Culture and "Human Nature"

[sweetnpetite]

Anthropologists argue that culture is "human nature," and that all people have a capacity to classify experiences, encode classifications symbolically, and teach such abstractions to others. Since culture is learned, people living in different places have different cultures. Anthropologists have also pointed out that through culture people can adapt to their environment in non-genetic ways, so people living in different environments will often have different cultures. Much of anthropological theory has been motivated by an appreciation of and interest in the tension between the local (particular cultures) and the global (a universal human nature, or the web of connections between people in distant places).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_anthropology

--so my question is, do animals (besides humans) have 'culture'? Do they create art (birds decorate nests with buttons and feathers sometimes- does this count?), ritual, myth? Do they seek ways to understand and order their world? Do they attempt to leave something behind for future generations, or to mark their own existence after they are gone? Are there any cases were the *same species* does things differently (thereby as an example of learned/taught behavior) in a different environment than other of it's kind? (ie- do domestic animals adapt a different 'culture' than wild ones?)

This is a sincere and honest question- does anyone know the answer!!

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Not much. The decorating behaviors of bower birds and pack rats are hereditary and not learned, so that wouldn't count as culture.

The closest I can think of was the behavior of a tribe of Japanese macaque monkeys who were bding fed grain by human keepers. This was like back in the '60's. The keepers would pile the grain on the sand and the monkeys would eat from it until the grain was all scattered around and had to be picked piece by piece from the sand, a very tedious process. One day a female monkey somehow hit on the idea of taking handfuls of sand-grain mix and dropping them in the water. The sand sunk and the grain floated, making separation easy.

She taught some other monkeys (the older ones never did adopt the trick) and they taught others and the technique's been passed down from generation to generation to this day. That's a kind of monkey culture.

But do animals take part in any kind of abstract thinking? I seriously doubt it. I'm not sure how self-aware animals are. Certainly they have enough sense of self to flee from danger, but that seems to be about it.

Apes have been taight to use American Sign Language, and they say some pretty interesting things, but they don't pass it on to their offspring.

On the other hand, birdsong is known to come in "dialects". A robin from the midwest might have a slightly different song than a robin from somewhere else. Bird songs seem to be about 75% heredity and 25% learned.

 

[sweetnpetite]

Not much. The decorating behaviors of bower birds and pack rats are hereditary and not learned, so that wouldn't count as culture.

...On the other hand, birdsong is known to come in "dialects". A robin from the midwest might have a slightly different song than a robin from somewhere else. Bird songs seem to be about 75% heredity and 25% learned.

Thanks Dock- I was hoping somebody here would have some knowlege on the subject You guys never let me down.

Anyone else wanna weigh in?

 

[maggot420]

it makes my ass twitch whenever someone says that another living creature isnt capable of abstract thought. maybe its because thats what they used to say about me.
all i know is ive seen birds playing in the wind when its especially wivery and i've had conversations with particular dogs through facial expressions and body language. maybe its all instinctive behaviour but i still think that dog thought i was funny and i know those birds were having fun. and the capacity for humour is really the true test of intelligence i think. and if they are intelligent i cant see why they wouldnt have some kind of culture. maybe its just subtle culture or sub-culture.

i bet if they could talk we still wouldnt understand them.

 

[KarenAM]

You might take a look at some of the research on chimpanzees, in which traditions of learning have been observed which seem to constitute culture (check Jane Goodall's research on this). Chimps are genetically about 95% identical to humans, as I recall. Also, a lot of dolphin behavior is possibly cultural, though it is still not well understood and so the jury is still out on that.

Best of luck on your inquiry.

 

[rgraham666]

Since chimpanzees also murder one another, as well as patrol their troops geographical boundaries and kill chimps from other troops that violate those boundaries, I would say they're a lot closer than 95%.

 

[neonlyte]

Here is a link for 'sweets' The Cultural Evolution of Chaffinch Song

 

[impressive]

I think there's research re dolphins & abstract thought ... but I can't remember where I saw it.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

it makes my ass twitch whenever someone says that another living creature isnt capable of abstract thought. maybe its because thats what they used to say about me.
all i know is ive seen birds playing in the wind when its especially wivery and i've had conversations with particular dogs through facial expressions and body language. maybe its all instinctive behaviour but i still think that dog thought i was funny and i know those birds were having fun. and the capacity for humour is really the true test of intelligence i think. and if they are intelligent i cant see why they wouldnt have some kind of culture. maybe its just subtle culture or sub-culture.

i bet if they could talk we still wouldnt understand them.

I totally agree with you that animals play, and that their emotional repetoire is probably closer to ours than we usually think. A recent study showed that rats not only play, but laugh, or at least express pleasure in a certain kind of squeak. If other rats hear this squeak, even if they're isolated from the squeakers, they start to play and "laugh" as well, kind of like contagious laughter.

