Moral behavior in animals
-
0:00 - 0:02I was born in Den Bosch,
-
0:02 - 0:05where the painter Hieronymus Bosch named himself after.
-
0:05 - 0:07And so I've always been very fond of this painter
-
0:07 - 0:10who lived and worked in the 15th century.
-
0:10 - 0:12And what is interesting about him in relation to morality
-
0:12 - 0:15is that he lived at a time where religion's influence was waning,
-
0:15 - 0:17and he was sort of wondering, I think,
-
0:17 - 0:19what would happen with society
-
0:19 - 0:22if there was no religion or if there was less religion.
-
0:22 - 0:25And so he painted this famous painting, "The Garden of Earthly Delights,"
-
0:25 - 0:27which some have interpreted
-
0:27 - 0:29as being humanity before the Fall,
-
0:29 - 0:32or being humanity without any Fall at all.
-
0:32 - 0:34And so it makes you wonder,
-
0:34 - 0:37what would happen if we hadn't tasted the fruit of knowledge, so to speak,
-
0:37 - 0:40and what kind of morality would we have?
-
0:40 - 0:42Much later, as a student,
-
0:42 - 0:44I went to a very different garden,
-
0:44 - 0:47a zoological garden in Arnhem
-
0:47 - 0:49where we keep chimpanzees.
-
0:49 - 0:51This is me at an early age with a baby chimpanzee.
-
0:51 - 0:54(Laughter)
-
0:54 - 0:56And I discovered there
-
0:56 - 0:59that the chimpanzees are very power hungry and wrote a book about it.
-
0:59 - 1:02And at that time the focus in a lot of animal research
-
1:02 - 1:04was on aggression and competition.
-
1:04 - 1:06I painted a whole picture of the animal kingdom,
-
1:06 - 1:08and humanity included,
-
1:08 - 1:10was that deep down we are competitors,
-
1:10 - 1:12we are aggressive,
-
1:12 - 1:15we're all out for our own profit basically.
-
1:15 - 1:17This is the launch of my book.
-
1:17 - 1:19I'm not sure how well the chimpanzees read it,
-
1:19 - 1:22but they surely seemed interested in the book.
-
1:24 - 1:26Now in the process
-
1:26 - 1:28of doing all this work on power and dominance
-
1:28 - 1:30and aggression and so on,
-
1:30 - 1:33I discovered that chimpanzees reconcile after fights.
-
1:33 - 1:36And so what you see here is two males who have had a fight.
-
1:36 - 1:39They ended up in a tree, and one of them holds out a hand to the other.
-
1:39 - 1:42And about a second after I took the picture, they came together in the fork of the tree
-
1:42 - 1:44and they kissed and embraced each other.
-
1:44 - 1:46Now this is very interesting
-
1:46 - 1:49because at the time everything was about competition and aggression,
-
1:49 - 1:51and so it wouldn't make any sense.
-
1:51 - 1:53The only thing that matters is that you win or that you lose.
-
1:53 - 1:55But why would you reconcile after a fight?
-
1:55 - 1:57That doesn't make any sense.
-
1:57 - 2:00This is the way bonobos do it. Bonobos do everything with sex.
-
2:00 - 2:02And so they also reconcile with sex.
-
2:02 - 2:04But the principle is exactly the same.
-
2:04 - 2:06The principle is that you have
-
2:06 - 2:08a valuable relationship
-
2:08 - 2:10that is damaged by conflict,
-
2:10 - 2:12so you need to do something about it.
-
2:12 - 2:14So my whole picture of the animal kingdom,
-
2:14 - 2:16and including humans also,
-
2:16 - 2:18started to change at that time.
-
2:18 - 2:20So we have this image
-
2:20 - 2:22in political science, economics, the humanities,
-
2:22 - 2:24philosophy for that matter,
-
2:24 - 2:26that man is a wolf to man.
-
2:26 - 2:29And so deep down our nature's actually nasty.
-
2:29 - 2:32I think it's a very unfair image for the wolf.
-
2:32 - 2:34The wolf is, after all,
-
2:34 - 2:36a very cooperative animal.
-
2:36 - 2:38And that's why many of you have a dog at home,
-
2:38 - 2:40which has all these characteristics also.
-
2:40 - 2:42And it's really unfair to humanity,
-
2:42 - 2:46because humanity is actually much more cooperative and empathic
-
2:46 - 2:48than given credit for.
-
2:48 - 2:50So I started getting interested in those issues
-
2:50 - 2:52and studying that in other animals.
-
2:52 - 2:54So these are the pillars of morality.
-
2:54 - 2:58If you ask anyone, "What is morality based on?"
-
2:58 - 3:00these are the two factors that always come out.
-
3:00 - 3:02One is reciprocity,
-
3:02 - 3:05and associated with it is a sense of justice and a sense of fairness.
