This Christmas (along with some less worthy gifts) I adopted two donkeys for my parents. Pooh and Eeyore are based at their local sanctuary in Devon, so naturally we ran straight over to be introduced by the lovely Donkey Sanctuary representative. As well as learning a ton of fascinating information about equine biology and behaviour, we got to talking about empathy and friendship between donkeys, and between donkeys and humans. These sweet animals, our guide told us, will go over and comfort people when they feel sad, their sensitivity to human emotion and moods making them ideal for assisted therapy. By contrast, she laughed, sheep are her least favourite animal because they’re “selfish”: if they fear a predator, they’ll all try to leap into the middle of the herd to protect themselves, showing no qualms about letting their mates be picked off first. After we left the sanctuary, I wondered whether our tour guide had been too hard on sheep. Can animals really be described as selfish? Aren’t sheep just acting according to their natural survival instinct? But if we believe that, are we also saying that a donkey’s empathy is just evolutionary hardwiring? Do other animals have a sense of right and wrong: can they be ‘good’ or ‘bad’? Does “morality” come into it, or are we just anthropomorphising?
Best friends Earless the Poll Dorset sheep and Jess the donkey. Jess chewed off her ears, but the sheep still loves her…
I’ve often heard people call their cat a ‘dickhead’ in the same way that new parents will jokingly say their 6 month year old baby is being ‘an arsehole’. It’s funny because we all know it’s not true, the assumption being that babies and animals don’t have the mental sophistication or moral compass to deliberately misbehave or act maliciously against us. But is this really the case when it comes to animals? John Shivik, author of the brilliant Mousy Cats and Sheepish Coyotes, describes his own cat as a disdainful, objectionable “asshole” but he also talks about a horse who, ignoring his food, licked his owner’s tears away. If animals can be empathetic and altruistic, it follows that they can also be mean bastards. And there are countless stories about animals displaying positive moral behaviour towards their own species and towards other humans, appearing to care strongly for others even when there’s no obvious biological advantage. The book that prompted me to go vegan and study animal welfare was ethologist Marc Bekoff’s The Emotional Life of Animals, which describes a lioness adopting a baby oryx, a snake befriending a hamster, even a golden retriever palling up with a fish – animals defying biology to make friends with their ‘food’. There’s another story (I marked it with a heart in the margin!) worth quoting in full:
Two Jack Russell terriers were found, filthy and terrified, cowering on the main street of a small town. The dogs were friends, not mates. One was bleeding from both eyes; the other was standing guard, barking and snapping at anyone who approached. They were taken to a vet, who determined that the one terrier had been stabbed: both eyes had to be removed and the lids sewn up. Two days after the operation, Ben, as he had been named, was reunited with Bill in the local animal shelter. From that moment on, Bill acted as Ben’s guide dog; with Ben holding on the scruff of his neck, Bill walked him round the yard until he knew the lay of the land. [In their new rescue home] they sleep curled up together and behave “rather like a married couple”. [1]
These innumerable examples of animals caring for others, including people, and taking risks to save them (or hurt them) must surely offer proof that they can be both ‘bad’ and ‘good’, and have vast capacity for empathy. Just this week I read an article [2] describing how, as we see in people, when animals observe friendly social interactions, it can make them feel good themselves and then act in a similar way towards others. The researchers watched female Barbary macaques observing grooming, a relaxing behaviour, and found the effect was contagious: when they saw their friends groom, macaque bystanders became less anxious and even started grooming other monkeys. If this isn’t empathetic behaviour, what is? Bekoff points to the same kind of ‘social contagion’ in dog play, with canine observers copying the ‘play bow’ of other dogs to indicate willingness to join in the fun. For both dogs and monkeys, the more familiar the subject, the more likely they are to mimic them. The ability to recognise another individual and empathise with him or her is one of the most common distinguishing features of sentience, demonstrating awareness of the feelings and consciousness of others. It is also the starting point for moral action. Speaking at Compassion in World Farming’s Extinction conference in 2017, Carl Safina stated “of course animals feel empathy”, demonstrating not just simple mood matching but sympathy and compassion i.e., acting on that sympathy. Why do we believe that what looks like compassion or empathy in humans is the real deal, but when we see similar behaviour in nonhuman animals, it’s just an unthinking evolutionary mechanism?