Most young mammals play. I've got a kitten running up and down the drapes and chasing my dog's tail as I write this, and there's no way you can tell me she's not having a ball.

But emotion and intelligence are not the same as culture, which is a learned body of knowledge passed down from generation to generation. Not having a language makes transmitting information awfully difficult. Some animlas do pass on knowledge through example--monkeys teach other monkeys how to use a stick to catch termites, for example. I don't know if they teach their young which fruits to avoid and which to eat, but that could be a rudimentary kind of culture. Gorillas teach their young how to make sleeping nests at night. Bears teach their cubs how to forage for honey and catch salmon. Well, maybe "show" is a better word than "teach".

But when you come down to abstract thought--the ability to imagine things one hasn't experienced--I don't think animals do very well at all. I doubt very much that they know they're going to die, for example, or that they ever wonder where they came from or what it all means, the kinds of thoughts that lead to myth and religion in humans. I don't know what came of all that research into dolphin speech, but I don't think it amounted to much.

The apes who were taught American Sign Language generally used it to indicate things they wanted, for example. The one exeption I remember is that Koko used sign language to call another ape a "dirty diaper ape", a sequence of signs she'd never seen before. Apparently, the urge to swear is universal.

 

[neonlyte]

I think there's research re dolphins & abstract thought ... but I can't remember where I saw it.

There is a link to mammals inc dolphins on the page I posted for 'sweets' above.

 

[cantdog]

I seem to remember the dolphin thing was a fellow named Lilly. Something like that. Whale song is another thing. It's like birdsong, we think, but much more mutable. It seems to change in a way much like cultural change, say folk music. The pie-in-the-sky figure for percent-learned (as distinct from percent inherited) is usually higher than the one they assign to birdsong. It is the content of it that is baffling. The larger question of abstraction is not going to be easy to get a handle on.

The communication we notice between ourselves and other mammals is because we have the same emotional brain, essentially, as other mammals do. It is the primary joy of living with a dog, that empathic and wordless communication, and even though some of it is projected onto the animal's behavior in a sort of wishful-thinking way, some of it is really a perception, from analogy, of the emotional life the animal is living. It could hardly be otherwise, given our mammalian nature.

The question is always being asked by primatologists to what extent the making of the occassional tool (and teaching the technique to others) and the development of clever ideas posits an abstract mind. Science fiction points out that the same would certainly be said about a human specimen in some spacefaring culture's menagerie.

 

[impressive]

The larger question of abstraction is not going to be easy to get a handle on.

Can it even be defined?

 

[Op_Cit]

It's funny to have this topic so close to those evolution digressions.

That is, it illustrates the silliness of scientists: so insistent to sell some form of evolution on one hand while their other hand is busy trying to insist there's a distinction between us and THEM.

(Will they please make up their minds?)

I'd be relieved just to hear one scientist say that every sociological and psychological state in humans is likely to have its sibling or ancestor in the rest of the animal kingdom.

They've found war, prostitution, tool making,... still looking for die manufacturing and I'm not sure if they've encountered self mutilation yet...

Maybe--now it's only a thought, but-- maybe one reason finding cultural differences in other animals is so hard is that over the last 10,000 years we've reduced the range of so many species that they don't have enough physical separation to develop any, and that our presence requires of them a greater struggle for survival...

Personally, I don't think humans are truly intelligent yet, and so far, I'm not sure if it's likely for them to get there.

(See, that's the other part of the evolution silliness: They keep neglecting the concept that if evolution is real, then it's not over and done with, we're not the be all and end all... How have you evolved today?)

 

[R. Richard]

But do animals take part in any kind of abstract thinking? I seriously doubt it. I'm not sure how self-aware animals are. Certainly they have enough sense of self to flee from danger, but that seems to be about it.

Apes have been taight to use American Sign Language, and they say some pretty interesting things, but they don't pass it on to their offspring.

I would suggest that this following link might change your mind about at least apes and language.

http://www.dianahacker.com/rules/pdf/RULE5-Shaw.pdf#search='Apes%20American%20Sign%20Language'

One of the problems that, IMHO, most researchers make when trying to determine/measure animal thinking is that they try to teach the animal things that the researcher wants the animal to know, not what the animal wants to know.

If you teach a cat to press a button for food, the cat will do this. However, it is a trick and will only be done to earn the food because the trick is not really a part of the life of the cat. If you can teach a cat a hunting trick, the cat will not only learn, but also adapt the trick. I have done this last.

 

[Halo_n_horns]

It's funny to have this topic so close to those evolution digressions.

That is, it illustrates the silliness of scientists: so insistent to sell some form of evolution on one hand while their other hand is busy trying to insist there's a distinction between us and THEM.

