I knew about Vanessa Wood's book on the bonobos - I think that was published around the same time she married Brian Hare - I didn't know they were married and he heads the department now - or something like that. So they're a Duke power couple that both got the Ph.D.s together at Duke I think....
This is really awesome work. I already knew about the comparison of foxes with dogs via Russian research - I cite that in my 2012 book I think. But the comparison to Homo Sapiens having been "domesticated" is less well known in the literature - this was discussed maybe ten years ago as humans maintaining youthful or delayed development - I forgot the science term for that.
https://www.americanscientist.org/article/the-benefits-of-a-long-childhood
Their limited information-processing capacity may help them learn language, because it forces them to focus on constituent components and build upward from there, whereas adult language learners skip straight to semantics, often failing to master underlying grammatical structures.
I actually don't think this is how language is learned at all - rather it is holographic learning through the spirit as quantum biology. This is also how "savant" abilities occur.
Neoteny is the retention of juvenile traits well into adulthood.
Here is there talk together - Hare and Woods.
This has to be connected to the Grandmother Effect and also to Eusociality of intergenerational nesting and also matrifocal cultures. In fact I learned of this work via mention of similar research by Professor Camilla Power.
So the take away point of Woods and Hare is that the adaptation of friendliness has the "spandrel" or evolutionary side affect advantage of social communication cognition skills - leading to interspecific cooperation between dogs and humans, between humans and other humans, and between bonobos with each other. But humans and dogs co-evolved this trait together as is the argument by that one anthropologist - dogs helping humans hunting gave them the advantage over Neanderthals. This is no real proof for this - just a hypothesis but it makes sense.
So the irony of bonobos is because they lack as close of friendliness as humans the bonobos also lack the opposite extreme of hate of "out" groups or strangers.
So what made humans SPECIAL compared to Neanderthals or Denisovans or Homo Erectus? Like the Bonobos we had been domesticated to friendliness. Bonobos are friendly to those they recognize directly but humans are friendly around group cultural identity.
I think the "white sclera" of the eyes as friendliness was the big point of Professor Chris Knight - not sure if he cites Hare and Woods but I think he probably made this emphasis before they did - so they should be citing him!
http://eitan-bookshelf.s3.amazonaws.com/images/SurvivaloftheFriendliest.pdf
So dogs evolved a bigger eye muscle to show more sclera whites of their eyes to communicate guilt to humans!!?! OK that is a more precise explanation - that got watered down before in the media...
No comments:
Post a Comment