One for all / Frans de Waal

Our ability to cooperate in large societies has deep evolutionary roots in the animal kingdom

The traditional discussion of the way in which humanity became the dominant form of life on Earth, which has an ever-increasing population that currently numbers more than seven billion, revolves around the issue of competition. Our ancestors, it is said, took over land, destroyed other species, including our ancient brothers, the Neanderthals, and hunted large predators, until their extinction. We conquered nature, with blood-red teeth and nails.
However, in an overall view, this scenario is unlikely. Our ancestors were too small and vulnerable to dominate the savannah. They apparently lived in constant fear of herds of hyenas seeking prey, ten different types of large feline predators, and other dangerous animals. We probably owe our success as a species to the cooperation between us, more than to our ability to use force and violence.
Our tendency to cooperate has ancient evolutionary roots. However, only human beings organize themselves into groups capable of achieving great things. Only humans have a complex moral system that emphasizes responsibility towards others and is enforced through reputation and punishment. And at times, we do the unbelievable, in stark contrast to our image as beings driven by purely selfish motives.
Consider, for example, the incident that occurred in 2013 in one of the Washington subway stations. One of the passengers found himself sprawled on the train tracks due to a malfunction in his motorized wheelchair. Within seconds, several passers-by came to his aid, jumping onto the tracks to bring him back to the platform before the next train passed. A more dramatic act of rescue happened on the New York City subway in 2007, when a 50-year-old construction worker named Wesley Autry rescued a man who had fallen onto the tracks right in front of the oncoming train. Since there was not enough time left to pull him up, Ottery jumped between the train tracks, shielding him with his body as five train cars passed overhead. When asked afterward about his act of heroism, Autry downplayed it: "I don't feel like I did anything extraordinary," he said.
Needless to say, his act was indeed amazing. But what motivated him to risk his life to help a foreign passenger on the subway? To answer this question as well as the broader question of how humans learned to cooperate in other ways, we must first examine similar behavior among the rest of our evolutionary flesh, and in particular the species closest to us that are still alive today: the chimpanzee and the bonobo.
Cooperation between primates
I regularly observe less dramatic cases of selfless cooperation among these animals at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University. My office overlooks a vast grassy enclosure where Peony, an aging female chimpanzee, spends her days in the sun in the company of other chimps. Every time the arthritis she suffers from attacks her, Peony has difficulty walking and climbing. And while Peony pants and pants in an effort to climb the climbing frame, more than once a younger female chimpanzee, who is not a member of her family, approaches her from behind, places both hands on her ample buttocks and pushes her upwards. We also saw other chimpanzees bringing water to Peony, for whom the walk to the tap was too strenuous. As she turns towards the faucet, her friends rush to reach it in front of her and fill their mouths with water, then they stand in front of the elderly lady, who opens her mouth to let them spit a jet of water into it.
Many recent studies document cooperation between primates in detail, and all reach three main conclusions. First, the cooperation does not require kinship. And even if the animals tend to prefer their relatives, they do not limit their cooperation to the family circle. DNA samples taken from the carcasses of chimpanzees collected in African forests allowed researchers in the field to examine which of them hunt and move together in a pack. It turns out that the closest partnerships in the forest are forged between individuals who are not relatives. These friends take care of each other, warn each other of predators, and share their food. We know the same is true for bonobos.
Second, cooperation is often based on reciprocity. Experiments show that chimpanzees remember favors they received. One of the studies measured mutual care and grooming behaviors in a colony of captive chimpanzees in the morning, before feeding time. When the common breakfast, watermelons, for example, was served to the group of chimpanzees, the lucky ones who managed to get their hands on the food were surrounded by their fellow "beggars" who reached out and begged, whining and howling, for a share of the loot. The researchers found that Pratt's chances of receiving food from his friend increased if he took care of that friend earlier in the morning.
Third, the motive for cooperation may be empathy - a trait that characterizes all mammals, from rodents to primates. We empathize with others who need help, who are in pain or in distress. This identification arouses in us feelings that urge us to rescue ourselves. Scientists now believe that primates in particular go even further than that and care for the well-being of their fellows. In a typical experiment, two monkeys are placed side by side, with one of them choosing a token according to its color. Choosing a token of one of two colors yields a reward for that monkey only, while choosing a token of the other color yields a reward for both monkeys. After a few rounds, the monkey who has the choice usually chooses the "social" token, the one that has to get along with his friend. This preference is not based on fear of the other monkey, since dominant monkeys (who have fewer reasons to fear) are actually the most generous.
Sometimes, as in the described experiment, the concern for other individuals among primates does not require the benevolent individual to make any concessions. But primates help each other even when this involves a real sacrifice on their part, such as giving up half of their food. It is known that chimpanzees in the wild adopt orphans and even come to the rescue to protect other individuals from tigers, two forms of altruism that have a very high price.

