Animal Aggression

Seeing as I can write about anything I want this week, I figured an interesting topic to go into a bit might be animal aggression and how it relates back to either the way we condition them as humans or the way we act as humans.

Cats naturally, being predators, will want to kill rats and eat them. However, an experiment that was done by Zing Yang Kuo, a renowned biologist, has shown that it is possible to train cats to not be aggressive towards rats. The way Kuo proved this is by raising a cat in the same cage as a rat companion from when it was a kitten up until it was full grown. He found that instead of attacking the rat, the cat became friends with it. Not only that, but the cat refused to go after any other rats because it had been put in a situation where it learned that rats are friends and not to be hunted. This experiment shows that certain instinctual aggressive behaviors in animals can be stifled based on how they are raised or what role they are taught to play. This does not mean that aggressive behaviors in animals are not often instinctual. In fact, there have been experiments in which rats are raised without any contact with other rats. Once they are introduced to another rat for the first time, they will attack it in the same exact pattern that any other rat would attack someone threatening their territory. What this all is meant to show is that some aggressive behaviors certainly come naturally, but humans have the capacity to override those aggressive behaviors by the way the raise animals (or possibly other humans, as the case may be). 

Chimps and bonobos are two species that share over 95% of the same DNA as humans, but they each handle aggression in very different ways. For instance, some chimps, especially the males, will track down other chimps that they deem as threatening with the intent to kill. Bonobos on the other hand will do everything in their power to avoid violence. They will even go as far as to have sex before doing something that they believe would otherwise cause conflict. An example of this is when multiple bonobos choose the same area to scavenge for food, they will engage in group sex before eating to avoid fighting over the limited resources they are attempting to share. Chimps on the other hand will violently fight with each other if forced to compete for food. An interesting part of all of this is that chimps are in male-dominated societies, while bonobos are in female dominated societies. Because of this it there is speculation that males are programmed to be aggressive, while females are programmed to be more sympathetic.

It is worth noting that most animals utilize aggression as a sort of survival instinct, and have the ability to turn off their aggressive tendencies when it would be optimal to do so. So it could just be that the bonobos have evolved under fortunate enough circumstances that they have not had to develop major aggressive tendencies to survive. Sherwood Washburn, a monkey anthropologist, has discovered that generally in groups of monkeys the role of dominance will be given to the strongest and most aggressive male. This is because of that same natural aggressive instinct that most animals need to survive. Another scientist, Steven Pinker, has discovered that establishing an aggressive leader creates less overall aggression amongst groups of monkeys because they know who their leader is, and they fear him. Not only is this good for general reproduction, but it also allows the strongest monkey in the group to pass on his genes to future generations, thus strengthening the species overall. In this way, aggression in animals can be a good thing. Another example of this is elephant seals. Burney LeBoeuf, a biologist, discovered that before mating, male elephant seals will battle each other for dominance. The seal that gains dominance through this aggression will obtain the position of alpha male, and go on to have sex with more females than any of the other seals in the pack. In fact, the alpha male will have between 50% and 100% of the sex, depending on the size of the group he is in. This helps the species pass on the genes of the strongest elephant seals, while letting the weaker ones die without reproducing. These examples of aggression being beneficial for animals have prompted some scientists to make the conclusion that aggression is also beneficial for humans and so we should not work so hard to stifle it.

Other scientists have argued that solving problems without the use of aggression is usually more beneficial. This is shown through interactions between groups of insects, like bees or ants who communicate in large hives/colonies as a unified workforce. Even animals known for their violent behavior, like chimps, can find working together to be beneficial. For instance if a chimp has food and another chimp begins to beg for said food, the first chimp will often give the begging chimp some of his food, even if the first chimp does not want to give up any of his meal. This is meant to show that even though aggression runs rampant throughout the animal kingdom, animals also have the capacity to work together for the greater good, or just out of pure compassion.