In
the National Geographic Website, the article " Dolphin
Saves Stuck Whales, Guides Them Back to Sea" made me ponder the
reasons behind such behavior. The article is heart warming, intriguing and also
relatable but does not provide convincing scientific explanations for the
dolphin's behavior. In examining this article, I will attempt to explain
anthropomorphism as a narrative technique and more importantly, account for the
dolphins unusual behaviour by using the concepts of evolution, imprinting and
also learning.
The main animal in question is the Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) which rescues a stranded
Sperm Whale (Physeter macrocephalus) .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottlenose_dolphins
Below
are interesting excerpts from the article which can be found in the link above.
"Moko just came flying through the water and pushed in between us and
the whales," Juanita Symes, another rescuer, told the Associated Press.
"She got them to head toward the hill, where the channel is. It was an
amazing experience."
Anton van Helden, a marine mammals expert at New Zealand's national museum,
Te Papa Tongarewa, said the reports of Moko's rescue were "fantastic"
but believable because dolphins have "a great capacity for altruistic
activities."
There's evidence of dolphins protecting people lost at sea, and the swimmers
are known for their playfulness with other animals.
"But
it's the first time I've heard of an inter-species refloating technique. I
think that's wonderful," said van Helden, who was not involved in the
rescue but spoke afterward to Smith.
While reading this article, emotions of admiration, surprise and a
"heart-warming" feeling arose possibly as a result of the manner of
reporting. In a recent tutorial, the concept of Anthropomorphism would seem
appropriate to explain for the invocation of such affects in the reader.
Anthropomorphism is described as "the attribution of human characteristics
to non-human animals, most commonly by supposing non-human behaviour to be
motivated by human emotion that might motivate superficially similar human
behaviour." Though the manner of reporting is effective and informative,
it does not provide satisfactory answers to explain the behaviour of the
dolphin. In another article "Myth,
metaphor and hypothesis: how anthropomorphism defeats science" by Lucy G.
Sullivan, she states that "Because of our natural tendency to
interpret the world in the light of human experience, language expressing this
viewpoint comes most readily to our tongue." My intention however is not
to discredit the article, but to highlight human tendency towards describing
animal behaviour by borrowing means of representation from human behaviour.
This would then serve as a launching point to introduce another set of articles
that would better explain the dolphin’s behaviour as a student of animal
behaviour.
In
another related article on the same incident titled
"Why
species give each other a helping hand", a more scientific attempt was
made to explain the dolphin's behaviour through the concept of imprinting. An
interesting observation I made is that the writer of the article could be the
same author of "An Introduction to Animal Behaviour", a
supplementary reading of this course.
"By and large, adult animals rarely do anything unless
there is something in it for them. When they do, however, it's generally
because something has gone awry with their sense of self."
"Many scientists will tell you that faulty imprinting lies behind all
apparent examples of inter-species co-operation. It may well be that with Moko
the dolphin it was a case of mistaken identity."
The reason provided for this instance of
interspecies cooperation is possibly a result of faulty imprinting. Imprinting
according to our suggested supplementary reading is a difficult term to pin
down but provided for a tentative definition as "various behavioural
changes whereby a young animal becomes attached to a 'mother figure' or a
future mating partner." It is possible, as suggested by the author that
"It may be that Moko actually mistook the whales for dolphins". Thus
this explanation makes this unusual occurrence of interspecies cooperation more
fitting when considering the altruistic behaviour as an adaptive behaviour in
light of the theory of evolution. By reading the dolphin's action as an act of
mistaken intraspecies altruism, there are many instances of seemingly
altruistic intraspecies behaviour such as cooperative breeding in birds,
cooperative acts in primate groups and the cooperative nature of other animal
groups that occur as a result of reciprocity and self benefit. This is further
substantiated in another
article which states the need "To account for the manifest existence
of cooperation and related group behavior such as altruism and restraint in
competition, evolutionary theory has recently acquired two kinds of extension.
These extensions are, broadly, genetical kinship theory and reciprocation
theory."
In conclusion, anthropomorphism as a narrative technique
makes articles on animal behaviour more relatable and more easily identifiable
with the masses. However, a more scientific approach is necessary when
attempting to explain animal behaviour. The second article thus provides for a
more satisfactory and scientific interpretation of the dolphin's behaviour,
using theories of imprinting and evolution to account for this unusual
phenomenon.
References:
1."Dolphin
Saves Stuck Whales, Guides Them Back to Sea" by Ray Lilley.
Nationalgeographic.com, 12th March
2008.
2. Lucy
G. Sullivan
Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, Vol. 349, No.
1328 (Aug. 29, 1995), pp. 215-218
3. Manning, Aubrey and Dawkins, Marian Stamp, An
Introduction to Animal Behaviour 5th Edition, Cambridge
University Press (1998)
4. Robert
Axelrod; William D. Hamilton The Evolution of Cooperation: Science,
New Series, Vol. 211, No. 4489. (Mar.
27, 1981), pp. 1390-1396.
5."Why
species give each other a helping hand" by Aubrey Manning.
Dailymail.co.uk, 13th March
2008