Through a Window (33 page)

Among humans, members of one group may see themselves as quite distinct from members of another, and may then treat group and non-group individuals differently. Indeed, non-group members may even be "dehumanized" and regarded almost as creatures of a different species. Once this happens people are freed from the inhibitions and social sanctions that operate within their own group, and can behave to non-group members in ways that would not be tolerated amongst their own. This leads, among other things, to the atrocities of war. Chimpanzees also show differential behaviour towards group and non-group members. Their sense of group identity is strong and they clearly know who "belongs" and who does not: non-community members may be attacked so fiercely that they die from their wounds. And this is not simple "fear of strangers"—members of the Kahama community were familiar to the Kasekela aggressors, yet they were attacked brutally. By separating themselves, it was as though they forfeited their "right" to be treated as group members. Moreover, some patterns of attack directed against non-group individuals have never been seen during fights between members of the same community—the twisting of limbs, the tearing off of strips of skin, the drinking of blood. The victims
have thus been, to all intents and purposes, "dechimpized," since these are patterns usually seen when a chimpanzee is trying to kill an adult prey animal—an animal of another species.

Chimpanzees, as a result of an unusually hostile and violently aggressive attitude towards non-group individuals, have clearly reached a stage where they stand at the very threshold of human achievement in destruction, cruelty and planned inter-group conflict. If ever they develop the power of language, might they not push open the door and wage war with the best of us?

What of the other side of the coin? Where do the chimpanzees stand, relative to us, in their expression of love, compassion and altruism? Because violent and brutal behaviour is vivid and attention-catching, it is easy to get the impression that chimpanzees are more aggressive than they really are. In fact, peaceful interactions are far more frequent than aggressive ones; mild threats are more common than vigorous ones; threats per se are much more frequent than fights; and serious, wounding conflicts are rare compared to brief, relatively mild ones. Moreover, chimpanzees have a rich repertoire of behaviours that serve to maintain or restore social harmony and promote cohesion among community members. The embracing, kissing, patting and holding of hands that serve as greetings after separation, or are used by dominant individuals to reassure their subordinates after aggression. The long, peaceful sessions of relaxed social grooming. The sharing of food. The concern for the sick or wounded. The readiness to help companions in distress, even when this means risking life or limb. All these reconciliatory, friendly, and helping behaviours are, without doubt, very close to our own qualities of compassion, love and self-sacrifice.

At Gombe care of the sick is not a helping behaviour common among unrelated chimpanzees. Indeed, a badly injured individual is sometimes shunned by non-family members. When Fifi, who had a gaping wound in her head, repeatedly solicited grooming from others in her group, they peered at the injury
(where some fly maggots could be seen) then moved hastily away. But her infant son groomed carefully around the edges of the lesion and sometimes licked it. And when old Madam Bee lay dying, after the assault by the Kasekela males, Honey Bee spent hours each day grooming her mother and keeping the flies away from her terrible wounds. In groups of captive chimpanzees, individuals who have been raised together, and who are as familiar as close kin in the wild, will zealously squeeze or poke pus from one another's wounds and remove splinters. One took a speck of grit from his companion's eye. A young female developed the habit of cleaning her companion's teeth with twigs. She found this particularly fascinating when their milk teeth were loose and wiggly, and she even performed a couple of extractions! Such manipulations are for the most part due to a fascination for the activity itself, and almost certainly derive from social grooming. The results, however, are sometimes beneficial to the recipients and, coupled with the concern so often shown for family members, the behaviour provides a biological base for the emergence of compassionate health care in man.