-
3:05 - 3:07And the other one is empathy and compassion.
-
3:07 - 3:10And human morality is more than this,
-
3:10 - 3:12but if you would remove these two pillars,
-
3:12 - 3:14there would be not much remaining I think.
-
3:14 - 3:16And so they're absolutely essential.
-
3:16 - 3:18So let me give you a few examples here.
-
3:18 - 3:20This is a very old video from the Yerkes Primate Center
-
3:20 - 3:23where they train chimpanzees to cooperate.
-
3:23 - 3:26So this is already about a hundred years ago
-
3:26 - 3:29that we were doing experiments on cooperation.
-
3:29 - 3:32What you have here is two young chimpanzees who have a box,
-
3:32 - 3:35and the box is too heavy for one chimp to pull in.
-
3:35 - 3:37And of course, there's food on the box.
-
3:37 - 3:39Otherwise they wouldn't be pulling so hard.
-
3:39 - 3:41And so they're bringing in the box.
-
3:41 - 3:43And you can see that they're synchronized.
-
3:43 - 3:46You can see that they work together, they pull at the same moment.
-
3:46 - 3:49It's already a big advance over many other animals
-
3:49 - 3:51who wouldn't be able to do that.
-
3:51 - 3:53And now you're going to get a more interesting picture,
-
3:53 - 3:56because now one of the two chimps has been fed.
-
3:56 - 3:58So one of the two is not really interested
-
3:58 - 4:01in the task anymore.
-
4:01 - 4:04(Laughter)
-
4:08 - 4:13(Laughter)
-
4:19 - 4:22(Laughter)
-
4:35 - 4:38Now look at what happens at the very end of this.
-
4:41 - 4:43(Laughter)
-
4:52 - 4:54He takes basically everything.
-
4:54 - 4:57(Laughter)
-
4:57 - 4:59So there are two interesting parts about this.
-
4:59 - 5:01One is that the chimp on the right
-
5:01 - 5:03has a full understanding he needs the partner --
-
5:03 - 5:05so a full understanding of the need for cooperation.
-
5:05 - 5:08The second one is that the partner is willing to work
-
5:08 - 5:10even though he's not interested in the food.
-
5:10 - 5:13Why would that be? Well that probably has to do with reciprocity.
-
5:13 - 5:15There's actually a lot of evidence in primates and other animals
-
5:15 - 5:17that they return favors.
-
5:17 - 5:19So he will get a return favor
-
5:19 - 5:21at some point in the future.
-
5:21 - 5:23And so that's how this all operates.
-
5:23 - 5:25We do the same task with elephants.
-
5:25 - 5:28Now with elephants, it's very dangerous to work with elephants.
-
5:28 - 5:30Another problem with elephants
-
5:30 - 5:32is that you cannot make an apparatus
-
5:32 - 5:34that is too heavy for a single elephant.
-
5:34 - 5:36Now you can probably make it,
-
5:36 - 5:38but it's going to be a pretty flimsy apparatus I think.
-
5:38 - 5:40And so what we did in that case --
-
5:40 - 5:43we do these studies in Thailand for Josh Plotnik --
-
5:43 - 5:46is we have an apparatus around which there is a rope, a single rope.
-
5:46 - 5:48And if you pull on this side of the rope,
-
5:48 - 5:50the rope disappears on the other side.
-
5:50 - 5:53So two elephants need to pick it up at exactly the same time and pull.
-
5:53 - 5:55Otherwise nothing is going to happen
-
5:55 - 5:57and the rope disappears.
-
5:57 - 5:59And the first tape you're going to see
-
5:59 - 6:01is two elephants who are released together
-
6:01 - 6:03arrive at the apparatus.
-
6:03 - 6:06The apparatus is on the left with food on it.
-
6:06 - 6:09And so they come together, they arrive together,
-
6:09 - 6:11they pick it up together and they pull together.
-
6:11 - 6:14So it's actually fairly simple for them.
-
6:15 - 6:17There they are.
-
6:24 - 6:26And so that's how they bring it in.
-
6:26 - 6:28But now we're going to make it more difficult.
-
6:28 - 6:30Because the whole purpose of this experiment
-
6:30 - 6:32is to see how well they understand cooperation.
-
6:32 - 6:35Do they understand that as well as the chimps, for example?
-
6:35 - 6:37And so what we do in the next step
-
6:37 - 6:39is we release one elephant before the other,
-
6:39 - 6:41and that elephant needs to be smart enough
-
6:41 - 6:43to stay there and wait and not pull at the rope --
-
6:43 - 6:46because if he pulls at the rope, it disappears and the whole test is over.
-
6:46 - 6:48Now this elephant does something illegal
-
6:48 - 6:50that we did not teach it.
