Obligation and the new naturalism

Although it has become increasingly evident that an adequate theory of obligation must rest on evolutionary biology and human ethology, attempts toward this end need to explore the full range of personal, cultural, and political obligations observed in our species. The new naturalism reveals the complexity of social behavior and the defects of reductionist models that oversimplify the foundations of human duties and rights. Ultimately, this approach suggest a return to the Aristotelian concept of natural justice.     

The Strange Animal Situation Test

ABSTRACT

Many tools assess the reactions of humans encountering familiar or unfamiliar partners or environments. Companion animals belong to our everyday environment and influence our lives. Whereas many standardized tools test companion animals' reactions to humans, few evaluate humans' reactions to companion animals. We present here a test with a guinea pig that can be applied to a wide range of people in the home environment. This standardized test and simple coding system enabled us to characterize individual behavioral profiles of children and compare them in relation to different factors (e.g., gender, age, pet ownership). We observed 59 children (32 girls, 27 boys), aged between 6 and 12 years old. Our results show that most children first looked at the guinea pig (72%), smiled when they saw it (49%), and then went directly towards it without looking at their parent (79%). Many children touched the animal without hesitation (86%). Moreover, this test reveals more than the mere interest of children in guinea pigs. Indeed, a cluster analysis differentiated four behavioral profiles that reflected aspects of the children's experience, gender, and lifestyles. When encountering the unfamiliar guinea pig, children could be “confident” (go straight to the animal and touch it; 64%), “anxious” (look at parent; 12%), “indirect” (hesitate and touch; 14%), or “careful” (emit vocal and/or verbal behaviors; 10%). The potential future application of this research is to compare behavioral profiles quantitatively over the long term, taking into account the development and experiences of people with typical development and those with atypical development (e.g., autistic disorders).     

On the notion of fitness,or: The selfish ancestor

We introduce a concept of fitness of a lineage as the number of descendents weighted by their degree of relatedness with the ancestor of the lineage and propose this as a scheme for analyzing altruistic behavior.     

The Management of Accidental Hypothermia

Accidental general hypothermia is defined as an unintentional lowering of the body temperature in a previously conscious patient due to exposure. Even mild degrees of hypothermia may be followed by death if treatment is not instituted promptly. Hypothermic patients who are still conscious may rewarm spontaneously. They should not be left unattended and, if the facilities are available, rapid rewarming appears to be the treatment of choice. Unconscious patients who are presumed to have a lower temperature of prolonged duration may not benefit from rapid rewarming. All hypothermia victims showing signs of life are potential survivors, but even with good facilities the mortality rate may be high.     

The evolution of extreme altruism and inequality in insect societies

In eusocial organisms, some individuals specialize in reproduction and others in altruistic helping. The evolution of eusociality is, therefore, also the evolution of remarkable inequality. For example, a colony of honeybees (Apis mellifera) may contain 50 000 females all of whom can lay eggs. But 100 per cent of the females and 99.9 per cent of the males are offspring of the queen. How did such extremes evolve? Phylogenetic analyses show that high relatedness was almost certainly necessary for the origin of eusociality. However, even the highest family levels of kinship are insufficient to cause the extreme inequality seen in e.g. honeybees via ‘voluntary altruism’. ‘Enforced altruism’ is needed, i.e. social pressures that deter individuals from attempting to reproduce. Coercion acts at two stages in an individual''s life cycle. Queens are typically larger so larvae can be coerced into developing into workers by being given less food. Workers are coerced into working by ‘policing’, in which workers or the queen eat worker-laid eggs or aggress fertile workers. In some cases, individuals rebel, such as when stingless bee larvae develop into dwarf queens. The incentive to rebel is strong as an individual is the most closely related to its own offspring. However, because individuals gain inclusive fitness by rearing relatives, there is also a strong incentive to ‘acquiesce’ to social coercion. In a queenright honeybee colony, the policing of worker-laid eggs is very effective, which results in most workers working instead of attempting to reproduce. Thus, extreme altruism is due to both kinship and coercion. Altruism is frequently seen as a Darwinian puzzle but was not a puzzle that troubled Darwin. Darwin saw his difficulty in explaining how individuals that did not reproduce could evolve, given that natural selection was based on the accumulation of small heritable changes. The recognition that altruism is an evolutionary puzzle, and the solution was to wait another 100 years for William Hamilton.     

The evolution of altruistic social preferences in human groups

In this paper, we consider three hypotheses to account for the evolution of the extraordinary capacity for large-scale cooperation and altruistic social preferences within human societies. One hypothesis is that human cooperation is built on the same evolutionary foundations as cooperation in other animal societies, and that fundamental elements of the social preferences that shape our species'' cooperative behaviour are also shared with other closely related primates. Another hypothesis is that selective pressures favouring cooperative breeding have shaped the capacity for cooperation and the development of social preferences, and produced a common set of behavioural dispositions and social preferences in cooperatively breeding primates and humans. The third hypothesis is that humans have evolved derived capacities for collaboration, group-level cooperation and altruistic social preferences that are linked to our capacity for culture. We draw on naturalistic data to assess differences in the form, scope and scale of cooperation between humans and other primates, experimental data to evaluate the nature of social preferences across primate species, and comparative analyses to evaluate the evolutionary origins of cooperative breeding and related forms of behaviour.     

