Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans de Waal

Author:Frans de Waal [de Waal, Frans]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2016-04-24T22:00:00+00:00

Triadic Awareness

Siamangs—large black members of the gibbon family—swing high up in the tallest trees of the Asian jungle. Every morning, the male and female burst into spectacular duets. Their song begins with a few loud whoops, which gradually build into ever louder, more elaborate sequences. Amplified by balloonlike throat sacs, the sound carries far and wide. I have heard them in Indonesia, where the whole forest echoed with their sound. The siamangs listen to one another during breaks. Whereas most territorial animals need only to know where their boundaries run and how strong and healthy their neighbors are, siamangs face the added complexity that territories are jointly defended by pairs. This means that pair-bonds matter. Troubled pairs will be weak defenders, while bonded pairs will be strong ones. Since the song of a pair reflects their marriage, the more beautiful it is, the more their neighbors realize not to mess with them. A close-harmony duet communicates not only “stay out!” but also “we’re one!” If a pair duets poorly, on the other hand, uttering discordant vocalizations that interrupt one another, neighbors hear an opportunity to move in and exploit the pair’s troubled relationship.16

To understand how others relate to one another is a basic social skill that is even more important for group-living animals. They deal with a far greater variety than the siamang. In a baboon or macaque troop, for example, a female’s rank in the hierarchy is almost entirely decided by the family from which she hails. Owing to a tight network of friends and kin, no female escapes the rules of the matrilineal order according to which daughters born to high-ranking mothers will themselves become high-ranking, while daughters from families at the bottom will also end up at the bottom. As soon as one female attacks another, third parties move in to defend one or the other so as to reinforce the existing kinship system. The youngest members of the top families know this all too well. Born with a silver spoon in their mouth, they freely provoke fights with everyone around, knowing that even the biggest, meanest female of a lower clan will not be allowed to assert herself against them. The youngster’s screams will mobilize her powerful mother and sisters. In fact, it has been shown that screams sound different depending on the kind of opponent a monkey confronts. Thus, it is immediately clear to the entire troop whether a noisy fight fits or violates the established order.17

The social knowledge of wild monkeys has been tested by playing the distress calls of a juvenile from a loudspeaker hidden in the bushes at a moment when the juvenile itself is out of sight. Hearing this sound, nearby adults not only look in the direction of the speaker but also peek at the juvenile’s mother. They recognize the juvenile’s voice and seem to connect it with its mother, perhaps wondering what she is going to do about the trouble her offspring is in.18 The same sort of social

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