Animal behaviour (con't)

[El_Machinae]

This is topic drift from another thread. ...

I know about "chimp wars". What I don't know about is your statement that any chimp will kill any other chimp who doesn't belong to his particular tribe. Got any source for that? And how do zoos work? Are all the chimps from the same tribe?

I might have been loose with my language. I was mostly alluding to chimp wars, or their propensity to kill lone members of other tribes. I don't know how zoos work, though I'd suspect that they form a single tribe with a dominant male.

I don't have iTunes and I far prefer to read or watch a video. Do you have anything along those lines?

You should get iTunes! It's a free download, and the podcast service is invaluable. I am regularly able to listen to material while I'm doing something else. I've taken entire university courses through my ears.

Though you don't need iTunes to access MIT OpenCourseware. There's a way to get the slides along with the lectures. I don't have a good video source for teaching ethology, because it's an entire field of study. If there are video lectures, they only contribute in a piecemeal manner. If I were to recommend a book, it would be a textbook!

I am also not very familiar with ethology. From skimming the description on Wikipedia, it sounds like social Darwinism applied to animals to me. AFAIK Dawin never claimed that behavior was evolutionary, and psychology is notorious for being a "soft science" - big on grandiose theories and woefully inadequate when it comes to corroborating observations and supportive empirical data.

Well, remember that Darwin isn't the Pope or a prophet or anything. His contribution to evolutionary theory was immense, but evolution is an integral part of most aspects of the biological sciences.

Ethology is also called "animal behaviour", and it's a wonderful field. It's the field examination of animal behaviour in the wild, seen through the lens of evolutionary theory: why is the behaviour there, and how is it adaptive? So, just because Darwin didn't touch on psychology much (though he did write on the evolution of emotions in animals), it doesn't mean that there's no field of study. Ethology heavily draws upon game theory, statistics, and the economics of breeding and calories. It's probably the best course I took.

And I understand that you took your sciences awhile ago; many people with a distaste for psychology remember what the field was and thus disregard it. Psychology is very powerful science now, and it's certainly not a soft science. There was a revolution in the 70s that greatly expanded the utility of the field (cognitive science), and neuroscience has completely taken off in the last 20 years.

I also have an extreme distaste for anything that has Richard Dawkins' name associated with it. He's another case of a scientist stepping outside his narrow field to try to grab his 15 minutes of meme fame while trying to turn science into anti-religion. But that may very well just be bias based on my personal distaste for his methodology.

Dawkins has been, at best, an amusing contributor to the modern theological public debate. But he's an incredibly powerful contributor to the natural sciences. He's right up there with the 'greats'. I wouldn't dismiss his contributions to biology, just because he's odious elsewhere. If Feynmann had been a big jerk, his contributions to QM would still be essential. Similarly, Chomsky's contribution to linguistics shouldn't be disregarded.

You are going to convince me on that one. I don't see much variety amongst "skin color" with given species of primates. They all look the same to me.

Which is also why I don't think it is racist behavior. I can intuitively see how tribalism is a survival instinct amongst animals with more developed brains, and how their propensity to form groups would increase their odds of survival. And I can see why they may decide another group is a threat and declare "war" on them. I just don't think it is for racial reasons. That is going to take some convincing...

Well, 'racism' is a pretty subtle effect. Rwanda was a racist pogrom, and apparently the differences between the groups was almost entirely fictional. The thesis is that racism is just a variant on when tribalism makes us barbaric. It's not much different from the Robber's Cave experiment repeated over the generations.

And if so, it would seem to make them very susceptible to inbreeding. There likely has to be some mechanism for them to associate with other tribes to increase the gene pool or they would likely eventually die off.

They capture females, iirc. Or attract them.

 

[Narz]

drifting off topic somewhat already but just wanted to speak to this :

and psychology is notorious for being a "soft science" - big on grandiose theories and woefully inadequate when it comes to corroborating observations and supportive empirical data.

And I understand that you took your sciences awhile ago; many people with a distaste for psychology remember what the field was and thus disregard it. Psychology is very powerful science now, and it's certainly not a soft science. There was a revolution in the 70s that greatly expanded the utility of the field (cognitive science), and neuroscience has completely taken off in the last 20 years.

Much of it is still pretty soft though getting more substantial as theories these days are actually getting tested. It's still very new at being "real" though & many people tend to take ideas gleaned from one or two studies & misrepresent &/or universalize them in inaccurate ways. I love psychology though because, at the end of the day, it is almost everything (we are how we process).

More often than not what neuroscience & psychological studies are telling us about the brain & behavior & optimizing human existence are largely ignored (on the law, education, workplace, social & political fronts) altogether, which I hope will change. If people had the same love for studying & understanding the human mind & it's capacities as they did for absorbing religion & dogma (religious & otherwise) the world would be a much better place & humanity would have much more hope.

Anyway, I don't have much else to contribute yet but thanks for starting this thread Mac, we can learn alot about ourselves from animals (and vice versa).

 

[El_Machinae]

A lot of the research is much more powerful than people realise, because the synthesis and popularisation is a slow process (and so many people are dualists, so they're not learning stuff we've known for decades). I remember reading a paper last year that was distinguishing whether a specific neuroanatomical change in mice changed whether they drank less sweetwater because they didn't "want" the water vs. they didn't "like" the water.

I mean, asking if someone is doing something because they "want to" or if they "like to" is a pretty sophisticated question. Being able to conduct experiments to see if there's that difference in mice (there was) is just ... well ... pretty impressive.

Though ethology is mostly the study of wild behaviour, which makes it even cooler.

 

[Narz]

I mean, asking if someone is doing something because they "want to" or if they "like to" is a pretty sophisticated question.

Yeah. I like to do alot of things I don't always want to (concentrated study, certain kinds of work, intense exercise) or maybe I want to do them but I don't always like it at first.

Changing habits is a difficult thing. I'd study more about the nature of addiction but, to be honest, I'd rather study about the nature of breaking it, changing habits, etc. I haven't seen many good psychology books on people in severe ruts who've broken out & made long-lasting change, alot of "self-help" books but I 98% of them would be most helped as makeshift firelogs in the wintertime. If you have any you'd recommend I'd be open.

 

[Birdjaguar]

What is the discussion topic here?

 

[Narz]

What is the discussion topic here?

Animal behavior & it's interestingness (probably not real word0 for it's own sake & what it can teach us about ourselves?

That's how I see it anyway.

BTW, somewhat off topic I'm reading a very good book right now I think you would like also (knowing your personality somewhat).