by Marc Bekoff --
bekoffm@spot.Colorado.EDU
http://www.bouldernews.com/science/bekoff/16pscic.html
Many mammals, especially youngsters, love to play,
seeking out play with boundless zeal and expressing joyful glee as they
run about and wrestle, chase and bite their friends. Playtime's safe
time, mistakes are forgiven and apologies accepted by others, especially
when one player's a youngster who's not yet a competitor for social
status, food or mates. Animal play is obvious, but animal social
morality isn't. People often wonder if some nonhumans are moral beings
with codes of social conduct that regulate their behavior in terms of
what's permissible and what's not during social encounters.
Group-living animals provide many insights into animal
morality. Individuals coordinate their behavior some mate, some hunt,
some defend resources, some accept subordinate status to achieve common
goals. Individuals know what they can and can't do, and the group's
integrity depends upon individuals agreeing that certain rules regulate
their behavior. At any given moment individuals know their place or role
and those of other group members.
Consider pack-living wolves. For a long time researchers
thought pack size was related to food resources. Wolves typically feed
on such prey as elk and moose, each of which is larger than an
individual wolf. Hunting such large ungulates successfully takes more
than one wolf, so it made sense to postulate that wolf packs evolved
because of the size of wolves' prey. Defending food might also be
associated with pack-living.
However, long-term research by David Mech showed pack
size in wolves was regulated by social, not food-related, factors. Mech
discovered that the number of wolves who could live together in a
coordinated pack was governed by the number of wolves with whom
individuals could closely bond (social attraction factor) balanced
against the number of individuals from whom an individual could tolerate
competition (social competition factor). Codes of conduct, and
consequentially packs, broke down when there were too many wolves.
What about social play and the development of social
morality? It's thought that during play, while individuals are having
fun in a relatively safe environment, they form social bonds, acquire
different dominance ranks, and learn what they can and can't do to
others, how hard they can bite, how roughly they can interact and how to
resolve conflicts. They generalize these codes of conduct to other group
members and other situations. Individuals also learn to anticipate what
others will do in certain situations and to behave flexibly in changing
environments. As a result of lessons in social cognition and empathy
they learn what's "right" or "wrong" what's acceptable to others the
result of which is the development and maintenance of a well-oiled
social group. (Social morality doesn't mean other animals are "wrong"
when they kill for food, for they've evolved to do this.) My own
research on members of the dog family showed that youngsters of
more-social species (wolves) play more than youngsters of less-social
species (coyotes, red foxes, golden jackals).
Rules of social play, interacting justly, transfer to
codes of social conduct that facilitate the smooth functioning of a
social group. What could be a better atmosphere in which to learn social
skills than play, where there are few penalties for transgressions?
Human morality has some origins in the behavior of
nonhuman animals. Social morality, knowing right from wrong and behaving
fairly, is an evolved trait shared by many of our animal kin. We aren't
alone or unique in the arena of social morality.
Marc Bekoff (marc.bekoff@colorado.edu)
teaches in Environmental, Population and Organismic Biology at the
University of Colorado. April 16, 2000
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