Reaching out for help has even deeper roots
This tendency for concern and protection developed, most likely, from the maternal concern for offspring, which is required of all mammals. Mothers must respond to the hunger, pain or fear signals of their tender cubs, between mice and elephants, otherwise the cubs may die. This sensitivity (including the neural and hormonal processes that support it) was copied over time to other relationships, and helped establish emotional attachment, empathy and cooperation in society as a whole.
Cooperation provides considerable advantages. It is therefore no wonder that this form of behavior was also adopted in other contexts. The most common interactions in the animal kingdom are mutualisms, and apparently, they are so common because they yield an immediate benefit such as providing food or protection from predators. These interactions are characterized by joint action to achieve a goal that clearly benefits everyone. Thus, hyenas cooperating in a pack can subdue a large wildebeest together. Similarly, a dozen pelicans standing in a semi-circle with their feet in shallow lake water manage, as a group, to scoop up a mouthful of fish at once. Such cooperation is based on well-coordinated moves and mutual benefit.
This type of cooperation can lead to even more sophisticated cooperative behaviors, such as reward sharing. If one hypocrite or one pelican monopolized all the rewards, the system would collapse. Survival depends on the sharing of rewards, which explains why both humans and animals are incredibly sensitive to fair distribution. Experiments show that monkeys, dogs, and certain types of birds endowed with a social sense reject rewards inferior to those earned by a colleague performing a similar task. Chimpanzees and humans go even further, sometimes negotiating shared rewards to avoid frustration among their peers. We owe our sense of fairness to a long history of reciprocal relationships based on reciprocity.

The human difference

Humans provide clear examples of the connection between sharing and survival. The Lamelera, a whaling community in Indonesia, sail across the ocean in canoes in groups of about a dozen men, and catch the whales with almost their bare hands. The hunters row towards the whale, and one of them, armed with a spear, jumps on the whale's back in order to stick the hunting tool in it, while all the others surround the wounded whale, until it dies due to blood loss. In this community, where a life-threatening activity binds whole families together, and their men go hunting in the very same boat, the distribution of the spoils is of the utmost importance. It is therefore not surprising that the Lamelra people excel in their sense of justice and fairness. They were even crowned as the champions of fairness by anthropologists who use an assessment tool called the "warning game" (or the "ultimatum game") that measures preferences for fair distribution proposals. In societies where the families support themselves, for example, in societies where each family cultivates its own piece of land, fair distribution is less important.

One of the differences between humans and other primates, which is often mentioned in this context, is that the human species is the only species that cooperates with people outside the community and even complete strangers. Our willingness to cooperate does depend on the circumstances (after all, we humans are also capable of killing those who do not belong to our group), but primates in nature are characterized by competition between groups. Communities that allow strangers to pass through their territory, share meals with them, exchange goods and gifts with them, or unite with them against common enemies are not typical of other primates.