-
6:50 - 6:52But it shows the understanding that he has,
-
6:52 - 6:55because he puts his big foot on the rope,
-
6:55 - 6:57stands on the rope and waits there for the other,
-
6:57 - 7:00and then the other is going to do all the work for him.
-
7:00 - 7:03So it's what we call freeloading.
-
7:03 - 7:05(Laughter)
-
7:05 - 7:08But it shows the intelligence that the elephants have.
-
7:08 - 7:11They develop several of these alternative techniques
-
7:11 - 7:14that we did not approve of necessarily.
-
7:14 - 7:19So the other elephant is now coming
-
7:19 - 7:22and is going to pull it in.
-
7:38 - 7:41Now look at the other. The other doesn't forget to eat, of course.
-
7:41 - 7:45(Laughter)
-
7:45 - 7:47This was the cooperation, reciprocity part.
-
7:47 - 7:49Now something on empathy.
-
7:49 - 7:51Empathy is my main topic at the moment of research.
-
7:51 - 7:53And empathy has sort of two qualities.
-
7:53 - 7:56One is the understanding part of it. This is just a regular definition:
-
7:56 - 7:58the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
-
7:58 - 8:00And the emotional part.
-
8:00 - 8:02And so empathy has basically two channels.
-
8:02 - 8:04One is the body channel.
-
8:04 - 8:06If you talk with a sad person,
-
8:06 - 8:09you're going to adopt a sad expression and a sad posture,
-
8:09 - 8:11and before you know it you feel sad.
-
8:11 - 8:14And that's sort of the body channel of emotional empathy,
-
8:14 - 8:16which many animals have.
-
8:16 - 8:18Your average dog has that also.
-
8:18 - 8:20That's actually why people keep mammals in the home
-
8:20 - 8:22and not turtles or snakes or something like that
-
8:22 - 8:24who don't have that kind of empathy.
-
8:24 - 8:26And then there's a cognitive channel,
-
8:26 - 8:28which is more that you can take the perspective of somebody else.
-
8:28 - 8:30And that's more limited.
-
8:30 - 8:32There's few animals -- I think elephants and apes can do that kind of thing --
-
8:32 - 8:35but there are very few animals who can do that.
-
8:35 - 8:37So synchronization,
-
8:37 - 8:39which is part of that whole empathy mechanism
-
8:39 - 8:41is a very old one in the animal kingdom.
-
8:41 - 8:43And in humans, of course, we can study that
-
8:43 - 8:45with yawn contagion.
-
8:45 - 8:47Humans yawn when others yawn.
-
8:47 - 8:49And it's related to empathy.
-
8:49 - 8:51It activates the same areas in the brain.
-
8:51 - 8:53Also, we know that people who have a lot of yawn contagion
-
8:53 - 8:55are highly empathic.
-
8:55 - 8:57People who have problems with empathy, such as autistic children,
-
8:57 - 8:59they don't have yawn contagion.
-
8:59 - 9:01So it is connected.
-
9:01 - 9:04And we study that in our chimpanzees by presenting them with an animated head.
-
9:04 - 9:06So that's what you see on the upper-left,
-
9:06 - 9:08an animated head that yawns.
-
9:08 - 9:10And there's a chimpanzee watching,
-
9:10 - 9:13an actual real chimpanzee watching a computer screen
-
9:13 - 9:16on which we play these animations.
-
9:20 - 9:22(Laughter)
-
9:22 - 9:24So yawn contagion
-
9:24 - 9:26that you're probably all familiar with --
-
9:26 - 9:29and maybe you're going to start yawning soon now --
-
9:29 - 9:32is something that we share with other animals.
-
9:32 - 9:35And that's related to that whole body channel of synchronization
-
9:35 - 9:37that underlies empathy
-
9:37 - 9:40and that is universal in the mammals basically.
-
9:40 - 9:43Now we also study more complex expressions. This is consolation.
-
9:43 - 9:46This is a male chimpanzee who has lost a fight and he's screaming,
-
9:46 - 9:48and a juvenile comes over and puts an arm around him
-
9:48 - 9:50and calms him down.
-
9:50 - 9:53That's consolation. It's very similar to human consolation.
-
9:53 - 9:56And consolation behavior,
-
9:56 - 9:58it's empathy driven.
-
9:58 - 10:01Actually the way to study empathy in human children
-
10:01 - 10:03is to instruct a family member to act distressed,
-
10:03 - 10:05and then they see what young children do.
-
10:05 - 10:07And so it is related to empathy,
-
10:07 - 10:10and that's the kind of expressions we look at.
-
10:10 - 10:13We also recently published an experiment you may have heard about.
-
10:13 - 10:16It's on altruism and chimpanzees
-
10:16 - 10:18where the question is, do chimpanzees care
-
10:18 - 10:20about the welfare of somebody else?
-
10:20 - 10:22And for decades it had been assumed
-
10:22 - 10:24that only humans can do that,
-
10:24 - 10:27that only humans worry about the welfare of somebody else.