The auditory behaviour of primates: a neuroethological perspective

The ethological approach has already provided rich insights into the auditory neurobiology of a number of different taxa (e.g. birds, frogs and insects). Understanding the ethology of primates is likely to yield similar insights into the specializations of this taxa's auditory system for processing species-specific vocalisations. Here, we review the recent advances made in our understanding of primate vocal perception and its neural basis.     

Behavioral development in the red-crowned crane (Grus japonensis)

A male and a female red-crowned crane were observed on a weekly basis from hatching until 7 months of age. The levels for 12 classes of activity were averaged and displayed. Weekly weights and weight gains were also displayed. Developmental profiles are discussed. These include (1) cyclic profiles, (2) single developmental peaks, and (3) behaviors with a high initial level reducing to a later low level. The chicks seemed to display alternating passive and active periods. The cyclic nature of development is discussed in relation to similar cycles in other species of birds and mammals.     

小鼠动物实验方法系列专题(五) 应用高架十字迷宫分析小鼠焦虑行为

高架十字迷宫(the elevated plus maze,EPM)是研究小鼠焦虑行为的重要实验,本文介绍了EPM的原理和实验步骤。将小鼠置于开臂闭臂接合处,面向开臂,通过录像记录分析小鼠在EPM的表现。结果发现,两种小鼠均可成功完成实验,C57小鼠在EPM内较不活跃,闭臂滞留时间占总时间百分比显著高于129Sv小鼠。应用EPM可以简单直观地分析小鼠焦虑行为。     

Behavioural interpretation of a rosetted spreite trace fossil: Dactyloidites ottoi (Geinitz)

Excellently preserved specimens of the trace fossil Haenrzschelinia onoi (Geinitz) allow its three-dimensional reconstruction and interpretation of the behaviour underlying the morphological pattern. H. onoi is a rosette-shaped endogenic trace fossil comprising central tube and branching incomplete radial protrusive spreiten. The basic behaviour pattern (rosetted vertical spreiten with central shaft) is the same as that of Brooksella Walcott 1896 and Dactyloidites Hall 1886. Haentzschelinia is therefore placed in synonymy with Dactyloidites , which has priority.     

The evolution of mutualism with modifiers

Mutualisms are widespread, yet their evolution has received less theoretical attention than within‐species social behaviors. Here, we extend previous models of unconditional pairwise interspecies social behavior, to consider selection for donation but also for donation‐suppressing modifiers. We present conditions under which modifiers that suppress costly donation receive either positive or negative selection; assortment only at the donation locus always leads to selection for donation suppression, as in within‐species greenbeard traits. However, genomewide assortment with modifier loci can lead to intermediate levels of donation, and these can differ in the two species even when payoffs from donation are additive and symmetric. When costly donation between species can evolve without being suppressed, we argue that it is most appropriately explained by indirect fitness benefits within the donating species, using partner species as vectors for altruism. Our work has implications for identifying both the stability and the ultimate beneficiaries of social behavior between species.     

The costs and benefits of resource sharing: reciprocity requires resource heterogeneity

The evolution of resource sharing requires that the fitness benefits to the recipients be much higher than the costs to the giver, which requires heterogeneity among individuals in the fitness value of acquiring additional resources. We develop four models of the evolution of resource sharing by either direct or indirect reciprocity, with equal or unequal partners. Evolution of resource sharing by reciprocity requires differences between interacting individuals in the fitness value of the resource, and these differences must reverse although previous acts of giving are remembered and both participants survive. Moreover, inequality in the expected reproductive value of the interacting individuals makes reciprocity more difficult to evolve, but may still allow evolution of sharing by kin selection. These constraints suggest that resource sharing should evolve much more frequently by kin selection than by reciprocity, a prediction that is well supported by observations in the natural world.     

The evolution of reciprocity in sizable human groups

The scale and complexity of human cooperation is an important and unresolved evolutionary puzzle. This article uses the finitely repeated n person Prisoners’ Dilemma game to illustrate how sapience can greatly enhance group-selection effects and lead to the evolutionary stability of cooperation in large groups. This affords a simple and direct explanation of the human “exception.”     

The 'spiteful' origins of human cooperation

We analyse generosity, second-party ('spiteful') punishment (2PP), and third-party ('altruistic') punishment (3PP) in a cross-cultural experimental economics project. We show that smaller societies are less generous in the Dictator Game but no less prone to 2PP in the Ultimatum Game. We might assume people everywhere would be more willing to punish someone who hurt them directly (2PP) than someone who hurt an anonymous third person (3PP). While this is true of small societies, people in large societies are actually more likely to engage in 3PP than 2PP. Strong reciprocity, including generous offers and 3PP, exists mostly in large, complex societies that face numerous challenging collective action problems. We argue that 'spiteful' 2PP, motivated by the basic emotion of anger, is more universal than 3PP and sufficient to explain the origins of human cooperation.     

Is a cultural ethology possible?

The possibility, desirability, and potential outcomes of applying ethological methods to the study of culture-specific human behaviors are investigated. Ethology and culture are explored. A new term, instruction, and its use in cultural ethology are proposed. Genetics and survival value are related to cultural ethology. A cultural ethology is given a possible theoretical foundation, and current attempts at a cultural ethology are appraised. A research program in cultural ethology and related fields is proposed.This article is a completely rewritten version of a paper of the same title delivered at the annual meeting of the Southern Anthropological Society at Gainesville, Florida, in February 1968 and published inResearch Previews 15(1): 37–47, April 1968.