(Will they please make up their minds?)

I'd be relieved just to hear one scientist say that every sociological and psychological state in humans is likely to have its sibling or ancestor in the rest of the animal kingdom.

They've found war, prostitution, tool making,... still looking for die manufacturing and I'm not sure if they've encountered self mutilation yet...

Maybe--now it's only a thought, but-- maybe one reason finding cultural differences in other animals is so hard is that over the last 10,000 years we've reduced the range of so many species that they don't have enough physical separation to develop any, and that our presence requires of them a greater struggle for survival...

Personally, I don't think humans are truly intelligent yet, and so far, I'm not sure if it's likely for them to get there.

(See, that's the other part of the evolution silliness: They keep neglecting the concept that if evolution is real, then it's not over and done with, we're not the be all and end all... How have you evolved today?)

It sounds like you might be trying to get theological here, but even the various theologies of the world are cultural in their origins.

Animals do have cultures all their own, but I don't see why everyone is trying to suggest that it takes abstract thought to create a culture. To me that just seems like it's an effort to over think something that isn't complex enough to merit that much energy.

Cultures are the result of instincts, emotions and mindsets from like individuals, and then they develop from there. Some only develop so far, others develop even further, some stop at the basics of survival and the perpetuation of their species.

We're just another species. And worse than that, we appear to be a feral species in that our numbers are growing without control or constraint. Developing our cultural aptitudes doesn't make us better, just more complex.

If, for example, the platypus had developed a more complex mind and social hierarchy as we have, then perhaps some distant and evolved version of the platypus would be sitting at these computers asking if species like humans, birds, cows, whatever can be considered as cultures, or just other species.

 

[cantdog]

Halo, the posters did not fall into this trap. We referenced whale song and birdsong both as seeming somewhat cultural. My cats have had to learn to kill. To pounce, yes, they do immediately, without teaching, but killing is a learned technique. The distinction between cultural and inherited is the same as "taught" vs. "inborn."

Abstract thought, for which we will use Zoot's definition (abstract thought--the ability to imagine things one hasn't experienced) was once associated with certain structures in the human brain not shared with lemmings and cats. I haven't been to school on the subject for awhile, but I think it still is. So for most of us, the fact that we see play, sadness, guile, loyalty, confusion in our cats and even our lab rats is unsurprising, as also is the fact that most of us do not imagine we see planning calendars or literature in their behaviors, since the brains do not seem like brains which can do these things.

The signings of the Gorillas and chimps is sometimes surprising. Many manipulations of language seem to observers as though they must be abstract, because they are done by us humans by swapping around the abstractions of meaning in our heads. Then, after the abstract play with meaning, we generate the language to express it. The results with the primates do look as though that's what they are doing.

But how can we be sure there isn't some other mechanism by which the symbols are being associated and played with? We use our abstraction because we can, but there is little we can do to interview them to ask how they do it. "How, by what process, did you do that?" is an abstract question, and the answers seem to be mostly the result of misunderstanding when the obvious question is asked. This makes us doubt again the capacity for abstraction.

Some of it seems to invite the idea that the apes can do it. They do a lot of making up of new words. Alongside this puzzle is the ongoing slippery nature of the definition of "abstract thought."

Critics of the research try to establish, with rigor, that the use of each hand symbol is no different from the use of the little bell by the cat to get food or the use of the lever in the cage to get cocaine. Simple learned behavior for reward, no real necessity to imagine a true use of language. You'll have to read up on it, I think, to form your own conclusions.

 

[cantdog]

For what it's worth, I believe the critics fail to establish credibly that ape signings are the equivalent of rat levers for cocaine. But a use of language does not mean abstraction. "Bad" may be used as an abstract concept, but it may also be an immediate, sensory thing. Not all our language is abstract. Social signals exist in crows, blackbirds, most mammals we've looked at, and I think of the ape signing as true enough use of language. Whale song? Maybe. But I haven't seen anyone with a really good one to show that abstract language is being used, only signals, interactions, descriptions of a concrete kind.

 

[nushu2]

I am having some difficulty defining the term of abstract thought. It's abstract. If we limit it to just imagination, then any dog chasing a squirrel in it's sleep counts. Is it that far a leap to project the imagination along observed and perceived rules? Again, any dog trained not to get on the bed, won't climb onto the couch unless taught otherwise. That leap of imagination seems just a matter of degree.

Culture in dog terms would be the pack. Order through dominance and subjecation for the collective good. They have neither the need or capacity for art and their limited intellect does not need to exercise itself.

Humans are the pinacle of evolution on this planet for the simple reason that we can exploit our enviroment better than any other animal. Our intellect evolved as a weapon like the teeth of a shark. Culture is a survival method. We group together to exploit more productively and efficiently. Art, creativity and science is just a side effect of overly adequate minds barely utilized in the struggle for survival.