In any case, contrary to claims that are sometimes heard, this openness to outsiders does not require special evolutionary explanations. It is likely that cooperation with outsiders is the result of similar intra-group action patterns. Application of existing capabilities outside the original context in which they developed is not uncommon in nature. An example of this is the use of hands by primates (whose original purpose was to climb trees) to cling to their verities. Experiments examining the interactions between capuchin monkeys and bonobos and strangers from outside the community showed that they too are able to exchange favors and share their food with strangers. In other words, the potential for cooperation with strangers also exists in other species, even if they don't have many opportunities for it in nature.

However, what really sets us apart as humans in this field is the incredibly organized way we collaborate. We have the ability to create hierarchical collaborations and through them to implement large-scale projects, unmatched in nature in terms of size and complexity. Suffice it to mention the terraced rice fields of the Mekong Delta or the technology involved in the large particle accelerator (LHC) at the CERN research center.

When animals cooperate, they usually organize themselves and receive roles according to the abilities of the individuals in the group and the "action slots" open to them. Sometimes, they divide roles and precisely coordinate their moves, as in the case of the killer whales, which in amazing synchronization create a wave that washes over and knocks a seal off a block of floating ice, or in the case where several male chimpanzees organize to chase a group of monkeys through the forest canopy, with some of them playing the role of accelerating pursuers Banredaf and others are used in blocking roles, as if they had agreed in advance on this division of roles. We do not know how the shared tasks and goals are determined in this type of cooperation, or how they are communicated to the group members, but they do not seem to be orchestrated from above by the group leaders, in the manner typical of human society.

Moreover, humans have ways of enforcing cooperation, the likes of which have not been observed or documented until now in the animal kingdom. In repeated mutual actions we build a reputation for ourselves as loyal or treacherous friends, and we may be punished if we do not fulfill the tasks. The possibility of being punished also deters individuals from trying to cheat the system. In laboratory experiments, humans punish the free eaters, even at the cost of harming themselves - a practice that, in the long run, is expected to promote cooperation in the population. Opinions differ as to the question of how widespread such punishment is in real life, outside the confines of the laboratory. But we know that our moral systems include expectations of cooperation and that we are hypersensitive to public opinion. In one of the experiments, the subjects donated larger sums of money for a noble cause when there was a picture of a pair of eyes watching them hanging on the wall. When we feel that we are being watched, we are worried about our good name.

It may well be that these reputational concerns were the primordial glue that allowed Homo sapiens to coalesce into larger societies. During much of human prehistory, our ancestors lived as nomads, just like the hunter-gatherers of our time. In these modern tribes, a good capacity for peaceful relations and trade between communities is evident, and this indicates that the ancient Homo Sapiens also possessed these qualities.

Without denying our ability to use violence, I am convinced that it is precisely the cooperative tendencies that have brought us this far. Based on tendencies developed in non-human primates, we have been able to shape our societies as complex systems of individuals cooperating with each other in every possible way.
About the author
Frans de Waal is a professor in the C. H. Kendler Chair of Primate Behavior at Emory University, and serves as director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. His books include "The Monkey Within" (Crown Publishing, 2009), and "The Bonobo and the Atheist" (WW Norton Publishing, 2013).

in brief

• Humans have a unique ability to cooperate in large, well-organized groups, and they operate a complex moral system based on reputation, on the one hand, and punishment, on the other.
  However, to a large extent, the basics of this cooperation, including empathy and altruism, are also observed among the animals closest to us, the primates.
• Homo sapiens' unique cooperative abilities are what allowed the human species to become the dominant species on Earth.

More on the subject
The Human Potential for Peace. Douglas P. Fry. Oxford University Press, 2005.
The Age of Empathy. Frans de Waal. Harmony Books, 2009.
Prosocial Primates: Selfish and Unselfish Motivations. Frans BM de Waal and Malini Suchak in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Vol. 365, no. 1553, pages 2711–2722; September 12, 2010.
Scientific American online slide show of animals helping each other is provided in the link - ScientificAmerican.com/sep2014/cooperation

More on the subject on the science website

• Why are we alone?
• Altruism as the way of nature

The article was published with the permission of Scientific American Israel