National Post (National Edition)
Going ‘alpha’
POLITICAL MISUSE OF THE TERM IS PROOF OF HOW MUCH WE STILL HAVE TO LEARN FROM ANIMALS
In 1995, the Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich recommended Frans de Waal’s book Chimpanzee Politics to young congressmen trying to get ahead. It has become apparent, though, that most people only skimmed the Dutch scientist’s 1982 account of the protracted power struggle between two apes determined to become the “alpha male.” Lazy reading caused politicians and business folk alike to imagine (incorrectly) the “alpha” as a personality type — a swaggering bully, dominating by aggression — and that humans had to ape this behaviour if they wanted to climb the greasy pole.
De Waal heard the “alpha” term misused so much that he felt moved to write a corrective chapter in his new book, Mama’s Hug. “Merciless tyrants do sometimes rise to the top in a chimpanzee society,” he writes, but their reigns are short and usually end with their murder or exile. The most common and successful alphas “are typically not necessarily the biggest, strongest, meanest ones around since they often reach the top with the assistance of supporters. Most alphas protect the underdog, keep the peace and reassure those who are distressed.”
After analyzing all instances in which chimps offer consolatory hugs to the losers of fights, de Waal found that females generally dole out the most cuddles — with one exception: the alpha male does more hugging than any other chimp in a community. This “healer-in-chief,” says de Waal, will
not pick petty fights. Instead, he stands “impressively between screaming parties with his arms raised, until things calm down”.
The ability to rise above raw emotion was long believed to be something that distinguished humans from beasts. In fact, de Waal’s book on “animal emotions and what they teach us about ourselves” is full of examples of animals suppressing their urges: the predator must pause before pouncing, the prey might hide instead of taking flight. Apes can wait months to settle scores.
When de Waal began studying animal behaviour, nearly 40 years ago, he was told not to project “human” emotion on to his subjects. But today he is “at the point that I think emotions are more like organs,” he says. “All my organs are present in a rat’s body, and the same way, I think, all my emotions are probably present in the rat.” And we learn that rodents — long thought incapable of expressing emotion on their faces — actually convey their mood so clearly to their own kind that captive rodents will always choose to sit beside the photograph of a happy rat instead of a sad one.
Our understanding of animal emotion is not always intuitive. De Waal reminds us that all those old films showing images of “laughing” chimps — teeth bared, hooting — actually show us scared chimps. Somewhere, out of the shot, there is a trainer with a stick. Then again, de Waal notes that films of humans riding roller coasters show similar grimaces of fear. In fact, he doubts that the smile is a human “happy face” at all. He makes a good case that it is a signal with much more complicated origins and one we use — like apes — to flag non-hostility. So women smile more than men. Children smile at adults. Studies of fighters smiling before matches in the Ultimate Fighting Championship revealed that those with the most intense pre-match smile were more likely to lose.
Although his book’s structure is rather shambolic, de Waal writes like a weathered safari guide, taking us on a freewheeling hunt for connection through the minds of all living creatures. Each chapter is crammed with fascinating descriptions of animals navigating complex emotional and social states, of humans behaving exactly like them and — sometimes — far less sensibly. Like The Naked Ape’s author Desmond Morris, de Waal steps back from the language we use to describe — or conceal — our feelings, and observes the body language that reveals more than we want to admit. We’re invited to think afresh about empathy, altruism, laughter, parenting, disgust, deceit, hate, guilt, grief, revenge and reconciliation.
Queen Victoria was “appalled” by the sight of the first apes at London Zoo in 1835. Charles Darwin saw the same exhibits and thought anybody convinced of human superiority should check their prejudice. The more aware we become of our similarity to other creatures, the more we have to question our treatment of them.
De Waal writes movingly of the dairy industry’s “horrific practice” of separating cows and their offspring. “These calves are less socially active and adept, and more easily stressed than those that have been allowed to stay with their mothers,” he says. He compares the cattle to the children raised in the Romanian orphanages known as “the slaughterhouses of souls,” whose brains have enlarged amygdalae and pay excessive attention to negative information.
But then, that’s another thing de Waal tells us about emotions: “they make us take sides.” Explaining his opposition to slavery, Abraham Lincoln didn’ t talk theory. He evoked the pitiful sight of chained slaves he saw in the South. And when de Waal wants to connect his readers to his subject, he opens a book with the tale of the “last hug” between a dying, captive chimp called Mama, and the 79-year-old Jan van Hooff who had studied her for 40 years. Footage of their farewell has been viewed over 10 million times online. Watching the elderly ape gently stroke the man’s hair, then pull him into a final embrace, it’s impossible to doubt the equivalence of the two elderly hominids’ emotions.
NOT NECESSARILY THE BIGGEST, STRONGEST, MEANEST ONES AROUND.