Undeniable (27 page)

It's right about now that religions typically assert that belief in a higher power or faith is the root of altruism—that without a certain set of beliefs or inculcation into a religious doctrine, there would be no good deeds done in the world. At least, that is my interpretation of what I perceive as the positions of many organized Christian religions. But it is my view, and the view of many evolutionary scientists, that altruism occurs widely in nature. It shows up in animals like vampire bats and termites, for but two examples, whether or not they are exposed to religion.

Stick with vampire bats for a moment. They fly out at night and hunt for cattle. They bite the cow or bull's neck and gulp down blood that is loaded with nutrients for a mammal. They fly back to their roost, and through a series of signals, determine whether some individuals among them were unsuccessful that night: They flew and flew, but could find no neck to suck. In this case, the bats who did find food regurgitate some of the blood they gulped, allowing the hungry bats to get a meal. This might all sound vampirically creepy, but it is well documented and the way of a vampire bat's world. But the really strange part is the altruism part. Why would these bats do that?

As a survival-of-the-fittest first cut, you might see yourself in the role of a well-fed bat and remark (or think), “Why should I help this other bat, who flew so poorly and listened to that rock and roll music instead of his or her own ultrasonic echoes? He didn't eat? Well, to the dingy dark cave with him!” In other bat words, “Why not let him or her starve tonight? It would teach that bat a lesson about flying and echo-locating.” As valuable a lesson as that might be, it's not how bats roll … or roost. When a fellow bat doesn't get enough food to drink, another bat helps out. Near as any of us can tell, these altruistic bats never went to Saturday or Sunday school. It's in their blood, pun intended. And studies show that impulse is widespread.

Let's postulate that altruistic behavior is ingrained in all mammals. Let's say, further, that all of us mammals have enough in common ancestrally to explain this. Somewhere a long time in the past, perhaps around the demise of the ancient dinosaurs 66 million years ago, bats and humans had a common ancestor and that group (colony or tribe) had a tendency to help a fellow out. Well, is that where it ends? If we found that ancestor, could we do some analysis of the evolutionary origin of altruism?

Probably not, because altruism most likely goes back a lot further than that. I've been to a remarkable place called Dinosaur National Monument. It's on the border between Utah and Colorado. The official location is Dinosaur, Colorado. One of their sayings is: “You'll want to stay here forever … the dinosaurs did!” How charming is that?

Apparently, about 150 million years ago, a river flowed through the location, and during a very large rain event there was an enormous flood. Hundreds of animals were washed downstream the way our human-built houses get washed away in floods. The animals drowned or were crushed in what might be called a bone-jam, like a logjam only more deadly.

If you've never been to the site, you should visit and see it for yourself. It's amazing. President Woodrow Wilson saw to it that the area was set aside as a national monument in 1915. Today, there is an enormous roof covering the main bone-jam area, known as the Carnegie Dinosaur Quarry. But if you walk around and you're alert, you'll find a great many other ancient dinosaur fossils and get a sense of the enormous scale of the deluge. As you consider all of the animals that must have been living in the same area upstream, you cannot help but wonder how they lived. Were they savages with no ties to families or homelands? Or were they like us, with tribal ties and their own kind of altruistic impulses? Did they have ancient dinosaur rituals like parades, birthday parties, and sunrise services?

I've also traveled in Montana and visited a couple of ancient dinosaur fossil sites there. It takes diligence, but scientists have found a great many dinosaur egg nests. Some of the most spectacular examples were buried by ash from what we now call a supervolcano under Yellowstone National Park. The nests here belonged to a duck-billed dinosaur called
Maiasaura
. You don't have to know much about ancient dinosaurs to see that they lived like birds in a rookery. The arrangement of the eggs in
Maiasaura
nests indicate that these animals cared for their young at least as attentively as a modern bird does. Observing modern birds, we can see that they have altruistic tendencies. Some species, famously the cuckoo, lay eggs in the nests of other birds, who tend to the alien hatchlings as though they are their own, apparently
just because
, just because it's the right thing to do. It's an amazing strategy that exploits other birds' altruism or just their bird brains.