Among non-human primates in the wild it is rare for adults to share food with each other, although mothers will typically share with their young. In chimpanzee society, however, even non-related adults frequently share with each other, although they are more likely to do so with kin and close friends. At Gombe sharing among adults is seen most often during meat eating when, in response to an outstretched hand or other begging gesture, the possessor may allow a portion of the flesh to be taken—or may actually tear off a piece and hand it to the supplicant. Some individuals are much more generous than others in this respect. Sometimes other foods in short supply are shared, too—such as bananas. A good deal of sharing is seen among captive chimps. Wolfgang Kohler, "in the interests of science," once shut the young male Sultan into his cage without his supper, while feeding the old female Tschego outside. As she sat eating her meal,
Sultan became increasingly frenzied in his appeals to her, whimpering, screaming, stretching his arms towards her, and even throwing bits of straw in her direction. Eventually (when, presumably, she had taken the edge off her own hunger) she gathered a pile of food together and pushed it into his cage.

Food sharing among chimpanzees is usually explained away by scientists as being merely the best way of getting rid of an irritation—the begging of a companion. Sometimes this is undoubtedly true, for begging individuals can be extraordinarily persistent. Yet often the patience and tolerance of the individual who has possession of the desired object is remarkable. There was, for example, the occasion when old Flo wanted the piece of meat that Mike was chewing. She begged with both hands cupped around his muzzle, for well over a minute. Gradually she moved her pouted lips closer and closer until they were within an inch of Mike's. In the end he rewarded her, pushing the morsel (well chewed by then) directly from his mouth into hers. And what of Tschego's feeding of young Sultan? Admittedly she may have been irritated by his noisy tantrum—but she could have walked away to the far corner of her enclosure. Robert Yerkes tells of a female who was offered fruit juice from a cup through the bars of her cage. She filled her mouth and then, in response to pleading whimpers from the next cage, walked over and transferred the juice into her friend's mouth. She then returned for another mouthful which she delivered in the same manner. And so it continued until the cup was empty.

Towards the end of Madam Bee's life there was an unusually dry summer at Gombe, and the chimpanzees had to travel long distances between one food source and the next. Madam Bee, old and sick, sometimes got so tired during these journeys that she had no energy to climb for food upon arrival. Her two daughters would utter soft calls of delight and rush up to feed, but she simply lay below, exhausted. On three quite separate occasions Little Bee, the elder daughter, after feeding for about ten minutes, climbed down with food in her mouth and food in one hand, then went and placed the food from her hand on the ground beside Madam Bee. The two sat side by side, eating companionably together. Little Bee's behaviour was not only a demonstration of entirely voluntary giving, but it also showed that she understood the needs of her old mother. Without understanding of this sort there can be no empathy, no compassion. And, in both chimpanzees and humans, these are the qualities that lead to altruistic behaviour and self-sacrifice.

In chimpanzee society, although most risk-taking is on behalf of family members, there are examples of individuals risking injury if not their lives to help non-related companions. Evered once risked the fury of adult male baboons to rescue adolescent Mustard, pinned down and screaming, during a baboon hunt. And when Freud was seized during a bushpig hunt by an enraged sow, Gigi risked her life to save him. The pig had seized him from behind, and Freud, dropping his piglet, was screaming and struggling to escape, when Gigi raced up, hair bristling. The sow wheeled to charge Gigi, and Freud, bleeding heavily, was able to escape up a tree.

In some zoos, chimpanzees are kept on man-made islands, surrounded by water-filled moats. There are tales of heroism from there, too. Chimpanzees cannot swim and, unless they are rescued, will drown if they fall into deep water. Despite this, individuals have sometimes made heroic efforts to save companions from drowning—and were sometimes successful. One adult male lost his life as he tried to rescue a small infant whose incompetent mother had allowed it to fall into the water.

In all those animal species in which parents devote time and energy to the raising of their young they will, when occasion demands, risk life and limb in defence of their offspring. It is much more unusual for an adult to show altruistic behaviour towards an individual who is not closely related. After all, if you help your kin, all of whom bear some of the same genes as yourself, then your action will still be of some benefit to your clan in its struggle to survive—even if you yourself get harmed in the process. From these basically selfish roots sprang the most rarified form of altruism—helping another even when you stand to gain nothing for yourself or your kin.

