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Comment by SeanDav | Hacker News Reader

If I may play Devil's advocate here - it is very easy to anthropomorphize animal behaviour. There are numerous examples in the animal kingdom of animals protecting and even rearing animals from other species. This could be down to genetics and learned behaviour and nothing to do with altruism, or other noble sentiments.

Part of me says it is highly unlikely that Humpback whales have a vendetta against killer whales and are the policeman of the oceans, but the bigger part of me, wants to believe that they are exactly that!

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The books by Frans de Waal about this topic are very interesting. He's a dutch ethologist, researching the social behaviour and emotions of animals, mainly primates I think.

Some of his quotes, source Wikipedia:

"To endow animals with human emotions has long been a scientific taboo. But if we do not, we risk missing something fundamental, about both animals and us."

"In chimpanzees and other animals, you see examples of sympathy, empathy, reciprocity, a willingness to follow social rules. Dogs are a good example of a species that have and obey social rules; that's why we like them so much, even though they're large carnivores."

> "Dogs are a good example of a species that have and obey social rules; that's why we like them so much, even though they're large carnivores."

Well, that was a good reason why we initially liked them, but the last few millennia of genetic modification through selective breeding to alter their behavior and appearance for our benefit hasn't hurt either...

Yes, dogs are the worst possible place to look for ‘anthropomorphic’ behaviour — they've had thirty or forty thousand years of evolutionary pressure to please humans.

Well, depending on whether you are looking for naturally occurring anthropomorphic behavior, they are either the best or worst place to look. :)

That is, they are probably good evidence for some emotions in animals, but fairly useless in their current incarnation as to whether it was naturally occurring. Interestingly, it's entirely possible (and likely, IMO) that they exhibited some of this behavior originally due to their social nature, and this is what causes humans to start the process of domestication in the first place (not that it was likely a decision like that).

What's really interesting is how quickly changes, both behavioral and physical happen during domestication (and how quickly domestication works, possibly on the order of a decade or so)[1].

1: http://www.radiolab.org/story/91696-new-nice/

‘Behaviour’ was the wrong word for me to use. I should have said, dogs are the worst place to look for human-like internal mental state. If your dog looks contrite when they've done something wrong, do they feel contrite, or have they just mechanically evolved to make you think they do?

A good question, and very complicated. For example, what if dogs have always been capable of that emotion, but expressed it differently? What if the evolved response is not the emotion, but to match a specific behavior to the emotion? What if the evolved response is not attached to the emotion and just for our benefit, but the emotion does exist in other situations? It would be so much easier if we could accurately communicate with our dogs.

On that note, I'll leave you with this, which is wonderful: https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/4rkdit/text_we_didnt_s...

They don't have to have done something wrong.

Years ago I had a lurcher, raised from a pup. One day I noticed that if you spoke to him in a stern manner - even if he had done absolutely nothing wrong he would hang his head low and look up at you, and put his tail between his legs as if he was guilty of something bad and wanted to look contrite.

It seems to me that it may be a long ago learned, now instinctive, behaviour to react that way to a particular tone of human voice.

It might have a simpler explanation. Maybe what you are seeing isn't guilt, but submission, and you are mistaking it for guilt. When spoken to a certain way, submission is the correct social response. This is true in people as well. If you have a work superior approach you in an angry manner, your best option is likely not to respond angrily or indifferently.

it is very easy to anthropomorphize animal behaviour

It's also very easy to assume humans are more special than we actually are.

I do find it interesting that we (humans) think we are "more special" than we actually are.

People just forget or don't know that the same spark that powers our physical bodies also powers the physical bodies of other living things.

And that the brains that support our minds are part of said bodies. Eg corvids with their tiny little bird brains are apparently capable of feats of intellect that are very human-like in various ways.

its very easy to forget that humans are animals too.

>If I may play Devil's advocate here - it is very easy to anthropomorphize animal behaviour.

I think that we also very easily 'anthropomorphize' human behavior; that is to say that we superimpose our own assumptions onto other people's behaviour.

We are animals too, and the rational part is only a thin, recent addition to our brains.

I believe many animals are just as intelligent as us in their own way.

So altruism is not genetics? We share like 90% of same genes with whales, and most of rest 10% of different genes have just small difference, separating humans from animals is just simply stupid.

It could also be culturally transmitted

> it is very easy to anthropomorphize animal behaviour

It is also easy to assume that an animal's internal life is dumb and uninteresting.

It is a valid objection.

When a certain type of great cat kills, say, an antelope, it will look around carefully. Humans first describing this behavior assumed the cats were feeling guilty for killing and wanted to check if there were any "witnesses".

Nowadays, this behavior is interpreted as checking for hyenas, who like to snatch away prey from other predators.

I would not consider this behavior dumb or uninteresting, but it is - probably - for a different reason than a human observer might naively assume.

Being aware that animals might do things for different reasons than humans is not dismissing the animal's motives, it can be a key to understanding its behavior. It is not at all the same as assuming an animal's internal life is dumb and uninteresting, at least I do not think the GP wanted to imply that.

It is also very easy to anthropomorphize human behavior.

With slightly less snark, altruism and other noble sentiments in humans are also likely due to genetics and learned behavior.

There's a whole field you might want to study (altruism features there quite prominently): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_psychology

Anthropomorphism is anthropomorphic. We are animals, mammals. Whales are also mammal animals. To attribute our behaviours as something solely human is ridiculous hubris and a vestige of hundreds of years of scientific ignorance.

> ... the policeman of the oceans

i thought it was Aquaman. the dolphins are his deputies.

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