Is there an
essential difference between humans and animals?
Until recently, "culture" seemed to be the last stronghold of
humanness. Now, however, there is no conflict between
"nature" and "culture". Culture — defined as "knowledge and
habits"' acquired from other individuals, so that two groups of the
same species behave differently — is part of
nature.
On the Japanese
island of Koshima a primatologist noticed, in 1950, a young
female macaque monkey dubbed "Ima" washing a sweet potato in a
stream. Later Ima shifted her habitual activity to the beach
— salty sea-water evidently made the potatoes taste better.
The habit spread first to her playmates, then to her mother and
other female relatives, a clear example of social learning within a
group.
It is the same story
elsewhere. Certain wild communities of chimpanzees demonstrate a
form of highly skilled nut-cracking, where a "hammer" stone is used
on an "anvil"; others do not. Wild chimpanzees in the Mahale
mountains on the east shore of Lake Tanganyika clasp opposite hands
in pairs as they groom each other, but another group of the same
subspecies of chimpanzee living only 105 miles, away never do it.
As human knowledge deepens, we shall find other species that pass
on distinct local behaviour — whale songs and the calls of
wrens, for example, have regional dialects.
This will be
unsurprising to pet-owners and farmers who know the idiosyncratic
variations between animals, but we have to see it in the context of
the narrow conclusions about animals drawn by behaviourists (some
of whom not so long ago thought it was a distraction to observe
actual animals at all). Many scientists still refuse to believe
that non-human animals have intentions, complex emotions, or the
ability to learn by imitation.
Where a species has
a recent shared evolutionary history with us, as apes do, it is
extreme bias to refuse to understand similar behaviour by reference
to our own. Perhaps, before we deny animals a trait like sympathy
because they cannot rise to our own moral heights, we should
instead ask whether human sympathy has prosaic biological
roots.
The sensory
apparatus that enables human beings to enjoy and appreciate music
and art is very similar to that of other mammals, and is also found
in birds. Apes paint with pleasure and concentration. Given a
piece of paper with a single asymmetrically placed mark already on
it, they balance it with a mark of their own. It is likely that
other creatures respond to symmetry as we do.
Why do we dismiss
bower-birds' elaborate and beautifully decorated nests as nothing
but automatic mating display — after all, human artists
painted partly to spread their genes to models and
countesses. At its most fundamental level human art making is
a form of individual and group display.
Every artistic
tradition develops on the basis of certain special visual and
aesthetic ideas embedded, through social evolution, in a particular
culture. These reflect the emotional needs and imaginative
prepossessions of the people for whom the art was made; and if we
want to understand the meaning of any art we have to explore these
cultural ideas in depth.
