Zoo, was the first to
demonstrate that animals have the ability to
project themselves into the future.
Our close cousins are not the only animals to
have such cognitive skills. In 2006, rats demonstrated their ability to understand a causal
chain (an event that triggers another event)
and even to take deliberate action to trigger
the delivery of sugar water. Admittedly, “when
they do this, rats are not establishing any sort
of explanatory law, although they do recognise
a causal chain,” says Anne Reboul, linguist and
philosopher at France’s Institute of Cognitive
Sciences in Bron (Institut des Sciences
Cognitives). Nonetheless, it is enough for Julia
Fischer to declare that “rats and great apes are
able to accomplish sophisticated mental operations before they act.” In 2008, Robin Murphy,
a psychologist from the University of London(3),
demonstrated what he claimed to be a rat’s
capacity for abstraction. The test was to see if
rats were able to grasp that a particular
sequence of sounds resulted in the delivery of
food and then to transpose this rule to a similar
sequence of different sounds. In short, rats
needed to infer a general, abstract law from a
specific situation.
© Josh Plotnik
COGNITION
Necessity knows no law
In 2007, American researchers demonstrated
that rats subjected to tests responded when
they knew that they could solve the problem
but refrained (preferring a lesser consolation
than the reward for success, but one that they
were certain to receive) when they did not
know the answer (for example, being able to
differentiate between two different sound
wavelengths). So the rats knew that they didn’t
know! Up until then, only the rhesus monkey
had demonstrated such metacognition.
Perhaps the rat is an exception? Not in the
least. “It is simply a convenient species to
breed in the laboratory,” says Robin Murphy.
“There is nothing special about rats, even if
they are the cleverest at solving their own particular problems. All species, including humans,
share the same base of cognitive skills, with
each species developing the specific skills it
needs.” Indeed, the experts warn us against
the common error of viewing non-human animals as a homogeneous group, since no species
is alike.
Another question remains largely unexplored. For instance, why in every experiment
do some individuals perform better than others? “We are just beginning to examine this
subject,” says Josep Call. “As we are not able
to work with large numbers of great apes and
know very little about their cognitive development, it is difficult to decide how much can
be attributed to genetics and how much to an
individual’s history.” So it seems that the cognitivist approach has its limitations. According
to Julia Fischer, ‘fashion’ plays a role: “It is bad
form to publish an article showing that an animal does not know how to do something.”
Patrick Philipon
(1) Josep Call, Past and present challenges in theory of mind
research in nonhuman primates. Progress in Brain
Research, Vol. 164, Chapter 19 (p. 341), Elsevier, 2007.
Josep Call & Michael Tomasello, Does the chimpanzee
have a theory of mind? 30 years later. Trends in cognitive
sciences, 12(5), 187, 2008.
(2) The term ‘belief’ should not be understood in the sense
of religious belief, but means belief in a reality
(such as a hidden object). Belief is assessed by means
of false-belief tests.
(3) Robin A. Murphy et al., Rule learning by rats, Science 319,
1849, 2008.
Happy, passing the mirror test.
Elephants take a look
at themselves…
I
n 2006, researchers erected a gigantic mirror
in the elephant enclosure at New York’s
Bronx Zoo. It was known that most animals
treat their reflection as though it were a fellow
creature. Only humans, great apes and dolphins
recognise themselves in a mirror. So why test
elephants? “To date, the few species that have
demonstrated the ability to recognise themselves in a mirror are altruistic animals capable
of understanding the needs of fellow creatures
in trouble and of helping them. Elephants also
share these attributes,” explains Joshua Plotnik,
one of the experimenters (1). A link between the
two types of behaviour is difficult to establish
and may entail an awareness of the self as a
being separate from others.
The test was a success. After a short phase of
exploring the reverse side of the mirror, the
three female Asian elephants started to look at
themselves, to perform movements to test their
reflection and to examine parts of their body
that they normally could not see, such as the
inside of their mouths. One of the elephants
even passed the ultimate test. After crosses had
been painted on her forehead without her
knowledge, she rubbed them out with her trunk
when she discovered them in the mirror. Does
this mean that elephants are capable of seeing
themselves ‘from the outside’? Do they have any
conception of the boundaries of their own bodies?
There is no way of telling…
(1) Joshua M Plotnik et al., Self-recognition in an Asian elephant,
PNAS 103 (45), 17053, 2006.
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
23
SOCIALISATION
Oneself and others
F
Like human culture,
animal culture relies
on relationships with
others: for attracting
a mate, reproduction,
teaching, providing
protection and finding
food. They are
ambivalent relationships
woven from cooperation
and rivalry. Here are
a few probative
examples.
rench philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre
famously coined the maxim “Hell is
other people”, although the very fact
of belonging to the human race
made him a social animal. In a way, all other
living beings could be seen as hell because
others are always rivals. First and foremost
they compete for food: our fellow creatures
share the same diet as ourselves and, if food
becomes scarce, they can endanger our lives.
They are also potential sexual rivals and, in
some cases, potential predators too. Fortunately,
Sartre’s maxim reflects only part of the truth.
Others are essential for reproduction. If they
are cooperative, they can also prove to be
valuable allies: for protection, building shelter,
detecting danger, finding food resources…
and even entertainment. In short, our fellow
creatures are a curious mix of heaven and hell.
This duality is an integral part of the animal
condition. It explains why there are few truly
solitary individuals, whatever their species or
Friendship among
chimpanzees.
distinctive characteristics because, at the very
least, every individual is obliged to interact
with reproductive partners. That being said,
relationships are rarely limited only to reproduction. Many animals also have relationships
with their siblings, and possibly also their parents, their group, large or small, as well as the
fellow creatures they meet. The fact is that
interaction always entails communication.
Power of seduction
In the universal sphere of reproduction,
animal communication has achieved the height
of sophistication. Lepidopterans are endowed
with a ‘seventh sense’ that enables them to
detect a mate as far away as 8 kilometres.
Sexual communication, which is often intrinsically chemical, has been enriched with auditory components in many insects and birds,
where song plays a decisive role. Visual communication is also important, as testified by
the blaze of markings, colours, plumage and
other aesthetic features that can be seen
across the animal kingdom. Not to mention
tactile communication. According to biologist
Stéphane Tanzarella in the case of Amaurobius
ferox spiders, “the male distinguishes itself from
prey by drumming on the female’s web with its
maxillipeds. It creates a frequency of 4 Hz for a
few seconds and then uses its abdomen to
deliver a vibration of 30 to 100 Hz.”(1) This prevents it from being devoured by the female,
provided that it can maintain this rhythm
throughout the mating process (one moment
of distraction and the female’s predatory
instinct will regain the upper hand, to the
male’s cost). For many years now, astonishingly complex behavioural codes have also been
observed among the most evolved animal
species, as witnessed in the elaborate displays,
synchronised dances and gift-giving ceremonies
of certain birds.
Parental responsibility
© Chris Herzfeld
24
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
The parent-child relationship undoubtedly
has the next-largest communication and behavioural repertoire, after the sexual relationship.
SOCIALISATION
More complex still are the pack-hunting
mechanisms of certain predators like lions or
wolves. Pack hunting relies on a division of
labour between the fast-moving and boisterous
‘hunters’ that chase down the prey and the
silent ‘killers’ that lie in ambush to attack it.
Although very little is yet known about how
the division of labour and synchronisation of
movements are organised, they clearly form
part of sophisticated communication systems.
© CNRS Photothèque/CEBC/Christophe Guinet
© CNRS Photothèque/Alain R. Devez
Two young male elephant seals come to blows The Muscicapa aëdon flycatcher (Gabon).
in front of a colony of king penguins at Ratmanoff Both parents of the species feed the young – here it is
(Kerguelen Island) in the southern Indian Ocean. the female.
Examples can even be found in invertebrates.
For example, aphids and spiders will sometimes defend their offspring, transport them
from one place to another and feed them. In
many cases this is a fairly basic reflex action,
triggered by the general appearance, odour or
sounds emitted by their young. In fact, substitution of offspring goes unnoticed by most
birds, not least the hen, which will ‘rear’ any
chick as her own without batting an eyelid, or
the cuckoo fledgling which is adopted by substitute parents that are generally even smaller
than their adoptive newborn.
Alex Thornton, a researcher at the Department of Zoology of the University of Cambridge
(UK) provides us with another astonishing
example. He has shown that a real training
process exists among meerkats (or suricates),
small African social mammals from the mongoose family. Meerkats have a highly varied
diet that includes dangerous and fast-moving
creatures like scorpions. When their offspring
are still very young, the parents bring them
dead animals to eat. Then, when the young
are more agile, the parents give them live scorpions from which they have ripped out the sting.
It is only in the final stages of their training that
young meerkats are given entire prey with
which they are left to cope as best they can.
Alex Thornton explains that meerkats have no
theory of mind that enables them to imagine
what their offspring are capable of doing or
understanding. They are merely guided by the
type of sound emitted by their young. The
shriller cries of the smaller infants lead to the
delivery of dead prey. Later, as the sounds
drop in pitch, meerkat parents modify the type
of food they give their offspring. By playing
back tape recordings of cries of the incorrect
pitch, researchers succeeded in tricking meerkat
parents into feeding their babies with the wrong
type of prey.
