“Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist”

“While it is always unwise to ignore biology, it is a simplification to attribute existing social roles to it. Modern knowledge of animal and human behavior indicates a more flexible arsenal of responses than is often assumed.” (p. 290)  

This warning echoes throughout the new book, Different, by primatologist Frans de Waal. Different contains a wonderful presentation of the author’s insights from a long career observing primates, and a long life making personal observations of his fellow humans (whom he never lets you forget are also primates). Simply stated, the essential topic is the old nature-nurture question as applied to human sex and gender, but backed up with the most recent studies of neuroscience; observations of chimps, bonobos, and other primates; and measures of actual human behavior (as opposed to questionnaires, which are subject to self-censorship).

A counter-theme of DeWaal's book is to correct many misconceptions in prior popular science writing. DeWaal constantly presents summaries of theories from earlier authors who claimed the authority of having made observations of male and female primate behavior. DeWaal does a wonderful job of showing the ways that many of these theories were flawed, sometimes because the primates under observation were in abnormal captive situations, and sometimes because the observers were extraordinarily biased by the expectations of male-centric human culture, especially among the early primatologists. Despite many years of improving observations, thanks in no small part to the women who entered the field, the picture has changed. Women scientists were especially influential in figuring out how to observe troops of wild chimpanzees and bonobos. 

DeWaal still finds the cultural blindness when observers claim to know about the inborn nature of behavior — both of us and our evolutionary relatives:

“Yet in academic discourse, nurture still often is the sole message. I’m at a loss as to why this is so, and I’ve tried to poke holes into this position by describing how males and females behave in our next of kin. Not that the conclusion is crystal clear, but at a minimum, it’s considerably richer than the cliché of the male monkey overlord that was foisted upon us during an era of limited knowledge. Human gender differences have enough commonalities with primate sex differences to clarify that we didn’t escape the forces of evolution.” (p. 314)

A young male chimpanzee, it turns out,
likes to play with toy vehicles and balls,
while girl chimps like dolls, and even use
wood sticks or other objects in the wild to 
imitate mothering behavior.

In part due to DeWaal's own primate studies and publications in the 1980s and 1990s, the contrasting sexual behavior of males and females in bonobo and chimpanzee societies have become iconic because chimps are often violent, including the killing of infants by male members of the troop, while bonobos live a nonviolent life full of relaxed sex acts between just about any combination of partners. The key observation in Different is that both the males and the females of various species have their own social order, in which both sexes cooperate, and that female leaders often exert a great deal of authority and leadership in the troops of animals. The alpha female often has the power to determine which male becomes or remains the alpha male of the troop.

Different offers many insights about numerous issues of sex and gender and what we can learn from our close primate relatives. For example, there's the question of whether differences in male and female behavior are innate or learned. Basically, the answer seems to be both. It's complicated, and I won't try to replicate the details of the discussion.

For another example, the question of male or female brains --

"The only point both sides agree on is that the brains of women and men are more similar than they are different. Animals play a critical role in this debate, as their brains develop independently from the human cultural environment. If their brains vary by sex—and they do—why should ours be gender neutral? A recent study of capuchin monkeys, for example, reported a remarkable divergence between male and female brains, which differ in cortical areas associated with higher-order functioning." (p. 316). 

The complexity of the topic of gender is important, and DeWaal offers a deep study of how our society deals with the differences between the sexes and how the differing roles of the sexes arise:

"Except for purely cultural embellishments—such as pink for girls and blue for boys—these roles integrate both nature and nurture. As a result, they are more resistant to change than you’d expect. In this day and age, some parents opt for a gender-neutral upbringing of their children to throw off what they see as society’s shackles. They refuse to reveal their child’s anatomy, sometimes not even informing the grandparents. They cut the hair of girls or let that of boys grow long, and they allow their children to dress any way they want, also if their son decides to go to school in a tutu. They do so in reaction to society’s gender stereotyping and the associated inequality. Note, however, that only one of the two words in gender inequality refers to a problem, and it’s not gender . No one would propose to fight racism by urging people of different races to try to look more alike. So why would we try to get rid of gender? Ultimately, such attempts fail to address the deeper problem of inequality. It blames the existence of genders for the moral and political shortcomings of society." (pp. 50-51). 

Many other topics of how animal behavior might provide hints about human behavior. In reading all the numerous and enlightening examples in Different, I was fascinated to learn how subtle and complex the communication and intelligence of primates can be, including observations of occasional female chimpanzees who exhibited male characteristics and behavior, but were treated normally by their fellow chimps.  

Other primates besides us humans also plan what they will do. In the author’s sketch, you can see a female with both a baby and a rock on her back. She's on the way to use the rock to crack some nuts that she finds good to eat. 