Of course, affective states like empathy help animals protect themselves and form strong social bonds, which enhance reproductive success. Given then that cooperative behaviour is beneficial in evolutionary terms to group animals, perhaps we might infer that it doesn’t necessarily mean an animal is acting out of real sympathy for others. Ground squirrels, for instance, sometimes warn their mates about the presence of a predatory bird, highly risky behaviour for the squirrel that raises the alert, but presumably they expect to benefit from the group’s survival later. Similarly, a female vampire bat can only survive one night without food [3], but other bats will only share food with her if they’re likely to come into contact again in the future, i.e. if there was a good chance that their “altruistic” act will be reciprocated [4]. Maybe not so selfless after all! They’re also far more likely to help a related bat, but I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that blood is thicker than water for this particular species…
By contrast, many insects will readily kill themselves for the good of the colony, an act that appears to be entirely altruistic. The matabele ant of sub-Saharan Africa, hunts vicious termites and often sustains terrible injuries. These wounded ants are carried home by their nestmates where they have their injuries licked clean so they can heal. But those ants missing five legs or more will resist help, flailing around violently until their rescuers give up. Is this a selfless rejection of help, allowing the other ants to focus on saving others who have a better chance of survival? Or, as biologists posit, is the injured ant just trying to stand up and repeatedly failing, rather than deliberately flailing around to repel the helpers? [5] A less ambiguous example is the ant Colobopsis explodens, who rip themselves open in battle, spewing deadly fluid on the enemy and protecting the rest of the colony from predators. In 2010, researchers dosed honeybees with carbon dioxide and hydroxyurea to make them feel ill: the bees that survived abandoned the hive of their own accord to prevent the other bees getting sick [6]. Nonetheless, these researchers insist that altruism doesn’t come into any of this: actually insect colonies resemble a single living organism instead of thousands of separate individuals, with the insects acting like immune cells in our bodies. If we lose a few cells, the rest of the body doesn’t care: the aim is for the colony to survive, not the individual.
Still, when people tell me animals don’t act altruistically, I always think of one of the least sympathetic creatures in human society, the rat. In 2011, researchers placed rats in an arena with a cage mate trapped in a translucent tube. The free rats learned how to open the tube to liberate their cage mates and continued to do so even when given the chance to open a tube containing chocolate instead. In the latter case, the rat opened both tubes and shared the chocolate [7]. A 1959 study showed that rats would stop pressing a bar to obtain food if doing so delivered an electric shock to a rat next to them [8].
Cartoon by Ian Aparici
Of course, this can still be put down to evolutionary benefit, Darwin stating that “Those communities which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best and rear the greatest number of offspring”[9]. But this applies to humans too and it doesn’t stop us disputing the genuineness of empathy and morality in individual people. Why should we insist on reducing these traits to hard-wired biology when it comes to animals? While these abilities may have evolved because natural selection favours individuals that are motivated to empathize with others, to the benefit of their own and the group’s survival, that doesn’t make them any less valid or real. Many of our own ‘moral’ actions are instinctual: jumping into the road to rescue a child, for instance.
Animals are also discerning beasts. Based on his studies of dog play, Bekoff shows that animals might be moral beings with a sense of ‘fairness’ [10]: animal play relies on adhering to the human code of morality ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’, which in turn requires empathy and reciprocity. Dogs can be arseholes in play: they will sometimes ‘trick’ one another and some will ‘cheat’, but it’s extremely rare for them to use play behaviour to mask aggression. In fact, other dogs will refuse to play with those dogs or humans that have been observed to cheat. Similarly, James Anderson [11] argues that animals display a core morality that doesn’t depend on training: monkeys and dogs negatively judge people who refuse to help others or exchange unfairly with another animal or person. Their dislike of these ‘selfish’ individuals influences their future interactions with them. While animals might not contemplate the ethical complexities of right and wrong, they seem to know the difference between the two, which is what we’d call morality. Just because we don’t know the precise needs and rules of other species’ societies, that doesn’t mean these animals aren’t ‘moral’.
When it comes to dogs and cats, we have even higher expectations, forcing them to adhere to the moral codes of human society. In his chapter in Pets and People, Philosopher Bernie Rollin [12] explains that because pets are now viewed as our friends or family rather than hunters or working dogs, we have to rethink how we view their abilities. We must be prepared to attribute capacities to them “beyond those we have traditionally acknowledged”. After all, the concept of ‘friendship’ in itself requires some morally-based, selfless reciprocity on the part of both parties. If we don’t believe animals are capable of moral action, how can we claim to be ‘friends’ with them? Our pets decide not to misbehave, to endure provocation by over-zealous children or other animals, or to act without benefit to themselves in order to protect their human companions. While training is part of this, the many anecdotes of dogs endangering themselves to save their owners shows that it’s not the whole story.