Group effect
Interactions with others that are neither
ascendants, descendants nor partners are still
largely a mystery. The dynamic of fish shoals
– some of which can exceed one kilometre in
width and include thousands of individuals –
is still poorly understood. The assumption is
that this group formation is intended to confuse
or even threaten a predator, thereby deterring it
from attacking. So whenever a hazard arises,
the shoal members close ranks synchronically
to create a denser mass. Although each fish has
contact only with the handful of individuals in
its immediate vicinity, this does not prevent the
signals from being transmitted from neighbour
to neighbour with astonishing speed. Despite
having a very rudimentary brain and a narrow
range of stereotyped behaviour, fish have managed to use the ‘group effect’ to develop complex and highly adapted behaviour patterns.
Many animals undergo alternate gregarious
and territorial phases. This is true of birds like
starlings, which form impressively large groups
in winter and execute fascinating displays of
formation flying. Every evening the flock of
birds can be seen, in turns, to scatter, stretch
out, then resume a compact pattern – as the
liking of the group members takes them –
whilst remaining cohesive at all times. Despite
this, when the breeding season arrives a few
weeks later, two members of the same group
will fight bitterly for possession of a few
square metres of territory.
Subtleties of primates
Then there are the primates, whose subtle
social hierarchies and interactions continue to
fascinate researchers. One of the most renowned
primatologists, Dutchman Frans de Waal, who is
currently working at Atlanta’s Emory University
(USA), has written a number of works (2),
complete with a wealth of fascinating details.
He explains that in chimpanzees, dominance
does not rely solely on physical strength.
Instead, the main determining factor is the
leader’s ability to secure sufficient allies
(including from among the ranks of physically
weaker females), to guarantee support when
he comes into conflict with rivals. Frans de
Waal describes radical switches in allegiance
that result in transferral of power to the ruler’s
former lieutenants. He claims that it is easy to
single out the ‘politicians’ in the group, which
are capable of changing allegiance quickly
when the time is right, whereas other members
stay faithful to the same fellow creatures as
long as they live. As we might have guessed,
the human race has invented nothing new…
Yves Sciama
(1) Stéphane Tanzarella, Perception et communication chez
les animals, De Boeck Université, 2005.
(2) Frans de Waal, Chimpanzee politics: power and sex among
apes, John Hopkins University Press, 2000.
Frans de Waal, Peter L. Tyack, Animal social complexity:
intelligence, culture, and individualized societies, Harvard
University Press, 2003.
Frans de Waal’s website (Emory University):
http://www.psychology.emory.edu/nab/
dewaal/
Animal Behaviour Society (USA):
www.animalbehavior.org/
Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution
and Cognition Research (AT):
www.kli.ac.at/
User-friendly website on primates:
http://primatology.net/
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
25
IMITATION
Who’s aping whom?
© Friederike Range, University of Vienna
The importance of learning by imitation, for both
humans and animals, has been acknowledged
for many years. But what is the origin of this
imitative behaviour, which is so fundamental
to cognitive and social development?
American researchers claim that it is 100 %
innate, while European scientists from the
EDICI project are not so sure.
“W
e have gathered together
researchers from a variety
of disciplines,” explains
Ludwig Huber, coordinator of the EDICI project (1). “Although it took
time to find a common language, it did enable
us to devise some highly original experiments.”
Specialists in ethology, evolutionary biology,
neuro-physiology, neuro-psychology and psychology from four countries (AT, HU, DE, UK)
developed tests on animals with some sort of
proximity to humans (marmosets, which have
a phylogenetic link; social birds, such as
crows or parrots; and dogs). Research was
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
On the right,
the heads of two young
marmosets perched
on their mother’s back
can be seen as they
watch carefully how
their father (in the
foreground) feeds.
© Vera Dell’mour, University of Vienna
Imitation and awareness
In this test, the instructor dog (right) is forced
to hold a ball in its mouth whilst carrying out a
task. It pulls a handle with its paw to deliver food.
The imitator dog (seated) has no ball and does
not copy blindly. It will use its mouth because that
is easier…
26
a considerable amount of effort in encouraging their young to succeed in complex feeding
tasks. Another type of experiment showed the
subtle ways in which dogs can imitate (see
illustration).
Researchers also compared the imitative
potential of 14 month-old human babies, in the
presence of either a passive adult or an active
person (who showed and explained to the
baby how things should be done, spoke to it,
called it by name, pointed out objects, made
sure that the baby was watching, and so on).
The results were not surprising: when they are
encouraged, children are naturally receptive to
interpreting these social communication signs.
also carried out on infants who had not yet
acquired language, as well as healthy adults
and neurological patients.
Be watchful, pay attention
One of the experiments, comparing attention levels among different species, showed
that levels varied from one individual to
another. “The ability to imitate is not innate.
Every individual develops imitative ability by
observing one’s own actions and, first and
foremost, through contacts with others.” (2)
For example, in experiments with marmosets,
researchers observed that the parents invested
Other research focused on the activation of
the human brain. “Up to now, imitation was
thought to be the most crucial ability for
understanding the actions of others. A case of
watch and imitate. EDICI research suggests
that the most important thing is the brain’s
intentional control over what it imitates.” This
means that humans are not automated copying machines. Brain imaging reveals that the
area of the brain that is active during imitation
is the exact same area that is active when we
are aware of what is happening to ourselves
or others.
“This could open up new possibilities for
the treatment of neurological disorders like
autism. Our results indicate a potential new
avenue of research on this area of the brain
associated with human representation of self
and others and the ability to distinguish self
from others. This research might well pave the
way for the development of new treatments –
for a variety of neurological impairments. It is
all very encouraging.”
Kirstine de Caritat
(1) The EDICI project (Evolution, development and intentional
control of imitation) is part of the European Nest Pathfinder
Initiative, ‘What it means to be human’.
ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/nest/docs/4-nest-what-it290507.pdf
(2) All quotes are from Ludwig Huber.
www.univie.ac.at/edici
COMMUNICATION
The meaning of sounds
V
ery recently, Yosuke, a Gabon grey
parrot living in a Tokyo suburb,
escaped from home. It was captured
by the police and taken to a veterinary clinic, where it insistently repeated the
name and address of its owner until it was
finally taken home. While this was just a case
of imitating human speech, some birds and
marine mammals are able to use language that
is just as complex as human language.
Detail and shades of meaning
© CNRS Photothèque/Marc Thery
Birds teach their young to sing in different
ways, depending on the species. It is generally
agreed that bird song is associated with mating
and territory. For instance, Thierry Aubin, an
ethologist and researcher at the French National
Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) Laboratory
for the Neurobiology of Learning, Memory and
Communication (NAMC)(1) believes that a skylark can say all in one go: “I belong to the skylark species, I am a male, I live in Brittany and
I am located near a large dune by the sea.”
A bird will sometimes sing for days at a time
before it attracts a mate and will not stop even
if an intruder bursts on the scene. On the
Communication via song is a characteristic of
birds, which in some circumstances is coupled
with a more aesthetic seduction technique.
Here a cock-of-the-rock parades on its chosen
site, where the bright light shows off its brightly
coloured plumage.
contrary it will listen to the intruder. All the
experts agree that birds sing out of a sense of
aesthetic pleasure, and many have drawn an
analogy between bird song and human music:
rhythm, repetition, intensity.
The singing of marine mammals, which was
unknown until the 1960s, is equally full of
nuances. Sound travels roughly four times
faster under water than it does through the air.
Cetaceans use sound in a variety of circumstances: for echolocation (2), whistles and calls
denoting different types of communication,
not forgetting their famous songs, so named on
account of their length and their complex and
repetitive structure.
This varied voice communication evolves
over time and differs not only from one
species to another but also within individual
species. Researchers are convinced that it is a
form of culture and a way of transmitting
behaviour from one generation to the next.
Chants and dialects
The humpback whale has been studied
extensively. Only the males sing and they do
this solely during mating season. As with birds,
Killer whale near Unimak Island, in Alaska.
Certain killer whales are bilingual and speak not
only the common language, but also a sort of
dialect specific to their group, that reinforces the
community’s identity.
scientists believe that these melodies are part
of the mating ritual and/or serve as signals to
rivals in the vicinity. Australian cetologist
Michael Noad, has also noticed that songs
evolve from season to season and, most importantly, are transmitted rapidly across wide
expanses of ocean. The result is that all whales
in that area sing from the same musical score.
Killer whales (Orcas) even speak different
dialects. This surprising discovery relates only
to sedentary populations. Unlike the less talkative migratory killer whale, the sedentary type
has developed a sort of private language that
is understood only by the members of its pod
(a small group of animals living together). To
communicate outside the pod, these bilingual
killer whales use a common language that is
understood by all killer whales, which reinforces the community’s cohesion and identity.