The connection between dinosaurs and birds runs deep. Strictly speaking, all modern birds are classified as dinosaurs: Specifically, Reptilia gave rise to Dinosauria, which includes Sauropodia, which includes Avialae, the modern birds. Paradoxically, our birds are descended from the dinosaurs that are classified as “lizard-hipped” rather than those classified as “bird-hipped.” It's yet another quirk in the history of scientific terminology. Modern birds have maternal instincts, and the ancient dinosaurs—nonavian dinosaurs, in modern evolutionary lingo—probably did, too. (A side note:
nonavian
is a poor term for those once-mighty beasts. Would you expect a sales guy to try to sell you a non-car truck? Sigh…)

Maternal care of offspring is not quite the same thing as altruism, but how many of us have had our best friend's mother treat us very well, just because we were kids who needed a snack or a ride or a few hours at the bowling alley? Does a human mother do that out of her maternal instincts or out of a humankind-wide altruism? If we allow the definition of altruism to include maternal care, then it becomes an even broader and older evolutionary impulse. A great many species that seem to be less thoughtful than we exhibit paternal care, too. I've been scuba diving around the Garibaldi damselfish. When you approach a nest of eggs, the male fish will go out of its way to annoy you until you move away. I've read accounts of divers being bitten by cute, happy little Garibaldis. Based on this experience alone, I'd say fish at least have a paternal instinct.

There is a good deal of evidence that certain fish also help each other out, albeit only in certain restricted ways. Consider the big-eyed squirrelfish and the reef wrasse. (Before we go on, I have always been charmed by our human-given whimsical fish names. A squirrelfish? Really? And, a wrasse would be an “old woman fish.” That's just weird.) At any rate, the squirrelfish swims into an area where the wrasse is working. The big fish lets the little fish eat tiny parasites off the big fish's scales. The squirrelfish even lets the little wrasse into its mouth to clean out parasites. The squirrelfish could just eat the wrasse, but it or they or he or she doesn't. The two species have a symbiotic or mutually beneficial arrangement. But, wait … wait … there's more.

Apparently, these two species of fish recognize each other as individuals. A certain squirrelfish seeks out a certain wrasse; they know each other in a fishy kinda' way. They help each other by not seeking other individual cleaner wrasses or another big squirrelfish. They guarantee each other's employment. But the altruistic part is that the squirrelfish chases away predators of the wrasse. The squirrelfish could just let the wrasse die at the mouth of the big bad predator fish, but instead puts its own life in danger on the little wrasse's behalf. It's an intriguing arrangement.

Altruism has a dark side, though. It requires enforcement at times, and that can involve punishment. Have you ever been mean, just because it somehow made you feel better? Have you ever sought revenge? The country singer Carrie Underwood had a huge hit with “Before He Cheats,” in which the protagonist celebrates vandalizing her ex-lover's four-wheel-drive truck. She describes smashing the headlights, carving into the seats, and slashing the tires. The crowd goes wild when she sings it; I've seen it.

Have you noticed that it might take a lot of time, effort, and energy to exact revenge? Someone plays a practical joke on you, like faking a phone call from a big television production company telling you that the company does not want to produce a show called
Bill Nye the Science Guy
, which broke your heart and sent you into a funk for the rest of the week? (That example is fictitious of course and I'm using it just as an example!) Then after you found out it was just a radio DJ you'd met, who was simply pretending to be a television executive, you thought about all the different things you might do to make that guy's life miserable? (Not that any of this has anything to do with me, of course.) Even though it would take a lot of your time to get the parking tickets forged and set up the fake phone number for the fake law firm that would send him a bill for thousands of dollars? If you did all that, you are helping to keep our society in balance, and it is predictable using mathematical models of evolution.

