topics: |  evolution | language | science | anthropology

About our propensity for gossip, Dunbar asks:

Why on earth is so much time devoted by so many to the discussion of so little?

He then takes an evolutionary perspective and outlines how during evolution, social bonds strengthened, so that apes and monkeys share larger and more intense, close-knit social relationships than other animals. The grooming among primates is more about this social bond (and status) than about hygiene.

As the social group became even larger (as in a human village), it was no longer possible to sustain N choose 2 grooming relations, and it became necessary to find a more convenient form of multi-person "grooming". This, Dunbar argues, is gossip. Language, he says evolved more as an enabling force for this gossip, rather than on its natural selection merits alone.

Very well written - almost lyrical in snatches.

Excerpts

To be groomed by a monkey is to experience primordial enotions: The initial frisson of uncertainty in an untested relationship, the gradual surrender to another's avid fingers flickering expertly across bare skin, the light pinching and picking and nibbling of flesh as hands of discovery move in surprise from one freckle to another newly discovered mole. - (opening lines, p. 1)

A human baby produces its first real words at about 18 months of age.

2 years - quite vocal; vocab of some 50 words.
3 years - 1000 - 2/3 word sentences
6 years - 13,000 words
18 yrs  - 60K  p.3

Our brain is nine times larger rel to body size than a mammal.  Only
porpoises and dolphins come close.

Most human conversations - 2/3ds is about social issues p.4 [no serious
research data].

newspapers:  L. Times: 1993 col-inches; 43% column space (850 in) goes to
	"human interest stories" - rest to serious news /reviews;
	human interest = interviews, gossip etc.
	Sun: 1063 col-in; 78% human interest, 833in (only 22% serious news)

Great Ape extinction - from 30mya to ~10mya, more apes than monkeys; but
      10mya, temp drop by 10 deg C (ocean surface) - and most ape species
      die.  [possibly because apes can't handle higher tannin diet as in
      unripe fruit]

Deception among apes

Andrew Whiten and Dick Byrne : chacma baboons in S. Africa.
Young adult female (Mel) was digging a succulent tuber out of the
ground... hard work... Young juvenile (Paul) was watching.  As soon as Mel
managed to wrench the tuber out of the ground, Paul let out an ear-splitting
scream, of the kind commonly uttered by juveniles who are being attacked by
someone bigger.  Paul's mother, who was beyond some bushes, immediately came
racing, took in the situation at a glance, and fell on the unsuspecting
Mel.  Needless to say, Mel dropped the tuber and ran off, with outraged mum
in pursuit.  Paul nonchalantly picked up the tuber and started to enjoy
lunch.  23

lg: "high dudgeon" - can dudgeon ever be "low"?
   (now used only in the phrase `in high dudgeon' - freedictionary: thesaurus)

Reconciliation after fighting among male Geladea baboons:
[After a fight, often lasting over a whole day, to decide who gets the
harem.  The females may also help decide such battles, if they prefer one
over the other. ]
   The new male approaches the defeated male in a non-aggressive, almost
   submissive way.  The defeated male is initially suspicious.  He has just
   received the beating of his life from this thug... After some false
   starts, the deal is struck surprisingly quickly; there is a simple ritual
   of reconciliation in which the old male reaches through to touch the new
   male's penis while the latter presents his rear.  Then the two males
   groom each other for the kind of enthusiasm reservved for the aftermath
   of patched-up quarrels.  27

Grooming stimulates production of endorphins - the body's natural opiates.
Opium etc. work because their chemical signature is identical to that of
the more familiar opiate drugs such as opium or its derivative, morphine.
However we don't become addicted to endogenous opiates in quite the way we
do to opium because the brain only produces natural opiates in relatively
small quantities.
     [or is it because we have no "control" over this natural production?]

Stress makes it more difficult to conceive (studies on career women) -
also men who ran > 60 miles / week had sign lower sperm densities  p.43
- this is perhaps why lower-ranked female geladas, who face some degree of
  harrassment from other higher females - 2 mild threats / day and one
  serious attack per week - they may have higher stress, which is why they
  produce fewer offspring - appox 10% less for every drop in rank.  Also
  lower ranking females have higher levels of circulating endogenous
  opiates.
[May be crucial also in explaining some aspects of behaviour - such as some
days when everything seems to go well - one wins in sports, does well at
work, etc. Low opiates? ]

Free riders in social situations
Magnus Enquist / Otto Leimar : percentage of free riders - those who promise
to return a benefit but don't - rises as size of group gets bigger.  Because
the free-rider can keep one step ahead of being "discovered".