Unfortunately, a shadow has been cast over
this underwater hit parade. Human-generated
noise in the marine environment (propellers,
seismic sounding, offshore drilling and various
types of sonar) are becoming invasive. The noise
pollution appears to be doubling every decade,
shrinking the auditory domain of marine
mammals. It is a worrying development for
those animals that rely on their sense of hearing
to find, among other things, their bearings, food
and a mate.
K. de C.
(1) Laboratoire de Neurobiologie de l’Apprentissage, de la Mémoire
et de la Communication, CNRS, Université Paris-Sud (FR).
(2) This biological orientation and guidance mechanism allows
certain animals, such as bats, to emit high-frequency
sounds that are reflected back from surrounding surfaces,
indicating the relative distance and direction of these
surfaces.
Centre for Mammal Vocal Communication
Research, University of Sussex (UK)
www.lifesci.sussex.ac.uk/cmvcr/Home.html
NAMC
www.namc.u-psud.fr/
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
27
© CNRS Photothèque/CEBC/Christophe Guinet
There are many ways of communicating, some
totally silent. ‘Talking’ apes answer their observers
in sign language, bees express themselves in dance
and many animals modulate their calls. Some
species, including birds and cetaceans, possess
extraordinarily complex singing talents.
© Shutterstock
American primatologists Jeanne
and Stuart Altmann have been
studying the yellow baboon
(Papio cynocephalus) from Kenya’s
Amboseli region since 1971.
Female baboons delouse one another.
The baboons have a matriarchal
society; the females form long-term
social bonds whereas males move
from one group to another.
Certain females appear to be
particularly friendly, spending
a lot of time delousing or
intervening in cases of conflict.
Between 1984 and 1999,
the researchers observed the
group’s demographic evolution:
pregnancies, births and infant
survival rates, dominance ranks
and, in particular, the behaviour
of 108 female baboons. The
conclusion of this long-term
observation in the wild was that
the more social the mother is,
the greater the chances of her
offspring surviving their first year
of life (considered to be the most
crucial year). Why is this? Social
contacts are known to reduce
physiological stress in a number of
species. The researchers also
speculate that infants lucky
enough to have a kind mother
have easier access to food and
more effective protection.
www.sciencemag.org/
28
Does the theory
of evolution
underestimate
cooperation?
A growing number of specialists
believe that the theory of
evolution has underestimated
cooperation between organisms,
which is dominated by a Darwinist
survival of the fittest interpretation
that focuses far too much on
competition. Numerous examples
of co-evolution and symbiosis
attest to the spontaneous tendency
of living beings to form relationships
for their mutual benefit. These
relationships rely on countless
signals where the recipient
belongs to another species or
even a different kingdom.
Together with British scientist
James Lovelock and pioneering
American microbiologist Lynn
Margulis, a professor at the
University of Massachusetts
has developed the theory that
the Earth itself can be seen as
a symbiosis of all its inhabitants (1).
Even without going as far as this,
it is hard to deny the fundamental
importance of relationships in the
living world.
(1) Lynn Margulis, Symbiotic Planet: a new look
at evolution, Basic Books, 1998
Looks aren’t
everything…
Female passerine birds (in this
case, lark buntings) look beyond
physical appearances when they
set their sights on a particular
male. Their choice appears to
depend less on his size and the
colours of his plumage than on the
ecological situation at the time.
Researchers Alexis Chaine from
the French National Centre for
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
© Alexis Chaine
Social mothers
enhance infant
survival
© Alexis Chaine
IN BRIEF
The female lark bunting (on the left) chooses her mate based on a number
of criteria other than his physical appearance.
Scientific Research (CNRS) and
Bruce Lyon from the University of
California, Santa Cruz (USA), have
highlighted this selection criterion
designed to ensure genetic
diversity. The aim of female
buntings is for the largest possible
number of eggs to hatch (1).
This induces them to elect a mate
on the basis of his ability to feed
their future offspring. If the nest
is located near the ground where
mice prowl they will choose a
male whose wings are spotted
white, which frightens the rodents.
If it is a poor year for grasshoppers
(the buntings’ favourite food)
females will take a mate with
a beak large enough to catch
other insects. According to the
researchers, females’ preferences
entail a sexual selection dynamic
that is almost certainly present
in other species too.
(1) Alexis S. Chaine, Bruce E. Lyon, Adaptive
plasticity in female mate choice dampens sexual
selection on male ornaments in the lark bunting,
science, 25 January 2008.
Cunning ploys
of prey
An insect will stand absolutely
still before its predator, as when
a grasshopper meets a toad. Why
doesn’t it jump out of the way?
Because that would mean certain
death. The predator will attempt
to catch its prey only when it
jumps. According to ethologist
and philosopher, Vinciane Despret,
a jackdaw does not recognise
a grasshopper’s shape when it
is motionless and it is only when
it leaps that the jackdaw can pick
it out from the confusing mass of
forms all around(1). The grasshopper
has learned that its predator is
unable to detect motionless forms.
A further finding is that small birds
actually build their nests close to
their predators’ habitat. The reason
for this appears to be that an
animal’s habitat is impregnated
with the odour of the animal that
lives there. Because the predator
considers the area where its
potential victim has come to live
as an extension of its own body,
it does not use it as a hunting
ground. A creature will not eat
itself. As Jacob von Uexhüll has
shown (see pages 6-7), we must
look to the meanings of these
ploys that may seem strange to
us but are in fact an important
feature of the animal world.
(1) Vinciane Despret, Bêtes et hommes,
Gallimard, 2007
© Michel Vanden Eeckhoudt
usage & abusage
“Human beings are the only
animals of which I am thoroughly
and cravenly afraid.”
George Bernard Shaw
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research
research
NUMÉRO
SPECIALSPÉCIAL
ISSUE I NOVEMBER
I OCTOBRE 2008
29
COHABITATION
Cunning canines…
Long scorned by
psychologists in favour
of the chimpanzee or
rat, the dog has come
into the spotlight in
recent years. This is
because dogs are
unusually skilled at
reading human social
and communicative
behaviour: the product
of a long history of
cohabitation.
“T
he only thing he can’t do is
speak!” Is there anyone who
hasn’t heard a poodle or
German Shepherd owner
boast how very clever their companion is?
Without going as far as to endow them with
human intelligence, nobody would deny that
dogs have a special relationship with humans.
Despite this, researchers have long preferred
30
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
to work with great apes, which are philogenetically more closely related to humans, or
rats, which are easier to breed in the laboratory. Early this century, though, a number of
research results reawakened scientists’ interest
in canines, which have proven to be astonishingly adept at deciphering the codes of human
social and communicative behaviour (much
better than primates, in fact). “For psychologists, dogs may be the new chimpanzees,”
announced American, Paul Bloom, in 2004 (1).
Rico, 200 words
This year, a research team from the Max
Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
in Leipzig (DE), headed by Julia Fischer (2),
went to study Rico, a border collie that its owners claim “understands more than 200 words.”
These are names of toys or small objects that
the dog fetches on demand, for which he
receives a reward. Rico began his apprenticeship
at the age of 10 months. First the researchers
checked his abilities using controlled experiments in which his mistress was not allowed
to give him any clues – even unintentionally.
The border collie never once chose the wrong
object. To test his skills further, the scientists
then placed an “unknown” toy among a few
familiar toys. When Rico’s mistress called out
its name, which Rico had never heard before,
© Courtesy Julia Fischer
Rico the Border collie knows all his
toys by name. He has a remarkably
extensive vocabulary and is able to
establish a link between a word and
an object with astounding speed and
recall.
the dog immediately guessed that the word
denoted the unknown object and brought it
back. Four weeks later he could still remember the new name.
Perhaps Rico is an exceptional dog?
Undoubtedly he is, judging by the extent of
his vocabulary, which Max Planck Institute
researchers deem to be “comparable with that
of trained great apes, dolphins, parrots or sea
lions.” Without going so far as to equate the
dog’s performance to language learning by
human babies, they believe that Rico is able to
establish a link between a word and an object.
Paul Bloom is more sceptical, pointing out
that Rico ‘learns’ only in a play situation and
then only the names of objects he is able to
fetch. In his view, Rico the border collie does
not assimilate the name of categories of
objects but simply associates the word with
the act of fetching. Another serious limitation
is that the test works only with the dog’s mistress. Nonetheless, the speed with which Rico
learns vocabulary shows that, like rats and
chimpanzees, dogs are capable of inference, a
process of logic that leads to a conclusion.
Power of signs
At the same time, more general experiments were conducted on untrained animals
with no special emotional ties with experi-
COHABITATION
menters. It soon became apparent that it was
not just a question of one exceptional individual but that the entire species had the same
abilities. All the studies were identical in
nature: first of all, researchers would set out
several identical boxes after hiding food or
another attractive object in one of them. They
would then let the animal into the room and
use a variety of cues to indicate the correct box,
such as pointing with a finger, gazing at the
box, nodding their heads or placing a coloured
cube on top of the box. In other words, by
using cues typical of non-verbal human communication. By the age of 14 months, puppies
had no difficulty in understanding this type of
cue. By contrast, chimpanzees failed dismally.
