17 Apr 2012, 4:07 am
http://www.ted.com/talks/frans_de_waal_ ... orals.html
This is a very funny experiment if you haven't seen it before, the whole talk is good but skip to 12:30 for the lulz.
I vote that monkey for union boss. 
17 Apr 2012, 5:36 am
That was quite interesting, and the fairness-related experiment at the end was hilarious 
I've even see these moral behavioral traits (reciprocity, empathy and compassion) in my cats, which I find very interesting because African and European wildcats, the two ancestral species of domestic cats, are asocial and territorial. One example is their social grooming -- i.e., washing each other's heads and ears -- which is usually reciprocated. The two genetically unrelated females also never hurt each other when they occasionally get into fights. They only hit each other with retracted claws, and I've never seen as much as a scratch on either of them.
The worst thing they ever do to one another is a bite that is not strong enough to break the skin. As soon as the bitten cat makes a painful noise, the biter immediately lets go of her and the fight is over, which is a demonstration of empathy imho. One of them occasionally pinches me with her teeth when she's in a crappy mood and doesn't want to be touched, with the same result: She doesn't break my skin, and when I say "ouch" she promptly lets go of me.
She also "apologizes" for pinching my hand later on by purring and rubbing her head against me. This attempt to appease her human can opener shows that she understands the importance of beneficial social relationships. As for empathy, if I yawn, the cats both yawn as well 
Mirror neurons: check. Cats also understand when they are being lauded or scolded as well as dogs do. When I scold them, they try to appease me by rubbing against my legs. When I laud them for retrieving toy mice or laugh about their antics, they repeat the behavior with more fervor.
And then there is the prawn experiment. Both cats love prawns, which I break into little pieces that I feed to them in turn. Usually, one cat pesters me until I follow her to the kitchen, and the other comes running as soon as she hears the sound of the microwave. Now, one of them has a hairball problem and sometimes doesn't eat for a day when her stomach is clogged with hair. But she still responds to the microwave bell and then just sits there and watches the other cat eat. At those times, the other cat will never take the last piece of prawn 
She just looks at it, then looks at the first cat, turns away and walks out of the kitchen. I have no other explanation for this behavior than a sense of fairness.
So, the ancestors of an asocial species have become quite social and show compassion for one another. I assume that humans have either selectively bred cats to be more social and affectionate than their wild ancestors, or the benefits of hunting rodents in human granaries selected for particularly social cats who were able to tolerate human company. It was probably a combination of both. This shows that all mammals have the capacity for social and moral behavior, which can be acted upon by natural or artificial selection.
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17 Apr 2012, 9:38 am
17 Apr 2012, 1:30 pm
17 Apr 2012, 6:54 pm
I've even see these moral behavioral traits (reciprocity, empathy and compassion) in my cats, which I find very interesting because African and European wildcats, the two ancestral species of domestic cats, are asocial and territorial. One example is their social grooming -- i.e., washing each other's heads and ears -- which is usually reciprocated. The two genetically unrelated females also never hurt each other when they occasionally get into fights. They only hit each other with retracted claws, and I've never seen as much as a scratch on either of them.
The worst thing they ever do to one another is a bite that is not strong enough to break the skin. As soon as the bitten cat makes a painful noise, the biter immediately lets go of her and the fight is over, which is a demonstration of empathy imho. One of them occasionally pinches me with her teeth when she's in a crappy mood and doesn't want to be touched, with the same result: She doesn't break my skin, and when I say "ouch" she promptly lets go of me.
She also "apologizes" for pinching my hand later on by purring and rubbing her head against me. This attempt to appease her human can opener shows that she understands the importance of beneficial social relationships. As for empathy, if I yawn, the cats both yawn as well
Mirror neurons: check. Cats also understand when they are being lauded or scolded as well as dogs do. When I scold them, they try to appease me by rubbing against my legs. When I laud them for retrieving toy mice or laugh about their antics, they repeat the behavior with more fervor. And then there is the prawn experiment. Both cats love prawns, which I break into little pieces that I feed to them in turn. Usually, one cat pesters me until I follow her to the kitchen, and the other comes running as soon as she hears the sound of the microwave. Now, one of them has a hairball problem and sometimes doesn't eat for a day when her stomach is clogged with hair. But she still responds to the microwave bell and then just sits there and watches the other cat eat. At those times, the other cat will never take the last piece of prawn
She just looks at it, then looks at the first cat, turns away and walks out of the kitchen. I have no other explanation for this behavior than a sense of fairness.So, the ancestors of an asocial species have become quite social and show compassion for one another. I assume that humans have either selectively bred cats to be more social and affectionate than their wild ancestors, or the benefits of hunting rodents in human granaries selected for particularly social cats who were able to tolerate human company. It was probably a combination of both. This shows that all mammals have the capacity for social and moral behavior, which can be acted upon by natural or artificial selection.
Now I really, really, really miss having a cat!
18 Apr 2012, 3:31 am
18 Apr 2012, 10:33 pm
Not sure that cats were ever all that antisocial. They have certain social habits that we clearly didn't breed into them. For example, they have a social hierarchy, though it's only been discovered in the last few decades:
http://www.catster.com/cat-behavior/cat ... -structure
There's no particular reason we'd breed them to have a hierarchy, and it couldn't really confer any evolutionary advantage in the environment of a human household. Ergo, it must have developed in the wild. This is particularly suggested by the fact that the hierarchies are organized similar to lion prides.
Interesting
While these are feral domestic cats and not wildcats, I think you're right that this behavior has evolved in the wild. Many prehistoric cats, such as smilodon, were pack hunters. And, coming to think of it, the great number of extant species of the order Carnivora that are social and hunt in packs makes it seem unlikely that this trait has convergently evolved in all social carnivores. The common ancestor of all modern carnivores might have been a social species too, and some descendant lineages became more solitary and territorial later on (but retained a predisposition for social behavior, which was co-selected when we domesticated wildcats).