Maybe we’re being unfair on sheep and cats and too good to donkeys and dogs. After all, not every human is ‘selfish’ or ‘kind’. To label an entire species with one moral personality is absurd. I’m sure there are many brave or affectionate sheep, just as there are probably really mean donkeys (not Pooh or Eeyore, obviously). Animals are individuals, so why wouldn’t they have individual personalities? Of course, biology has something to say about this too: personality can be seen as a ‘behavioural strategy’, an animal may be active or passive to cope with a situation. But consistent differences in behaviour give us what we call ‘personality’. At the British Ecological Society meeting a year ago, Paul Mensink hailed this as a new era for personality research, publications on animal personality significantly rising in 2017 [13]. Shivik’s book describes how some animals are aggressive and bold while others are more meek and timid, but “neither strategy is optimal in all instances” [14]. Great tits, for example, display very different personalities, with brave great tits feeding in the early day time, while timid great tits are more afraid of being preyed upon and wait for lower quality food as the light falls. Another example is found among bluebirds [15]. Short-tailed males are better adapted to raising offspring in dense vegetation and long-tailed birds raise more young when they establish territories in open areas. Yet it’s the birds’ different personalities that determine where they nest, even if this isn’t the optimum environment for them physically. Aggressive fighters are better at holding territories in the dense vegetation and fight hard to hold this land – even if they have long tails and would do better elsewhere.
Jane Goodall believes that the reason some people prefer to spend more time with animals than with human beings are because animals more often demonstrate desirable moral personality traits than we do: they are more faithful and loyal, for instance: more donkey. Those mugs and t-shirts joking “I’d rather spend time with my dog” aren’t far off the mark; although, as an example of individual variation, I can’t help but feel my own dog would (sheep-like?) abandon me to my fate to save his own skin in a second. Still, whether or not nonhuman animals are acting out of what we would call a sense of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, their behaviour can often be a real exemplar. One type of bird, the killdeer, will feign a broken wing in order to lead predators away from her nested babies. Does it really matter why she’s doing it? Her actions are still a model for virtue. Visiting Pooh and Eeyore might have left me with many unanswered questions about sheep and donkey morality and altruism, but perhaps these are the wrong questions. Instead maybe we should all be asking ourselves, do I want to be more sheep or more donkey? In light of mankind’s devastation of the planet and our fellow creatures, highlighted in a series of reports last year, the more cynical among us might think that either option is better than being ‘more human’.
References and notes
[1] Bekoff, M. (2008) The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy – and Why They Matter. Novato, California, 90-91
[2] Berthier, J. M. & Semple, S. (2018). Observing grooming promotes affiliation in Barbary macaques. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 285, 20181964.
[3] Mcnab, B. K. (1969). The economics of temperature regulation in neutropical bats. Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology, 31, 227-268.
[4] Wilkinson, G. S. (1984). Reciprocal food sharing in the vampire bat. Nature, 308, 181-184.
[5] Frank, E. T., Wehrhahn, M. & Linsenmair, K. E. (2018). Wound treatment and selective help in a termite-hunting ant. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 285.
[6] Rueppell, O., Hayworth, M. & Ross, N. (2010). Altruistic self‐removal of health‐compromised honey bee workers from their hive. Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 23, 1538-1546.
[7] Bartal, I., Decety, J. & Mason, P. (2011). Empathy and pro-social behavior in rats. Science, 334, 1427-1430.
[8] Church, R. M. (1959). Emotional reactions of rats to the pain of others. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 52, 132.
[9] Darwin, C. (1936 [1871]). The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. New York: Random House, p.163
[10] Bekoff, M. (2008) The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy – and Why They Matter. Novato, California
[11] Anderson, J. R. et al (2017). Third-party social evaluations of humans by monkeys and dogs. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 82, 95-109.
[12] Rollin, B. E. (2017). Ethical behavior in animals. In: Overall, C. (ed.) Pets and People: The Ethics of Companion Animals. New York: Oxford University Press.
[13] Mensink, P. (2017). Patchy personalities: prey distribution and the foraging success of behavioural syndromes. BES, GFÖ, NecoV and EEF Joint Annual Meeting 2017: Ecology Across Borders. Ghent, Belgium.
[14] Shivik, J. (2017). Mousy Cats and Sheepish Coyotes: The Science of Animal Personalities, Beacon Press, 24
[15] Duckworth, R. A. (2006). Behavioral correlations across breeding contexts provide a mechanism for a cost of aggression. Behavioral Ecology, 17, 1011-1019; Duckworth, R. A. (2006). Aggressive behaviour affects selection on morphology by influencing settlement patterns in a passerine bird. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 273, 1789-1795.
Thank you for this