It took them dozens of attempts before they
learned to use the information given by the
experimenter and proved unable to generalise
these skills when novel cues were given that
closely resembled the one previously learned
(for example, if experimenters turned their
heads around instead of nodding). Dogs are
able to resolve this problem with the greatest
of ease from the first attempt.
Other experiments have shown that the
canine species understands the fact that humans
see with their eyes, and acts accordingly. For
example, if a trainer throws a ball for a dog to
fetch and then turns their back, the dog will
bring the ball back around the trainer’s body
to drop it in front of them. A dog will choose
to beg food from a human whose eyes are visible rather than from a nearby person who is
blindfolded (something that chimpanzees do
not do). Similarly, a dog will approach a forbidden object only when experimenters have
their eyes closed or if there is a windowless
wall between dog and experimenter.
These results are all the more surprising
since dogs have real trouble in deciphering
non-social cues and are barely able to fathom
the physical world. By contrast, a chimpanzee
will understand immediately that when it sees
two boards, one lying flat on the ground and
the other tilted up, it means that the food is
hidden under the raised board. Dogs are totally
incapable of this.
Wolves and foxes
Why is it that even though great apes have
superior cognitive intelligence, dogs can outperform them when it comes to communicat-
ing with humans or with their conspecifics?
German psychologist Michael Tomasello (3)
recently published a research review on the
subject and put forward an explanation. First he
ruled out the training hypothesis, as it turned
out that litter-reared puppies (with relatively
little exposure to humans) had the same ability to understand cues as adult dogs that had
been raised by humans. The fact that the dog’s
ancestors, wolves, are social pack hunters and
need to read the social behaviour of their fellow hunters does not go far in explaining the
dog’s ability to read human social and communicative behaviour either. Even where
wolves have been reared by humans, they are
unable to understand human cues, although
they do as well as, if not better than, dogs in
non-social problem solving or memory tasks.
Michael Tomasello believes that the answer
lies in the dog’s specific evolutionary history.
“This leaves the possibility that dogs’ social
skills evolved during the process of domestication; that is, during the tens of thousands of
years that our two species have lived together,”
he writes. Even though it is impossible to date
accurately, thousands of years ago humans
began to domesticate the wolves that prowled
around their settlements in search of scraps.
Over time, humans gradually selected those
wolves that were not afraid of or aggressive
towards them. Was this behaviour selection
sufficient to endow these animals with the
skills for reading human social-communicative
behaviour? Amazingly enough, it seems that it
was. Tomasello cites as evidence long-term
domestication experiments conducted on foxes
in Siberia. Over a 40-year period, an experimental population was selectively bred
according to a single criterion – whether they
would fearlessly and non-aggressively
approach a human. The second population
was maintained as a control and had been
bred randomly with respect to their behaviour
towards humans. When fox kits from this
domesticated population were compared with
age-matched dog puppies on the basic fingerpointing and gaze-following tests, the untrained
foxes were as skilled as the dogs in using the
human social cues. By contrast, the domesticated foxes were no more skilled than their
wild counterparts in performing non-social
tasks. “Perhaps most surprisingly, research
with domesticated foxes suggests that a dog’s
skills for reading human social-communicative
behaviour might have initially evolved as an
incidental by-product of selection for tame
behaviour,” adds the researcher.
Inevitably this raises another question: how
is it that chimpanzees have failed to develop
social and communicative abilities whereas
humans have, despite being so closely related
philogenetically? After all, the chimpanzee,
and still more the bonobo, seems to have many
of the non-social problem-solving skills. Also,
they are capable of assessing what another
individual can see, attributing intentions to
others and can draw inferences from the goaldirected actions of experimenters and conspecifics. In short, chimpanzees have all the
requisite cognitive skills for understanding
human social-communicative behaviours.
Michael Tomasello believes that the answer lies
in the natural tendency of chimpanzees to compete. Experiments have shown that a chimpanzee will cooperate with a conspecific only
when there is no possibility of being attacked
(owing to a physical barrier between them)
and when there is a prospect of reward.
Otherwise, dominance relationships inhibit
any form of cooperation. There is little use in
developing sophisticated communication
skills when individuals are unable to share the
rewards of joint effort. Following this line of
reasoning, Tomasello advances the hypothesis
that an important first step in the evolution of
modern human societies was a period of selfdomestication during which a human-like temperament was selected (“Individuals within a
social group either killed or ostracised those
who were over-aggressive or despotic”). Thus,
like domestic dogs, this selection for tamer
emotional reactivity may have put our hominid
ancestors in a new adaptive space within which
modern human-like forms of social interaction
and communication could be selected. So,
although dogs do not have the power of
speech themselves, they may have helped us
to understand how we humans have acquired
it.
Patrick Philipon
(1) Paul Bloom, Can a dog learn a word? Science 304, 1605,
2004.
(2) Juliane Kaminski, Josep Call, Julia Fischer, Word learning
in a domestic dog: evidence for “fast mapping” Science 304,
1682, 2004.
(3) Brian Hare & Michael Tomasello, Human-like socials skills
in dogs? Trends in cognitive sciences, 9(9), 439, 2005.
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
31
Agricultural fair
at Libramont
(Belgium), 2008.
© Courtesy Jocelyne Porcher
Pigs living outdoors
on Francis Surnom’s
farm (FR).
“Animal production
In Jocelyne Porcher’s
view, it is in true animal
husbandry that human
and animal societies
come together. That is
quite the reverse of the
alienation typifying
industrial pig farms.
Comments from an
angry sociologist.
“I
was just an ordinary pig, born
from a Sigma-Archi + sow and a
plastic straw of boar semen from
a highly composite crossbreed.
170 days after I was born, I died in an industrial slaughterhouse along with 6 000 of my fellow
creatures, all on the same day in the same place.
We lived uneventful lives governed by the procedures and schedules of scientists and technicians.” That is how Jocelyne Porcher begins
32
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
her contemporary story of an ordinary pig,
The contemporary history of a pig without
history (L’histoire contemporaine d’un cochon
sans histoire) (1). She narrates her account in
the person of the pig, the better to introduce
us to the harsh world of ‘animal production’.
In her latest book, A pig’s life (Une vie de
cochon) written jointly with former pig sector
employee, Christine Tribondeau, she narrates
in the guise of a little girl, Solenn, who
observes the life of her mother, an employee
in an industrial pig farm, with all the innocence of her 10 years.
Jocelyne Porcher is a consummate sociologist. In 2002, her thesis, Eleveurs et animaux,
réinventer le lien (livestock producers and animals, reinventing the bond) won the Le Monde
award for academic research designed to promote young doctors. She turned her thesis into
a book, in which she makes a shrewd but sensitive and detailed analysis of the way relations between humans and animals have
evolved through the ages – all the way to the
alienation that ‘animal production’ has now
come to represent (she refuses to dignify it
with the title of animal husbandry). Whether
the narrator is an animal, a little girl or the
researcher herself, it is always rebellion that
fires her writing. Rebellion against a system that
is just as merciless with the animals it produces
as it is with the men and women it employs.
No need to make a choice
One of the things that make Jocelyne
Porcher’s work so original is her refusal to
choose between the welfare of humans and
that of animals. Instead she believes in a bond
between beast and human that dates back
thousands of years. It is a bond that she strives
not to idealise but which she believes formerly
enriched both species. In industrial systems,
“the most commonly shared sentiment is suffering,” she says. Animals suffer because they
are torn from their world, because they never
catch a glimpse of nature or the sun and because
they must gain weight as fast as possible, in
tedious monotony, in order to hasten their day
of slaughter. The people who work in industrial systems feel ethical suffering, as they are
forced to suppress the part of themselves that
protests, that is distressed at causing suffering,
at the death everywhere, at having to do such
distasteful work. Jocelyne Porcher also points
to a lack of recognition from society, which is
© Michel Vanden Eeckhoudt
PORTRAIT
PORTRAIT
quick to accuse pig producers of being polluters or even poisoners, as well as lack of
recognition of the animals themselves, through
which the bond has been lost. The end result is
that the sector has been hit by a chronic labour
shortage, testifying to the difficulties encountered by employees, despite their being much
more highly paid than the average farm worker.
Develop armour plating and get out
Jocelyne Porcher has examined in great
detail the defence mechanisms that pig sector
employees strive to develop to preserve their
sense of identity in spite of their lethal work
shock” (as Jocelyne Porcher describes it) that
was to map the future course of her life. In the
pig industry she met with a system obsessed
with profit which, since 1970, had managed to
cut the interval between service and farrowing
from 21 to 8 days, and the weaning period
from 52 days to 25, while increasing the number
of piglets per sow from 16 to 27.
She resumed her studies whilst continuing
to work, and obtained first a technical diploma and then an engineering diploma, during
which time she discovered sociology and
embarked on a thesis on animal production.
In 2003, INRA, the French National Institute
find it hard. By contrast, in industrial systems,
we humans grab all we can from the animal,
without pity or compassion, but give nothing
back in exchange.”