In many species, the female will only mate w males who bring them gifts.
Making an expensive investment beforehand forces the male to invest
enough in the female, and not to abandon her. 46

Charles Hockett, 1960s: 18 features which can be taken to define true
language. 4 most important are that language is:
    - referential - sounds refer to objects in environment
    - syntactical (has grammatical structure)
    - non-iconic - most words do not resemble objects they refer to
     		   (unlike the "word" moo for example)
    - learned (as opp to being instinctive)
were proposed to distinguish human language from e.g. language of honey
bees, discovered in the 1950s by ethologist Karl von Frisch.  Through a
combination of ingenuous experiments, was able to show that the speed of
the dance indicates distance to the nectar source, while angle of the bar
of the figure of eight to the vertical indicates the compass direction rel
to the sun.
  [from http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/entomology/apiculture/PDF%20files/1.11.pdf]
     When a food source is very close to the hive (less than 50 meters), a
     forager performs a round dance. She does so by running around
     in narrow circles, suddenly reversing direction to her original
     course. She may repeat the dance several times at the same location or
     move to another location on the comb to repeat it. After the round dance
     has ended, she often distributes food to the bees following her.  A round
     dance, therefore, communicates distance ("close to the hive," in this
     example), but not direction.

     Food sources that are at intermediate distances, between 50 and 150
     meters from the hive, are described by the sickle dance. This dance is
     crescent-shaped and represents a transitional dance between the round
     dance and a waggle dance.

     The waggle dance or wag-tail dance, is performed by bees foraging at food
     sources that are more than 150 meters from the hive. This dance, unlike
     the round dance, communicates both distance and direction.  A bee that
     performs a waggle dance runs straight ahead for a short distance, returns
     in a semicircle to the starting point, runs again through the straight
     course, then makes a semicircle in the opposite direction to complete a
     full figure-eight circuit. While running the straight-line course of the
     dance, the bee's body, especially the abdomen, wags vigorously from side
     to side. This vibration of the body produces a tail-wagging motion. At
     the same time, the bee emits a buzzing sound, produced by wingbeats at a
     low audio frequency of 250 to 300 hertz or cycles per second. The buzzing
     occurs in pulsebeats of about 20 milliseconds, delivered at a rate of
     about 30 per second.

     While several variables of the waggle dance relate to distance (such as
     dance "tempo" or the duration of buzzing sounds), the duration of the
     straight-run portion of the dance, measured in seconds, is the simplest
     and most reliable indicator of distance. As the distance to the food
     source increases, the duration of the waggling portion of the dance (the
     "waggle run") also increases. The relationship is roughly linear (Figure
     3). For example, a forager that performs a waggle run that lasts 2.5
     seconds is recruiting for a food source located about 2,625 meters away.

     The orientation of the dancing bee during the straight portion of her
     waggle dance indicates the location of the food source relative to the
     sun. The angle that the bee adopts, relative to vertical, represents the
     angle to the flowers relative to the direction of the sun outside the
     hive. In other words, the dancing bee transposes the solar angle into the
     gravitational angle.

Chimpanzee language

1950s: Kellogg family and Hayes family - raised chimpanzee baby along with own
	new-born infant.   Hayes' chimp - Vicki - managed to produce ~ 5
	words, but barely audibly.  Worse, Hayes' own child picked up
	innumerable bad habits from the faster-maturing chimp, and they gave
	up. 51
late 50s: became clear that chimps did not have the vocal apparatus for
	speech.
1960s: Trixie Gardner and husband Alan: sign language to young female chimp
	Washoe.  taught ASL.  Learned ~100 signs, became the "wonder of the
	age".  But some psychologists / linguists argued that Washoe
	demonstrated nothing more than the ability to copy humans, as in the
	"Clever Hans" phenomenon.  Rarely produced sentences > 2 signs long,
	(excluding repetitions).   The supposedly novel signs she produced,
	e.g. water+bird on seeing a swan - were no more than chance
	combinations fueled by the Gardners' imaginative interpretation.
	   Gardners spent next 20 years trying to refute these charges, but
	opponents devised ever more ingenuous arguments.
1970s: ASL w gorilla Koko and orangutan Chantek
        picture-language (to avoid imitation arguments] with chimp Sarah
           - psychologist David Premack.
	Duane Rumbaugh - two chimps - Austin and Sherman - taught a computer
		keyboard language called "yerkish" (after psy pioneer Robert Yerkes)
	Sue-Savage Rumbaugh: Kanzi - taught same computer lg.  "became the
		Einstien and Shakespeare of the chimpanzee world, rolled into
		one."