Even if you have read other popular science books about gender behavior and about aggression in primates and how it applies to human interactions, I strongly suggest that you read this one too. Maybe you'll remain convinced by the earlier authors, but DeWall will offer you some good material to think about in terms of the evolutionary heritage we share with these close relations of humanity:

"Outside science and sometimes within, a common belief seems to be that, while our bodies are a product of evolution, our minds are ours alone. Humans aren’t subject to the same laws of nature as animals, and we feel and think the way we do because we freely chose to. I consider this position a form of neo-creationism: it neither denies nor fully embraces evolution. As if evolution came to a screeching halt when it reached the human (and only the human) neck, thus leaving our lofty heads alone!"  (p. 316). 

My few quotations and descriptions of this book really can't capture how interesting it is!

Review © 2022 mae sander. Images taken from the book 

Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist by Frans DeWaal, published 2022.

 

A Thought-Provoking Book about Animal Capablities

Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans de Waal explores the history and successes of a particular scientific endeavor called ethology: "the biological study of animal behavior" (p. 29). The book covers the state of the art of studying animal intelligence, non-human mental capacities, insights into animal minds from neuroscience, cognition and social interactions in various species, and other behaviors. Many of the observations made by de Waal and his colleagues over his long career in the field were in direct conflict with rigid assumptions about non-human characteristics held by earlier behaviorists.

Are We Smart Enough...  is full of descriptions of how the earlier researchers floundered in blind alleys while systematically excluding and mocking those who disagreed with their view of the limited nature of any creatures that were not humans. This is interesting, but what I found much more interesting was de Waal's many stories about the actual behavior of animals including a wide variety of species with numerous adaptations. He discusses the highly developed social life, social learning, and food-gathering methods of various species including chimps, monkeys, and corvids like crows and jackdaws, and even describes the clever hunting techniques of the octopus. We learn of many ways that these creatures make and use tools. We learn about their cognitive capacities, evidence of their consciousness and self-awareness, and several other characteristics once believed unique to humans. The question of consciousness, a problematic concept whether in humans or animals, is especially intriguing: from a conference on the subject de Waal quotes this: "The weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness." (p. 234)

There are many fascinating descriptions of apes, small monkeys, and even birds creating tools from available materials like twigs. One type of monkey even employed a sharpened stick to kill a small animal in its hole and pull it out to eat it. Moreover, a number of different animals apparently foresee when they would need the tools, bringing them to a site where food may be available, and then using them to overcome challenging situations where food is hard to get. Here's an example of one of de Waal's very informative original illustrations about wild chimps using tools --

De Waal describes quite a bit about how chimps go about this elaborate activity, especially how young chips patiently watch their mothers breaking the hard nut shells. At first the young chips ineffectively imitate their able mothers in a skill that's not in fact that easy for a human to do; after several years they become adept. An important fact about this observation is that it occurs in wild chimps, not in captive individuals. Here's more:

"The Japanese primatologist Tetsuro Matsuzawa tracked the development of this skill at the 'factory,' an open space where apes bring their nuts to anvil stones and fill the jungle with a steady rhythm of banging noise. Youngsters hang around the hardworking adults, occasionally pilfering kernels from their mothers. This way they learn the taste of nuts as well as the connection with stones. They make hundreds of futile attempts, hitting the nuts with their hands and feet, or aimlessly pushing nuts and stones around. That they still learn the skill is a great testament to the irrelevance of reinforcement, because none of these activities is ever rewarded until, by about three years of age, the juvenile starts to coordinate to the point that a nut is occasionally cracked. It is only by the age of six or seven that their skill reaches adult level." (p. 80).

Exaggerated claims about animal capacities are in a way the other side of the extreme views of animal limitations. For example, de Waal provides much detail about the claim that the famous parrot Alex was really using language just as humans do. De Waal doesn't think Alex's ability was the same as human language. However, he respects the endeavors with Alex and other language-trained non-humans, saying:

"The immense effort to find language outside our own species has, ironically, led to a greater appreciation of how special the language capacity is. It is fed by specific learning mechanisms that allow a toddler to linguistically outpace any trained animal. It is in fact an excellent example of biologically prepared learning in our species. Yet this realization by no means invalidates the revelations we owe animal language research. That would be like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. It has given us Alex, Washoe, Kanzi, and other prodigies who have helped put animal cognition on the map. These animals convinced skeptics and the general public alike that there is much more to their behavior than rote learning. One cannot watch a parrot successfully count up items in his head and still believe that the only thing these birds are good at is parroting." (pp. 112-113)

There's much more here than I can possibly cover in a brief review. A very thought-provoking book!

To quote the review in the New York Times by Jon Mooallem:

"We sometimes fall into what de Waal calls 'neo-creationist' thinking: We accept evolution but assume 'evolution stopped at the human head' — believing our bodies may have evolved from monkeys, but that our brains are their own miraculous and discrete inventions. But cognition must be understood as an evolutionary product, like any other biological phenomenon; it exists on a spectrum, de Waal argues, with familiar forms shading into absolutely alien-looking ones. He introduces what he calls the rule of 'cognitive ripples': We tend to notice intelligence in primates because it’s most conspicuous. It looks the most like our intelligence. But 'after the apes break down the dam between the humans and the rest of the animal kingdom, the floodgates often open to include species after species.'" (NYT Review, April 26, 2016)