Jocelyne Porcher believes that we should
continue to eat meat if we wish but “we should
not expect to pay rock-bottom prices for it.”
Meat should be priced high enough to enable
livestock breeders to earn a living from doing a
good job that is fair to animals – a price that
allows access to quality products in a way other
than by “perpetuating this indefensible system.”
Is Porcher too involved to make a good
scientist? This frequently heard criticism elicits
a smile and a stinging reply: “In my experience, objective research is a goal that often
goes hand in hand with gross cowardice.
When all is said and done, everybody does
research to change things. That is also the
is the opposite
of animal husbandry”
(what they call their “armour plating”). The
problem is perhaps more acute for women, in
whom the researcher takes a special interest.
Even though some women try hard to adopt
the virile attitude so prevalent in the profession (“We can do anything a man can do”), to
make the best of the suffering (“We’re no
slackers”), whilst minimising the situation (“It
could be worse” or “I can’t complain”), in the
end, the armour plating (“I’ve become hardened to it”) often cracks and many of these
women leave the profession. “You lose track
of who you are,” says the researcher. “You feel
‘dirty’, ‘numbed’, and ‘you frighten yourself’.”
Jocelyne Porcher’s sociology research is of
a private and personal kind that reflects her
unusual path in life. She was brought up in a
modest, urban family and began her working
life as a secretary in a large Parisian firm. At
the age of 24, she moved from the city to the
countryside where, by chance, she gradually
became a dairy-ewe breeder – a job she held
for five years, learning as she went along. The
whims of fate then took her to Brittany (FR),
where nostalgia for her old life as a livestock
breeder prompted her to apply for a job in an
industrial pig farm. It was this “existential
for Agricultural Research (Institut National de
Recherche Agronomique) recruited her to study
workplace suffering in the livestock production
sector. She found the research fascinating.
Give and take
Despite her criticisms of industrial systems,
Porcher fiercely opposes the various ‘animal
liberation’ movements as a philosophy that
imagines a future for animals only in the wilds
of nature, which are clearly shrinking away to
nothing. “Their aim is to separate humans
from animals; that is to say, there should be no
interaction between them at all.” The idea is
rubbish to this advocate of ‘true animal husbandry’. She points out that “true livestock
breeders” take pride in their animals and care
about their appearance, as testified by the
time-honoured tradition of livestock shows. In
her view, this traditional desire for beauty is
completely at odds with the ugliness found in
industrial concentrations of animals.
“Animal husbandry is based on a relationship of give and take. We give to animals, they
give to us in return, we give again, and so it
goes… That is why livestock breeders believe
slaughter to be legitimate even though they
vocation of INRA where I work, which conducts targeted research…” Duly noted. But is
it too late to turn back the clock, as industrial
systems have become so prevalent? “Of course
you could argue that what I am doing is futile
and will change nothing. That’s simply not
true. Everything that people read, hear and
see counts for something. Although I am not
necessarily optimistic, I believe it is better to
fight than to bow to pressure. And I for one
shall never back down…”
Yves Sciama
(1) www.cairn.info/load_pdf.php?ID_ARTICLE=RDM_023_0397
A few of Jocelyne Porcher’s works:
Eleveurs et Animaux, réinventer le Lien,
PUF, 2002.
La mort n’est pas notre métier,
Editions de l’Aube, 2003.
Bien-être animal et travail en élevage. Textes
à l’appui, Educagri/Editions Quae, 2004.
Etre bête. L’esprit des étables (with Vinciane
Despret), Editions Actes Sud, 2007.
Une vie de cochon (with Christine
Tribondeau), La Découverte, 2008.
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
33
© FAO/Arif Ariadi
ZOONOSES
Fragile species barrier
There have been two alerts in recent years:
outbreaks of new forms of Creutzfeldt-Jakob
disease in the late 1990s and of severe acute
respiratory syndrome in 2003. Both were cases
of an animal pathogen being transmitted to
humans. For the most part, it is a serious delusion
to think that the famous species barrier can be
protected. According to the European Med-Vet-Net
network, more than 60 % of the 1 400 or so
microbes responsible for human infectious
diseases may have come from animals.
T
wenty-five years ago, general
improvements in hygiene, the
invention of antibiotics and the
widespread use of vaccination lulled
us into believing that the problem of infectious
diseases had been resolved, or nearly so. The
sudden emergence of AIDS in the early 1980s
dampened this euphoria. A new virus that had
suddenly migrated from great apes to humans
has caused the worst pandemic the world has
seen since the 1919 Spanish flu pandemic. For
time immemorial, new diseases have emerged
as a result of a pathogen passing from its animal reservoir to Homo sapiens. Rabies, West
Nile virus and yellow fever are the most typical examples of this. The world ecological crisis (including deforestation and global
warming), coupled with globalisation (trade in
tropical animals, foodstuffs, tourism and so
on), are multiplying the opportunities for new
contacts between animals and humans and
heightening this age-old threat.
Although zoonoses have been known for
more than a century (the term ‘zoonosis’
appears in Ernst Wagner’s handbook of general pathology, Handbuch der allgemeinen
pathologie, published in 1876), these diseases
are still a long way from yielding all their
secrets. To pass from animal to human, a virus,
34
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
bacterium or parasite must cross a series of
biological barriers before it can multiply on
the surface of the human body, colonise its
internal environment, multiply there after
evading the human immune defence system
and, in the worst scenario, be transmitted from
person to person. Why are certain pathogens
able to effortlessly negotiate these phases,
each of which involves multiple modifications
to their genetic programme? Nobody knows.
We are still struggling to understand how the
mysterious infectious prion of bovine spongiform encephalopathy managed to pass to
humans without actually causing the feared
epidemic.
Campylobacter infections
Advances in molecular genetics allow the
problem to be tackled from a new angle. One
of the basic research strands of Med-Vet-Net,
a network of 300 researchers working to prevent
and control zoonoses, concerns campylobacter
infections (or campylobacteriosis) and gastrointestinal infections, which are one of leading
causes of bacterial food poisoning in Europe.
Campylobacter jejuni, a subtype of the campylobacter bacterium commonly found in poultry
and livestock, is dangerous to humans. More
than 100 strains have been listed, but it is almost
Vaccination against avian influenza
in Djakarta (Indonesia).
impossible to determine their pathogenicity
on the basis of their DNA gene pool. This has
led to a research effort to identify the virulence factors in the bacterium’s genome and to
learn more about the mechanisms for contamination and foodborne transmission from animals to humans.
Keeping watch on two lists
Meanwhile, the only solution is to maintain
close epidemiological surveillance of the health
of humans, as well as of domestic and wild animals. Veterinarians, doctors and food safety
specialists are all involved. Med-Vet-Net’s primary task is to monitor the pathogens thought
to cause outbreaks of the zoonoses listed by the
European Council and Parliament in late 2003.
List A includes eight diseases that are subject to
continual surveillance. The most common ones
cause foodborne gastrointestinal infections and
can be serious in young children and elderly
people. Apart from campylobacteriosis, such
gastrointestinal infections can be caused by
Listeria, Salmonella and certain Escherichia
coli bacteria, as well as by a parasitic worm
(trichinellosis). A much more serious disease is
echinococcosis, which is contracted from eating wild fruit that has been soiled with the
excrement of carnivores like foxes. Other diseases, such as brucellosis or tuberculosis
caused by Mycobacterium bovis, mainly affect
livestock producers and their contacts. List B
diseases, which include rabies, West Nile fever
and avian influenza, are zoonoses for which
surveillance must commence as soon as a case
is identified. So as to be at the ready…
Mikhaïl Stein
www.medvetnet.org
[email protected]
ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION
Contentious
alter of progress
Between 1901 and 2002, the Nobel Prize in
physiology or medicine was awarded on
68 occasions to scientists who had used animal
experimentation. While it is hard to deny that
these practices have advanced science, do they
need to be used systematically when alternative
methods are available?
A
bandon experiments and tests on
animals altogether? Animal ethicists want just that, or at least they
denounce some of the conditions
under which animal experiments and tests
take place. Back in 1959, the zoologist William
Russell, together with microbiologist Rex Bruch,
developed the ‘three Rs’ concept (Reduction,
Refinement, Replacement). Reduction of the
number of animals subjected to experiments.
A few figures
E
very year, 100 million animals are used
for research worldwide. Europe used
12.1 million of this total in 2005,
of which 78 % were rodents and rabbits,
15 % cold-blooded animals and 5 % birds.
More than 60 % of all animals are used for
human and veterinary medical research,
dentistry and biology, and 8 % are used for
toxicology testing and other safety assessments.
The number of animals used to research animal
diseases has increased significantly
(from 900 000 in 2002 to 1 329 000 in 2005),
owing to livestock epidemics and the risk of
avian influenza and zoonoses.
Refinement, that is to say, diminishing pain
and stress (which are known to disrupt
numerous behavioural and physiological
parameters). Wherever possible, replacement
of animals with models that do not use living
animals. The ‘three Rs’ concept became increasingly feasible after the introduction of in vitro
testing on cells and reconstituted tissue, as well
as in silico computerised methods.