 

[cantdog]

I see a lot of changes, gross changes, in the environment when I do the spring canoe trips. Beavers have a big impact.

Considering scale, termites wreak huge changes in the environment.

"Better?"

Humans are the pinacle of evolution on this planet for the simple reason that we can exploit our enviroment better than any other animal. Our intellect evolved as a weapon like the teeth of a shark. Culture is a survival method. We group together to exploit more productively and efficiently. Art, creativity and science is just a side effect of overly adequate minds barely utilized in the struggle for survival.

I think "better" depends on context, too.

I take your "as a weapon" as a mere prejudice. The purpose of any given evolutionary inheritance is always a speculation.

Culture is definitely a survival method. You needn't reinvent everything from scratch, you can learn it. That's an advantage.

There can be no transmission of culture without a group of animals. Ours seems naturally to be the tribe or clan. We function today in groups of millions, but rather poorly. City dwellers become schizoid to cope with the numbers of house apes there all at once, and we conversely get more comfortable and experience less mental and emotional dysfunction in small groups.

As the content of our culture is passed along among the generations, it has its own evolution; it changes over time, it changes in different groups in different places. It is in the evolution of culture that the capacity for abstraction is revealed. Pack structures don't change much, the dog curriculum is pretty well limited. Humans have an evolution in their literature, in their rituals and theology, art and philosophy. It all seems important enough to pass on in the culture.

I submit that this is a clearer yardstick to measure what sets us apart from other primates than any comparison about the efficacy of our impact on the environment.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

This discussion seems to be headed in ten different directions because, I think, there's no consensus on what we mean by "culture".

I'd define "culture" as the Rules, customs, practices and understandings which have been learned over time and passed down from one generation to another.

The critical qualities--for me at least--are that culture is learned and transmitted over generations.

Thus, gorilla nest-making may be an example of animal culture, but schooling behavior in fish is not, because it's instinctive. Choice of foods may be cultural in apes, but use of language is not, because, as I understand it, apes don't pass down the language from one generation to the next.

Anyhow, the answer to the question of whether animals have culture is going to depend to a large degree on your definition of "culture". That's mine. It's pretty clumsy, but it's a start.

 

[nushu2]

Good counterpoints. From a more humanist POV, I agree.

I wasn’t trying to endorse exploitation but that is the goal of evolution, by specific and, usually, specialized means. All I was trying to say was that humans aren’t so special. We’re just animals with big brains.

 

[cantdog]

I like to think it's even less special than that, since the bulk of the brain is just the standard large-mammal emotional/social brain. Lizard brain (hindbrain) too.

Did you catch the thread not long ago about the little center of empathy in the brain? They found it first in other primates, which is ironic.

 

[nushu2]

Having been raised by wild racoons, okay, suburban racoons, I should have an answer for this. Some of the older racoons didn’t like me too much at first. They didn’t say anything specific. They just scratched and bit my face. The younger ones adapted to my presence and eagerly watched when I showed them how to open garbage cans. I, in turn, learned to wash my orange peels in swimming pools. One particular mother racoon showed me all the best places to scrounge for food and to avoid the bright moving lights that stayed on the hard ground.

Ya, we’re not talking Socrates and Shakespeare here. There were some good times but mostly just eating, sleeping and occasionally procreating, but that's another story.

 

[sweetnpetite]

I don't doubt that animals are intellegent, or even that they are capable of abstract thought- much more so than we realize or have been able to *prove.* For example, I know that some animals (elephants and dogs for example) greive for there dead or 'missing.' They get lonely and they play, ect, ect.

but I'm wondering if they are known to have any type of culture along the lines of myths, drama, mask making- things that are not essential to survivial, but seem essential to mankind non-the less.

I just wanted to clarify that I wasn't wondering about intellegence or abstract thought or anything like that.

Also on the point (I think Maggot made) about 'if they could talk, we still wouldn't be able to understand them'- I believe 1) they do 2) we don't and c) we have 'language' as such (complex language) not because we are *more* intellegent than animals, but perhaps because we are *less* so. We need that extra 'crutch.'

Anyway- back to culture.

 

[sweetnpetite]

Maybe--now it's only a thought, but-- maybe one reason finding cultural differences in other animals is so hard is that over the last 10,000 years we've reduced the range of so many species that they don't have enough physical separation to develop any, and that our presence requires of them a greater struggle for survival...

Personally, I don't think humans are truly intelligent yet, and so far, I'm not sure if it's likely for them to get there.

That is a good point- maybe we have forced them to a lower level of need (Maslow) and they don't have time for higher level needs because they are on the survival level. Intesting thought.