The idea is that it costs you something to seek revenge—it takes your time and it's a little dangerous to smash headlights and carve seats. It takes time and money to produce fake tickets and set up a fake phone number or send phony invoices—you do it anyway, because making that other person feel bad makes you feel good. This has come to be called altruistic punishment. It is the flip side of evolutionary altruism. Evolutionary scientists claim that we are compelled to get back at someone who has wronged us because it's good for society. Our ancestors, who were not programmed to seek revenge (to gouge the paint job on someone's truck after she caught you on a date with a rival), did not pass on their genes. Revenge has an evolutionary purpose: It keeps everyone honest, so we can't resist seeking it. It's in the tribe's best evolutionary interest that you exact revenge on those who've broken the generally accepted rules. It's altruistic to punish.

Researchers have run many tests on the value and effectiveness of altruistic punishment. Classic experiments allow players to allocate money or points to other players in a group game. People never keep all the resources to themselves, apparently out of fear that sooner or later the other players will demand restitution if they do. It works every time. We are motivated to exact revenge or payment from someone we perceive to be a wrongdoer, even if it costs us money, time, or energy to do it—even when there is no apparent benefit to ourselves.

This is another case in which we can demonstrate that evolution influences not only the way we look, it also affects what we feel. The happy side of altruism helps the members of our human tribe directly. The mean side, altruistic punishment, keeps us all in check. We help each other out when we can, which generally makes us feel good. We act mean when we need to, which also makes us feel good—or at least better—and which, more important, helps keep the whole system of altruism running smoothly.

The big limitation of these experiments is that they are just tests. They are often simplified simulations of the real world. Influential nuances may be lost. And the limitation with underwater experiments is that these are just fish. It's hard to figure out exactly what motivates them by asking questions. Although they're always wagging their jaws, they refuse to talk, and their handwriting is terrible.

So biologists turn to playing games: More precisely, they turn to game theory, a system of thought that breaks down behavioral costs and benefits in specific scenarios. These games turn the idea of evolutionary feeling into something concrete and quantifiable. That's where we are going next.

 

28

GAMES SPECIES PLAY

My older brother Darby is great at card games. He usually beats me. In fact, he beats a lot of people. He has what is traditionally called “card sense.” Without counting each card, he has an intuitive feel for how many face cards have been played, how many aces remain in the deck, and the likelihood that the certain cards he needs are in my hand and any other players' hands. Maybe my brother should become an evolutionary biologist, because theories of games have become very important to understanding natural selection, especially to understanding the altruistic impulses we just investigated.

The most famous of the evolutionary games is the Prisoner's Dilemma, formalized in 1950 by mathematician Albert Tucker, who specialized in what's called game theory. The game goes like this: Let's say two partners in crime are apprehended. Each is interrogated by the authorities; within the constraints of an imaginary situation, each can either tell the cops that the other guy (the accomplice) committed the crime, or each can admit that he committed the crime. The possible consequences are:

1) The first bad guy denies having anything to do with it and gets away free, so the second bad guy ends up taking all the blame.

2) They both deny involvement and both go to jail.

3) They both admit doing it, and both get off with half the penalty.

Test subjects have been put in a variety of situations simulating this situation. Computer programs have been created to simulate this situation. Mathematicians who specialize in game theory have analyzed this scenario as it carries forward. Each prisoner has to make the choice between denying and admitting. The game's outcome is resolved once the second prisoner makes a choice: admitting after the first has denied, denying after the first has admitted, etc. In many versions of the game, prisoners make their choices before they know what choices their accomplices have made.

In the simplified context of the Prisoner's Dilemma, it would seem that the best course for either prisoner would be to simply deny, deny, deny. In reality, the trend goes somewhat the other way. If the other guy denies, the first guy admits. If the other guy admits, the first guy also admits. Why would he admit if the other guy has already done so? It's not what you might expect of a hypothetical prisoner, who was only interested in him or herself. It turns out that humans are somehow biased to cooperate. They are prone to be somewhat altruistic, somewhat like the squirrelfish and the wrasses I was talking about in the previous chapter. Game theory is just another way of probing the ways in which evolution has instilled altruistic instincts in all of us.