We also know that animals do not necessarily respond in the same way as humans, sometimes to the latter’s detriment. In London’s
Northwick Park Hospital in 2006, six of the
eight volunteers who had been injected with
TGN1412 (an auto-immune disease treatment
used to successfully treat non-human animals)
suffered serious multiple organ failure. The two
volunteers to emerge unscathed were the
patients who had been given a placebo.
Europe and alternatives
It was to cut down on animal experimentation that the European Commission created
ECVAM (European Centre for the Validation of
Alternative Methods), in 1991, as part of its
Joint Research Centre in Ispra (IT). To meet its
objective of validating alternative methods,
ECVAM works in collaboration with Member
State administrations, industry sectors and
universities. The information amassed by
ECVAM, which is currently the world leader in
this field, can be consulted on its SIS
(Scientific Information Service) database.
Since 1991, Europe has supported numerous
research projects to validate alternative methods,
including three integrated projects involving
more than 90 public and industrial laboratories.
The A-Cute-Tox project is examining a strategy
for replacing current in vivo procedures for
acute systemic toxicity testing; Re-Pro-Tect is
studying reproductive toxicity (fertility, embryo
implants, etc.) and Sens-it-iv explores skin and
lung allergies caused by a reaction to certain
products, in order to develop an in vitro strategy.
European Union legislation is based on
Directive 86/609 (1986), which implements
the ‘three Rs’ concept. Prior to revising the
directive, the Commission published a questionnaire on the Internet in 2006. A total of
42 655 people answered, of whom 93 % stated
that they wished to see animal welfare
increased; 79 % felt that the European Union
did not give sufficient funding for researching
alternative methods and a further 92 % believed
that the EU could be a world leader in promoting these actions.
Despite this, many scientists remain convinced that they would be unable to continue
their often highly specialised research if they
were to stop using live animals, especially
transgenic animals.
Didier Buysse
EVCAM:
http://ecvam.jrc.it/index.htm
EURCA (European Resource Centre for
Alternatives in Higher Education):
www.eurca.org/
IVTIP (In vitro testing industrial platform):
www.ivtip.org/
Euorgroup for Animals,
a European animal welfare organisation:
www.eurogroupforanimals.org/
European projects:
www.acutetox.org/
www.reprotect.eu/
www.sens-it-iv.eu/
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
35
INTERVIEW
Ethics
such loaded and ambiguous terminology. In
itself, the term ‘welfare’ conveys nothing of why
we should ensure that we respect it in animals. Welfare is only a state, the definition of
which is not only ambiguous but, most importantly, highly subjective. As I write in my book,
“the science of animal welfare is an independent
and technical discipline that examines not
whether humans should seek to improve animal
welfare and why, but only how.”
Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer, a 29 year-old
doctor of philosophy and political science,
with a Master of Laws from McGill University
(Canada), formerly taught animal ethics to
veterinary students in Montreal and is now
a visiting researcher at Yale University (USA).
His musings have culminated in a book on
animal ethics (1), the first part of which is
philosophical while the second part describes
the suffering that certain practices can inflict
on sentient beings. This is in spite of all the talk
about animal welfare and rights.
Does the poorly understood concept
of animal ethics both encompass and go
beyond the much more common notions
of animal ‘rights’ and ‘welfare’?
The notions of ‘rights’ and ‘welfare’ are too
vague yet at the same time too restrictive.
36
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
People speak of animal ‘rights’ without specifying whether this means legal rights or only
moral rights – and often assume that all animal
advocates inevitably see the issue in these
terms, which is not true. Some defend a theory
of animal ‘rights’, while others prefer to avoid
Talk ethics, think ‘philosophy’…
In fact, animal ethics is a branch of applied
ethics, which in turn is a branch of ethics – in
other words, moral philosophy. Defined as the
study of the moral responsibility of humans
towards animals (taken individually), it is the
discipline that brings together all of these
queries on the moral status of animals, that is
to say on what is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ to do to animals, and why.
Animal ethics therefore encompasses the
notions of both rights and welfare, which
divide animal ethicists into two camps. Animal
rights theory advocates (deontologists), who
also tend to be abolitionists – that is to say, they
seek to abolish all animal use – stand in fierce
opposition to ethicists, who wish to improve
animal welfare and no more (welfarists).
Animal welfare supporters therefore do not call
into question the actual fact of using animals,
although they may wish to abolish certain
practices, examined on a case-by-case basis
and not simply by virtue of the fact that they
use animals.
The primary motivation of both animal
welfare supporters and deontologists
seems to be the notion of suffering.
But if we examine the suffering of species,
comparing humans with non-humans,
the differences are striking…
That’s true. Contrary to popular belief, the
aim is not to treat animals as humans or vice
versa. As Peter Singer would say, it is a question
INTERVIEW
for animals?
of equal consideration for different interests,
different capabilities, which therefore calls for
different treatment.
Some animals at least (leaving aside borderline cases), share with humans the capacity
to suffer. This shared capacity does not imply
a similarity between the suffering of animals
and humans, or even between individuals in
the respective animal and human groups.
There are two essential differences. On the
one hand, human awareness, which allows us
to imagine suffering, can itself be a source of
suffering, which makes it doubly onerous: a
person sentenced to death suffers in the
knowledge that he or she will die in six
months, whereas the ox has no idea. On the
other hand, the ignorance of animals can also
be a source of suffering. Unlike a human, a
wild animal is unable to make a distinction
between an attempt to capture and restrain it
and an attempt to kill it. Beyond these differences, what animal ethics is interested in is
what humans and animals share and, most
importantly, what this common capacity to
suffer implies for humans in their dealings
with animals.
Do you feel that Europe (particularly
via Community directives) is leading the
way, or is on the right path, in terms of
respect for and protection of animal life?
I believe we need to draw a distinction
between ‘respect’ for and ‘protection’ of animal
life. Regarding protection, Europe is clearly
a pioneer: numerous widespread practices that
raise absolutely no concern in North America
have been banned in Europe for many years
and the European Commission seems to be
ambitious in this domain, especially in reference to cage-rearing systems. But is it truly out
of ‘respect’ for animals? Or, indirectly, is it solely for the benefit of humans, for the image that
humans wish to portray of themselves, for
public health and for the quality of the human
environment? Paradoxically, I feel that greater
respect for animals can be found among some
of the peoples that, legally speaking, ‘protect’
them the least. I refer to peoples that live with
and among nature without seeking to dominate
it and to others, especially Eastern peoples
who have a system of beliefs not founded on
the exaltation of humans.
In your view, what are the specific
areas where abuses call for rapid changes
in legislation?
There is not a single situation that could not
be improved. The highest priority is factory
farming. Europe is still far from meeting its
declared objectives, especially concerning
battery cages for laying hens, veal crates for
calves and stalls for sows. There is also much
to say about bullfighting, foie gras, zoos, circuses and the development of animal testing
alternatives.
The link between animal protection and
foreign policy should not be underestimated
either. When policy speaks with a single voice
(and therein lies the rub), Europe can bring a
lot of pressure to bear on international issues
like seal or whale hunting and, in general, on
international trade in animal products that
endanger certain species or perpetuate reprehensible practices.
Europeans should also realise that if Europe
fails to act there is little chance of other countries doing so. Also, the eyes of the world, particularly North American animal ethicists, are
on Europe.
You have written a book where part
one is devoted to theory and part two
to a summary of the facts, but without
really linking the two together. Was this
a deliberate pedagogical choice?
Yes, for three reasons. First, I felt it to be the
clearest and most systematic means of presenting the discipline as a whole. Second,
linking the two parts together without repeating the full gamut of possible positions every
time would mean imposing a certain theory
on the reader, my own) – which I wanted to
be implicit rather than obtrusive. By refraining
from making an explicit link, I left readers free
to choose their own theory for interpreting
practices. Third, the Socratic Method advocates the self-questioning approach. My book
does not give ready-made solutions, but rather
tools to enable individuals to find their way
around the animal ethics field based on their
own preferences.
In part two, you present a number of
highly diverse ‘practices’ – including
bullfighting, force-feeding of geese and
factory farming –which are equally
cruel. Is there anything in common
between these different ways of using
animals? Should they be seen as ways of
reifying animals, of demonstrating the
power of humans… or should we avoid
lumping issues together?
What all these uses have in common is
indeed a certain reification of animals which is
still the rule in public opinion, although it is
currently evolving in law (in certain countries).
We might get the impression, due to overzealous pet fanatics confusing pets with family
members, that we have moved beyond the
concept of animal-as-object to one of animalas-subject. But in fact, I consider the opposite
to be true. To me, such fanatic behaviour is the
clearest proof of the reification of animals,
which humans still use as substitutes, ornaments, or to enhance status.
In fact, a common thread that runs through
all these issues, apart from the reification of
animals, is the need for humans to prove to
themselves their power and superiority, since
humans are the only creatures who can look
at themselves. Another common thread is their
profound selfishness, as humans find it
extremely difficult to value the interests of
species other than their own – or even the
interests of others in their own species (people
who are not of the same social, ethnic, religious or geographical background).