As the ancestors of chimpanzees (and, incidentally, ourselves) gradually evolved more complex brains, so the period of childhood dependency became longer and mothers were forced to expend more and more time and energy in raising their families. Mother-offspring bonds became ever more enduring. The offspring of the most caring, supportive and successful mothers thrived and became themselves good and caring mothers who tended to produce many offspring. Youngsters who were less well cared for were less likely to survive, and those that did were often relatively poor mothers themselves and were less likely to produce large families. Loving and nurturing characteristics thus competed successfully, in the genetic sense, with more selfish behaviours. Over the aeons, tendencies to help and protect, which were originally developed for the successful raising of young, gradually infiltrated the genetic make-up of chimpanzees. Today we observe, again and again, that the distress of a non-related but well-known community member may elicit genuine concern in a companion, and a desire to help.

Compassion and self-sacrifice are two of the qualities we value most in our own western society. In some cases—as when someone risks his or her life to save another—the altruistic act is probably motivated by the same inherent complex of helping behaviours that cause a chimpanzee to aid a companion. But there are countless instances when the issue is clouded by cultural factors. If we know that another, especially a close relative or friend, is suffering, then we ourselves become emotionally disturbed, sometimes to the point of anguish. Only by helping (or trying to help) can we hope to alleviate our own distress. Does this mean, then, that we act altruistically only to soothe our own
consciences? That our helping, in the final analysis, is but a selfish desire to set our minds at rest? One can speculate endlessly on human motives for helping others. Why do we send money to starving children in the Third World? Because others will applaud and our reputation will be enhanced? Or because starving children evoke in us a feeling of pity which makes us uncomfortable? If our motive is to advance our social standing, or even to alleviate our own mental discomfort, is not our action basically selfish? Perhaps, but I feel strongly that we should not allow reductionist arguments of this sort to detract from the inspirational nature of many human acts of altruism. The very fact that we feel distressed by the plight of individuals we have never met, says it all.

We are, indeed, a complex and endlessly fascinating species. We carry in our genes, handed down from our distant past, deep-rooted aggressive tendencies. Our patterns of aggression are little changed from those that we see in chimpanzees. But while chimpanzees have, to some extent, an awareness of the pain which they may inflict on their victims, only we, I believe, are capable of real cruelty—the deliberate infliction of physical or mental pain on living creatures despite, or even because of, our precise understanding of the suffering involved. Only we are capable of torture. Only we, surely, are capable of evil.

But let us not forget that human love and compassion are equally deeply rooted in our primate heritage, and in this sphere too our sensibilities are of a higher order of magnitude than those of chimpanzees. Human love at its best, the ecstasy deriving from the perfect union of mind and body, leads to heights of passion, tenderness and understanding that chimpanzees cannot experience. And while chimpanzees will, indeed, respond to the immediate need of a companion in distress, even when this involves risk to themselves, only humans are capable of performing acts of self-sacrifice with
full
knowledge of the costs that may have to be borne—not only at the time, but also, perhaps,
at some future date. A chimpanzee does not have the conceptual ability to become a martyr, offering his life for a cause.

Thus although our "bad" is worse, immeasurably worse, than the worst conceivable actions of our closest living relatives, let us take comfort in the knowledge that our "good" can be incomparably better. Moreover we have developed a sophisticated mechanism—the brain—which enables us, if we will, to control our inherited aggressive hateful tendencies. Sadly, our success in this regard is poor. Nevertheless, we should remember that we alone among the life forms of this planet are able to overcome, by conscious choice, the dictates of our biological natures. At least, this is what I believe.

And what of the chimpanzees? Are they at the end of their evolutionary progression? Or are there pressures in their forest habitat that might, given time, push them further along the path taken by our own prehistoric ancestors, producing apes that would become ever more human? It seems unlikely; evolution does not often repeat itself. Probably chimpanzees would become ever more
different
—they might, for example, develop the right side of the brain at the expense of the left.