THE SOCIAL LIFE OF ANIMALS
HOW CO-OPERATION CONQUERED THE NATURAL WORLD
ASHLEY WARD
Profile, 400pp, £20
We can learn much from the way animals work together according to Ashley Ward, Professor of Animal Behaviour at the University of Sydney. Reviewers of his book were gripped by the strange examples of co-operation and diplomacy. Animals are not as competitive in the game of survival as one might imagine. In the Guardian, Katy Guest was intrigued particularly by the ‘thought-provoking chapters about baboons, bonobos and chimpanzees’. Apparently their ‘complex societies are often founded on networking rather than domination by strength’. James Mcconnachie in the
Sunday Times noted that ‘Some animal behaviour seems almost democratic. African buffalo wake up and gaze towards where they want to go; the herd heads off in the direction chosen by the majority. Tonkean macaques line up behind candidates for a leader, like MPS voting in the Commons. Army ants even elect their queens: when founding a new colony, they form two columns down which the contenders march with their attendants; when a queen is accepted by each line, it sets off.’
In the Daily Mail, Christopher Hart praised a ‘smart, funny and thoroughly engaging book.’ But he sounded a note of caution. ‘Before we get too warm and fuzzy about this though, we should also note that co-operating animals get together primarily to . . . exploit, kill and eat other animals.’ Ward opens his book, Hart remarked, with a bloodcurdling scene in northern Trinidad where, ‘As dusk falls, vampire bats leave their daytime lair, an abandoned house deep in undergrowth, to look for blood.’
African buffalo wake up and gaze towards where they want to go