Interview by Christine Rugemer
(1) Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer, Ethique animale,
Paris, PUF, 2008.
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
37
IN BRIEF
The striking and flamboyant killdeer
(a species of plover) is a North
American shorebird with a few tricks
up its sleeve. Should a predator
come too close to its nest or
young, it will either attack directly
or use the ‘broken-wing ploy’ to
distract the predator. This involves
the killdeer hobbling away from its
nesting area holding its wing as
though it were broken, then
flapping around on the ground
and emitting a distress call. This
tricks the predator into following
what it sees as easy prey. After
continuing to hobble for a while,
the killdeer suddenly flies off.
Meanwhile, its fledglings have
remained safe and sound, either
by keeping quiet and staying put
or by scattering in all directions.
find out whether it is society that
determines roles and influences
choices from early childhood. The
team compared the behaviour of
11 male and
23 female rhesus monkeys that
had never been subjected to
example or exhortation. Like
human boys, the male monkeys
exhibited a clear preference for
wheeled toys. By contrast, the
females were much more eclectic
and touched all the toys. “As
monkeys are not influenced by
advertising or criticism regarding
toy choice, it suggests that they
choose toys on the basis of the
activities the toys encourage,”
explains one of the researchers,
Kim Wallen. Sensible monkeys…
www.yerkes.emory.edu/
Two-voice penguins
Boy toys, girl toys…
Flocks of penguins breed at the
same time on the same little patch
of land. Before long, the racket is
so deafening that even a cat
Self-medication
Researchers are keenly interested
to learn how animals treat their
own ills. Michael Huffman (Primate
Research Institute, University of
Kyoto) is an expert on the subject
© CNRS Photothèque/Yves Handrich
© Yerkes National Primate Research Center
Researchers at the Yerkes National
Primate Research Center at Emory
return. It’s all done by ear. Every
penguin has its very own two-voice
song. This is because its soundproducing apparatus is a two-part
organ (the syrinx) located at the
junction of the bronchi. As each
branch of the syrinx produces
sound independently, it means
that a penguin produces two
different voices at once. It is the
quivering beat generated by the
interaction of these two
fundamental frequencies that
conveys information about
individual identity.
Female rhesus monkey showing an
interest in wheeled objects.
Colony of king penguins in the Crozet Islands, a subantarctic archipelago
in the southern Indian Ocean.
University in Atlanta (USA) were
interested in testing differences
in behaviour between male and
female monkeys. They set out to
test their taste in toys, which
in humans tends to be rather
gender-specific, e.g. cars, drums or
guns for boys, and dolls, cooking
utensils and other ‘feminine’
articles such as stuffed animals for
girls. The researchers wanted to
couldn’t locate its own kittens,
whereas a penguin, be it emperor
or king, has no trouble at all. The
throng of baby penguins is left to
its own devices when the parents
go off in search of food –
sometimes for weeks at a time.
Even though the fledglings are
totally blind and have scarcely any
sense of smell, they recognise
their parents the moment they
38
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
who has focused his research on
the diet of the great apes. It “often
consists of a variety of nonnutritional plants, containing
secondary metabolites, which
suggests that their ingestion has
medical benefits.” While working in
Tanzania, Michael Huffman
watched while a female
chimpanzee that appeared to be
suffering from an intestinal
© Patrick Ageneau/Musée des Confluences, Lyon (FR)
Crafty bird
Though less perfect than the leaf
insect (p. 21), this leaf-mimicking
katydid from Brazil also uses
camouflage to enable it to blend
with the foliage.
complaint chewed on shoots from
the Vernonia amygdalina tree,
extracting only the juice. Not
surprisingly, the chimpanzee
recovered quickly because, as local
doctors are well aware, it is an
excellent remedy for intestinal
parasites. “So we find in the animal
kingdom the biological roots of
the human use of medicinal
plants,” he says.
www.pri.kyoto-u.ac.jp/shakai-seitai/seitai/huffman/index.html
Mimesis and
mimicry
Camouflage is a well-known
weapon of insects that allows for
a range of strategies. Mimesis is
common to numerous species
and entails melting into the
background to escape predators.
For instance, some caterpillars,
stick insects, butterflies and
grasshoppers will imitate leaves.
True mimicry is much more subtle.
It is a means of openly appearing
before predators in the guise of an
unpalatable or noxious species.
“The most remarkable strategy is
when one species passes itself off
as another. For this deceit, the
vulnerable and palatable mimic
species adopts the characteristics
of the noxious or vulnerant (and so
unpalatable) model species,”
writes Christian Levêque (1). Some
of the most remarkable mimics are
species of intertropical butterfly.
www.museedesconfluences.fr/
musee/
(1) Sur les traces du vivant, edited by Christian
Levêque, Fage Editions, Musée des
Confluences, 2007.
© Musée Dapper/photo Hughes Dubois
imagination
“The specificity of primitive
thought is to be without the
notion of time.”
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Mbotumbo figure – Baule (Côte d’Ivoire).
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NUMÉRO
SPECIALSPÉCIAL
ISSUE I NOVEMBER
I OCTOBRE 2008
39
WESTERN WORLD
The bear and the wolf
Cute or terrifying, animals are the stuff of
dreams and nightmares. They can be therapeutic
or serve as alter egos. Animals have figured in
all art forms since prehistoric times. We turn
the spotlight on two animals that loom large
in Europe’s compendium of beasts.
O
n a clear night in the northern
hemisphere, you can see the
world’s two most famous constellations, Ursa Major (Latin for
‘Great Bear’) and Ursa Minor (‘Little Bear’).
Many civilizations have seen the constellations
as bears. Greek mythology has it that Zeus, a
tireless womaniser, fell in love with Callisto
the nymph and they had a son, Acras.
According to one version of the myth, in a fit
of jealous rage, Zeus’ wife, Hera, turns Callisto
into Ursa Major and her son into Ursa Minor.
Neptune then condemns them to circle the
North Pole forever. According to another version, Callisto’s angry rival, Artemis, goddess of
the hunt, metamorphoses the hapless pair. In
this tale, it was Zeus, the ‘Master of Olympus’
himself, who assigned Ursa Minor and Ursa
Major their place in the cosmos to save them
from the hunters. The constellation Ursa Major
comprises seven very bright stars commonly
called the Big Dipper (or Plough). The much
less sparkling nearby constellation, Ursa
Minor, contains the group of stars known as
the Little Dipper. The Dipper’s handle is the
Little Bear's tail and the Dipper’s cup is the
Bear's flank. The brightest star in the Little
Dipper constellation is Polaris (Alpha Ursae
Minoris), also known as the North Star or Pole
Star, which is found at the tip of the handle.
Warrior and seducer
The bear then came down to Earth and
figured heavily in myths and legends. In
Scandinavian folklore, bears were alleged to
abduct and rape young girls, giving birth to
40
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
hairy half-beast, half-human warriors. These
courageous and powerful bear-men went on to
found dynasties of Danish and Norwegian kings.
During rites of initiation among numerous
Germanic peoples, young boys would engage in
single combat with this formidable animal that
can stand on its hind legs. Dressed in a bear’s
skin and wearing one of its teeth as a pendant,
they believed that they would inherit the animal’s strength to aid them in combat. In a
number of countries, a pagan festival of the
bear (still marked as Imbolc in the Irish calendar and Groundhog Day in the USA) was held
on 2 February every year to mark the time
when the bear would come out of hibernation
to signal the end of winter. It was to vanquish
this pagan custom that the Church instituted
Candlemas on the same day.
The 18th century French legend of Jean de
l’Ours ( Jean of the Bear) originated from the
Pyrenees and is known throughout Europe. It is
the story of a man born of a woman and a bear
that grows to have remarkable strength but is
torn between his savage and his human
nature. “The bear is an animal of folk tales that
were passed on by word of mouth from generation to generation until the 20th century in
the bear’s places of refuge like the Pyrenees. It
is also the most anthropomorphised animal
because of the way it walks upright, holds it
food and fights. The bear is perceived as a sly
and dangerous supernatural man-beast that
prowls around committing multiple crimes.
Its relations with humankind are viewed in
terms of fierce rivalry with men and seduction
of women,” writes historian Eric Baratay (1).
“Carnivals perpetuating the bear’s reputation
as an abductor are celebrated even in places
from which bears have disappeared.”
The bear was reviled by the Christian
Church, as it harked back to a pagan past. The
Church never ceased to undermine and outlaw
it. Little by little, clergy managed to transform
the bear into just an ‘ordinary’ beast, ousted
from heraldic symbols, exhibited at fairs, dangled on a chain and stripped of all dignity.
During the Middle Ages, the bear was dethroned
as the king of wild game animals. As these
Bear tamer in the
Pyrenees in the early 20th century.