Dunbar, however, isn't careful enough in detailing some of his stronger
remarks like the following -
	I think it is fair to say this research has convincingly demonstrated
	that chimps understand several important concepts, including numbers,
	how to add and subtract, the nature of basic relations (such as "is
	bigger than", "is the same as" and "is on top of"), how to ask for
	specific objects (mostly foods) or activities (a walk in the woods or
	a game of chase), and how to carry out complex instructions ("take the
	can from the fridge and put it in the next room").   Kanzi can
	translate readily from one modality to another: e.g. by pointing to
	the correct keyboard symbols for spoken Engl words heard through
	headphones.
However, even Kanzi's interactions are largely limited to asking for things he
wants, or giving the correct one-word answer to logically complex
questions. He does not engage in the kind of spontaneous, apparently
effortless chatter of the two-year-old human child learning to speak: "Look,
mummy, car!"  .... "Yes, dear, another car..." 54

Often the logic is unclear - e.g. arguing how fruit-based diet justifies the
relatively larger brain/body-size ratio in monkeys. 59
	   (see Jerison based species graph, 57)

5. Ghost in the Machine

Poem by computer program called RACTER, by NY programmer Bill Chamberlain:
	A hot and torrid bloom which
	Fans wise flames and begs to be
	Redeemed by forces black and strong
	Will now oppose my naked will
	And force me into regions of despair.

published as the slim volume The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed
in 1984. [snippets of prose interspersed with poetry and a strange short
story about a dysfunctional group of friends sitting down for a dinner of lamb
chops. - complete text

review from [www.wopr.com/books/groom.htm]

Why is it that among all the primates, only humans have language?  Could it
be because we don't groom each other? Dunbar builds his argument touching on
the behavior of gelada baboons, Darwin's theory of evolution,
computer-generated poetry, and the significance of brain size. He begins with
the social organization of the great apes. These animals live in small groups
and maintain social cohesion through almost constant grooming
activities. Grooming is a way to forge alliances, establish hierarchy, offer
comfort, or make apology. Once a population expands beyond a certain number,
however, it becomes impossible for each member to maintain constant physical
contact with every other member of the group. Considering the large groups in
which human beings have found it necessary to live, Dunbar posits that we
developed language as a substitute for physical intimacy. Whether or not you
accept Dunbar's premise, his book is worth reading, if only for its animated
prose and wealth of scientific information. An obvious choice for science
buffs, Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language is a wonderful book
for anyone with an inquiring mind and an interest in what makes the world go
round.

blurb

What a big brain we have for all the small talk we make. It's an evolutionary
riddle that at long last makes sense in this intriguing book about what
gossip has done for our talkative species. Psychologist Robin Dunbar looks at
gossip as an instrument of social order and cohesion--much like the endless
grooming with which our primate cousins tend to their social relationships.

Apes and monkeys, humanity's closest kin, differ from other animals in the
intensity of these relationships. All their grooming is not so much about
hygiene as it is about cementing bonds, making friends, and influencing
fellow primates. But for early humans, grooming as a way to social success
posed a problem: given their large social groups of 150 or so, our earliest
ancestors would have had to spend almost half their time grooming one
another--an impossible burden. What Dunbar suggests--and his research,
whether in the realm of primatology or in that of gossip, confirms--is that
humans developed language to serve the same purpose, but far more
efficiently. It seems there is nothing idle about chatter, which holds
together a diverse, dynamic group--whether of hunter-gatherers, soldiers, or
workmates.

Anthropologists have long assumed that language developed in relationships
among males during activities such as hunting. Dunbar's original and
extremely interesting studies suggest otherwise: that language in fact
evolved in response to our need to keep up to date with friends and
family. We needed conversation to stay in touch, and we still need it in ways
that will not be satisfied by teleconferencing, email, or any other
communication technology. As Dunbar shows, the impersonal world of cyberspace
will not fulfill our primordial need for face-to-face contact.

From the nit-picking of chimpanzees to our chats at coffee break, from
neuroscience to paleoanthropology, Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of
Language offers a provocative view of what makes us human, what holds us
together, and what sets us apart.

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