Barbara J. King

I could feel the steam rising through my body, heading right out my ears like in some old TV cartoon. Here was a person discussing how to define and understand unique abilities that arose in human history—but overlooking the magnificent sociality and emotionality of great apes.

We were seated around a seminar table at the Oakley Center on the Williams College campus (see blog post of September 17). The speaker was David Christian of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. David was saying that humans are utterly unique in our abilities: 1) to learn collectively from one another and 2) to live in a collective emotional world. Only at around 200,000 years ago—when we became Homo sapiens—did these abilities come into fruition.

In what no doubt was a tight voice (matched by less-than-relaxed body language!), I asked David after his presentation: What would you need to observe in order to conclude that apes do indeed live in a collection emotional world? “Apes don’t tell stories or narratives to each other,” David replied.

Well, the game’s up right there. True, apes don’t tell stories. Apes don’t talk. Presumably, for apes, narratives are simply not part of their world.

That night, back in my hotel room, I scribbled point after point in support of apes living in a collective emotional world, as expressed in their own non-linguistic ways. Apes’ response to death, apes’ compassion to each other, even apes’ cruelty to each other are all rooted, I believe, in their ability to inhabit each other’s emotions via a complex system of body postures, body gestures, facial expressions, and vocalizations.

My own presentation was scheduled for the next day. I decided to add in some new facts just recently published, facts that bear on the question of ape collective learning. David, I knew, accepted that apes learn from each other; he was suggesting that only humans build on each other’s learned behaviors.

The new data come from Bossou in Guinea, West Africa. The Bossou chimpanzees had been known to suffer injuries derived from snare traps at a lower rate than chimpanzees elsewhere. Now, as Gaku Ohashi and Tetsuro Matsuzawa wrote in the journal Primates, chimpanzees were observed disabling the human-set snares.

This is pretty stunning stuff, especially because the snares are challenging to neutralize and because sometimes more than one chimpanzee approaches and investigates any given snare. How often the apes behave this way and how often they are successful remains to be discovered. What’s clear is that these apes have learned together—perhaps more aptly, are learning together-- how to respond to a historically recent threat (as other chimpanzees have apparently not learned).

The next day (before giving my presentation), I shared a lunch table with David and also Bill Lynn of Williams College. I connected with Bill, an ethicist who studies wolves, immediately. That sometimes happens at these conferences and is always a gift. This time, with Bill, and with Cary Wolfe of Rice University who has written brilliantly about animals, I felt a little high from finding people who care deeply about animals as individuals, as distinct selves. (And I was grateful because those conversations did not produce the above-mentioned steam!)

And then a funny thing happened.

I listened as David explained his views to Bill (who had not heard David’s paper the day before). While I had heard David earlier speaking mostly about boundaries—of our need and ability to draw borders around our species—now I heard instead an argument framed with great emphasis on thresholds. His presentation had struck me as focused on qualitative differences across species, but the more we talked together, the more I heard (and importantly, as that built-up steam began to dissipate, the more I was able to hear) about smaller quantitative shifts as humans evolved from ape-like ancestors.

My differences with David that the day before had felt so stark and fixed became far more pliable and dynamic in conversation. As the day went on, he admitted keen interest in chimpanzees’ qualities of collective response and I admitted keen interest in how, at some point in our prehistory, we humans crossed into new behavioral and emotional (and linguistic) territory.

Speaking for myself (but hoping he would agree), David and I each produced a shift—at least a small one—in the other’s point of view. I still embrace a different set of questions and a different starting point than David does. But still: the dynamic dance strikes again! I learned a lot from talking with David, Bill, and Cary. It’s so much fun when that happens. It’s the very reason we Homo sapiens leave our comfortable routine, squeeze into a winged vehicle that hurtles itself into the sky, and participate in these conferences in the first place.

Information on David Christian:

David Christian

Information on Bill Lynn:

Bill Lynn

Information on Cary Wolfe:

Cary Wolfe