WESTERN WORLD
‘barbaric’ interludes led to violent hand-tohand combat between hunter and animal,
locking man and bear in a rather unorthodox
grapple, they were frowned upon. The religious authorities forced the aristocracy to hunt
the stag instead, which has a much nobler
bearing, and the lion, considered to be the
true king of animals, came to symbolise the
power of kings and princes. However, the
bear remained the symbol of the Swiss city of
Bern and, by curious coincidence, the Bern
Convention to protect threatened bear species
was signed there.
Revenge of the teddy bear
© CNRS Photothèque/Jean-Dominique Lajoux
Stripped of its power, the bear was demoted to bear cub. In 1903, it was embodied in a
Canis antarcticus from a drawing in
Richard Owen’s The Zoology of the Voyage
of H.M.S. Beagle, 1838
© Reproduced with permission from John van Wyhe ed.,
The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online
soft toy, the forerunner of many comfort toys
designed to be a child’s favourite companion,
to reassure and to accompany them into the
land of dreams. As in the case of the bear constellations, there are also two tales of how the
teddy bear evolved. The first is the teddy bear
tale. When United States President, Theodore
(Teddy) Roosevelt, went on a hunt in
Mississippi, his staff had the cruel idea of
attaching a baby bear to a tree to make sure
that the President would not go home emptyhanded – but Teddy Roosevelt refused to
shoot it. A New York toy manufacturer had the
idea of immortalising the gesture by naming a
soft toy after him (Teddy’s Bear). According to
the second, slightly earlier version, the teddy
bear was invented in Germany. The nephew
of stuffed-toy manufacturer Margarete Steiff
was sketching bears at Stuttgart Zoo when he
had the idea of making a toy with articulated
limbs. A prototype bear (Baer 55PB), made
from mohair plush, was exhibited at the Leipzig
Toy Fair in 1893. An American toy buyer, who
was aware of the growing interest in “Teddy’s
Bears”, ordered 3 000 units. Production of the
teddy bears took off fast and, by 1907, had
exceeded one million units. Steiff teddy bears
are recognisable by the metal button in their left
ear… and are now priceless collectors’ items.
The bear cub continues to be the hero of
many adventures. One of the most famous is
that told by Alan Alexander Milne who, after
watching his son play with his teddy bear, created the character of Winnie the bear cub
(Winnie the Pooh), which has been adapted
most famously by Walt Disney. This mascot
toy is endlessly being pressed into service in
new roles. Teddy bear hospitals have been set
up in several countries, including Germany
and France, where young children can bring
their cuddly teddy to be treated by medical
students. This pretence of treating teddies is
meant to discover where the children themselves have pain as well as to reassure them
and help overcome their own fear of hospital.
Perhaps this very same need for comfort
prompted Neil Armstrong to take a teddy bear
along on his journey to the moon in 1969.
Terrifying or protective
Another familiar figure of stories, fables and
even contemporary children’s books is the wolf.
The wolf’s personality changes frequently, as
evidenced by the successive versions of the
tale of Little Red Riding Hood. “In the oral versions, the child shares the grandmother’s
remains with the wolf, undresses to sleep with
it and then runs away after tricking the wolf.
The story evokes a right of passage to adulthood and sexuality, of one generation of
women being taken over by the next. In the
first written version (1697), Charles Perrault
suppresses what he sees as the improper
aspects of the tale and, to encourage girls to
flee charmers, he portrays a cunning and pitiless wolf that gobbles up the child. The other
famous version, that of the Brothers Grimm
(1812), brings in the idea of disposing of the
wolf: it is killed by hunters who set the little
girl free,” adds historian Eric Baratay. Later,
Jack London turned the wolf White Fang into
a brave companion (featuring in several films);
Marcel Aymé revisited the Little Red Riding
Hood story in one of his Contes du Chat
Perché, and Pierre et le Loup (Peter and the
Wolf), written and set to music by Prokofiev,
ends with a march where the wolf escapes the
hunters… but is taken to the zoo.
The wolf can also be a protector and saviour.
For instance, Romulus and Remus, the founders
of Rome, were purportedly raised by a shewolf. And wolf children are found in history
time and again. In the early 14th century, the
legendary wolf-child of Hesse was allegedly
raised by animals, knew the choicest pieces of
meat and walked around on all fours.
The most recent example is Monique
Dewael’s best-selling account, Surviving with
wolves, which tells the tale of Holocaust survivor, eight-year-old Jewish girl Misha
Defonseca. Misha leaves Belgium during
World War II to find her parents who are being
held by the Gestapo. She treks across the
forests of Europe, living with a pack of
wolves. The book, translated into 18 languages, has sold millions of copies and the
film by Vera Belmont was seen by hundreds of
thousands of cinema-goers. Although it was
presented as an autobiography, the story
turned out to be pure fiction. It is a deception
that shows just how prominent a role the wolf
still plays in our imaginations…
Christine Rugemer
(1) Eric Baratay, Et l’homme créa l’animal, Ed. Odile Jacob,
Paris, 2003.
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
41
ELSEWHERE
Animal representation – sometimes
in symbolic form – is common to
all civilisations. But clearly it is
the peoples of Africa that have
been able to express with the most
power and compelling beauty the
proximity of nature that marks
the bond between the mystic and
human worlds.
A
(1) The quotations in the French version of this article
were taken from the book Animal, published by Musée
Dapper (Paris) and edited by Christiane Falgyrettes-Leveau,
for the exhibition by the same name (11 October 2007
to 20 July 2008), and have been translated freely for the
English version.
(2) Totemism is a complex and controversial notion that is
not present in all African civilisations. It is the belief in
kinship between human social groups and an animal,
plant or object (totem). The totem incarnates the life force,
and a mystical relationship is said to exist between
group members and the totem.
1
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research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
© Archives Musée Dapper et Hughes Dubois
Black Africa’s
anima
lfred Adler, an expert in African
culture (1) wrote that, despite their
great diversity, all African traditions
share the belief that differences
between species (both animal species as well
as between animal species and the human
race) are not fundamentally any different to
those within the human race, whether they be
classed as ethnic, tribal or clan-based. Animals
are omnipresent in all African cultures and
vary from region to region, featured in masks,
decorative objects, rock paintings, oral literature
and founding myths. According to numerous
African accounts of the creation of the cosmos,
animals pre-dated humans and bequeathed
them with values and rules of conduct.
For example, the Babembe tribe (Democratic
Republic of Congo) believe that chimpanzees
and gorillas were once men who, in times past,
possessed language but stopped speaking to
escape the domination of other humans. The
Moundang tribe (Chad) believe that monkeys
have served as valuable role models for the care
of women in labour and for the circumcision of
boys. The chief of the Shilluk tribe (Sudan) is
a descendant of the founder hero, Nyikang,
who was said to have created his people from
animals, mainly insects and fish, of which traces
can still be found in totemism(2).
According to Stefan Eisenhofer from the
Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde in
Munich, many Nigerian tribes believe that animals have the ability to link the human world
with that of ancestors and gods. They believe
that animals see and know things that are hidden from ordinary mortals. This is true not
only in Nigeria, as readers can see. A picture
is worth a thousand words.
C.R.
ELSEWHERE
5
1 Antelope –
Bamana (Mali)
Headdress worn by
dancers. The antelope is
often used as a fertility
symbol and figures in
agricultural rites. Some
headdresses depict a
female antelope with
thin straight horns,
supporting their
offspring on their backs,
while others feature
a male antelope with
a virile penis.
3 Lion – Bamana
(Mali)
Korè dyara mask from
the Koutialia region,
depicting a lion’s head.
Dancers wearing this
mask and a grass
costume, and carrying
a long staff in each
hand, mime the lion’s
movements and
behaviour.
4 Fish – Ijo (Nigeria)
Munich/S.AustrumMulzer
fish-spirits to prevent
them from putting
a curse on fishing
or fishermen.
5 Fish – Bidjogo
(Guinea-Bissau)
The rostrum (saw-like
snout) of a real sawfish
adorns these two
masks. River and
maritime tribes devote
rituals to these
2
2 Bird – Dan
(Côte d’Ivoire)
This black mask consists
of an enormous hornbill
beak and a smooth
human face. Even
though it belongs to
the natural world, the
hornbill is purported to
have founded culture
by bringing the first
ever oil palm nut.
Former Georges de Miré
and Charles Ratton
collections – Private
collection.
© Archives Musée Dapper/Mario Carrieri
© Archives Musée Dapper et Hughes Dubois
3
© Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde, Munich/S.Austrum-Mulzer
© Archives Musée Dapper/Hughes Dubois
4
research*eu SPECIAL ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2008
43
© CNRS Photothèque/Système Renne/laboratoire UMR6130
KI-AH-08-S02-EN-C
ETHOLOGY
The reindeer system
The Dolgans are preparing to harness their animals in the Atchayvayam
region of Kamchatka. This domestication relationship – the reindeer
system – is being studied by researchers from the National Centre for
Scientific Research (CNRS) in France as part of the “Biological and
Cultural Adaptation Programme”. They are working among the native
communities of Siberia, whose traditions are based on the omnipresence
and extensive use of this animal.