-
10:27 - 10:29Now we did a very simple experiment.
-
10:29 - 10:32We do that on chimpanzees that live in Lawrenceville,
-
10:32 - 10:34in the field station of Yerkes.
-
10:34 - 10:36And so that's how they live.
-
10:36 - 10:39And we call them into a room and do experiments with them.
-
10:39 - 10:41In this case, we put two chimpanzees side-by-side.
-
10:41 - 10:44and one has a bucket full of tokens, and the tokens have different meanings.
-
10:44 - 10:47One kind of token feeds only the partner who chooses,
-
10:47 - 10:49the other one feeds both of them.
-
10:49 - 10:52So this is a study we did with Vicky Horner.
-
10:53 - 10:55And here you have the two color tokens.
-
10:55 - 10:57So they have a whole bucket full of them.
-
10:57 - 11:00And they have to pick one of the two colors.
-
11:00 - 11:03You will see how that goes.
-
11:03 - 11:06So if this chimp makes the selfish choice,
-
11:06 - 11:09which is the red token in this case,
-
11:09 - 11:11he needs to give it to us.
-
11:11 - 11:14So we pick it up, we put it on a table where there's two food rewards,
-
11:14 - 11:17but in this case only the one on the right gets food.
-
11:17 - 11:19The one on the left walks away because she knows already.
-
11:19 - 11:22that this is not a good test for her.
-
11:22 - 11:24Then the next one is the pro-social token.
-
11:24 - 11:27So the one who makes the choices -- that's the interesting part here --
-
11:27 - 11:29for the one who makes the choices,
-
11:29 - 11:31it doesn't really matter.
-
11:31 - 11:34So she gives us now a pro-social token and both chimps get fed.
-
11:34 - 11:37So the one who makes the choices always gets a reward.
-
11:37 - 11:39So it doesn't matter whatsoever.
-
11:39 - 11:41And she should actually be choosing blindly.
-
11:41 - 11:43But what we find
-
11:43 - 11:45is that they prefer the pro-social token.
-
11:45 - 11:48So this is the 50 percent line that's the random expectation.
-
11:48 - 11:51And especially if the partner draws attention to itself, they choose more.
-
11:51 - 11:54And if the partner puts pressure on them --
-
11:54 - 11:57so if the partner starts spitting water and intimidating them --
-
11:57 - 12:00then the choices go down.
-
12:00 - 12:02It's as if they're saying,
-
12:02 - 12:04"If you're not behaving, I'm not going to be pro-social today."
-
12:04 - 12:06And this is what happens without a partner,
-
12:06 - 12:08when there's no partner sitting there.
-
12:08 - 12:10And so we found that the chimpanzees do care
-
12:10 - 12:12about the well-being of somebody else --
-
12:12 - 12:15especially, these are other members of their own group.
-
12:15 - 12:18So the final experiment that I want to mention to you
-
12:18 - 12:20is our fairness study.
-
12:20 - 12:23And so this became a very famous study.
-
12:23 - 12:25And there's now many more,
-
12:25 - 12:27because after we did this about 10 years ago,
-
12:27 - 12:29it became very well known.
-
12:29 - 12:31And we did that originally with capuchin monkeys.
-
12:31 - 12:34And I'm going to show you the first experiment that we did.
-
12:34 - 12:37It has now been done with dogs and with birds
-
12:37 - 12:39and with chimpanzees.
-
12:39 - 12:43But with Sarah Brosnan we started out with capuchin monkeys.
-
12:43 - 12:45So what we did
-
12:45 - 12:47is we put two capuchin monkeys side-by-side.
-
12:47 - 12:49Again, these animals, they live in a group, they know each other.
-
12:49 - 12:52We take them out of the group, put them in a test chamber.
-
12:52 - 12:54And there's a very simple task
-
12:54 - 12:56that they need to do.
-
12:56 - 12:59And if you give both of them cucumber for the task,
-
12:59 - 13:01the two monkeys side-by-side,
-
13:01 - 13:03they're perfectly willing to do this 25 times in a row.
-
13:03 - 13:07So cucumber, even though it's only really water in my opinion,
-
13:07 - 13:10but cucumber is perfectly fine for them.
-
13:10 - 13:13Now if you give the partner grapes --
-
13:13 - 13:15the food preferences of my capuchin monkeys
-
13:15 - 13:18correspond exactly with the prices in the supermarket --
-
13:18 - 13:21and so if you give them grapes -- it's a far better food --
-
13:21 - 13:24then you create inequity between them.
-
13:24 - 13:26So that's the experiment we did.
-
13:26 - 13:29Recently we videotaped it with new monkeys who'd never done the task,
-
13:29 - 13:31thinking that maybe they would have a stronger reaction,
-
13:31 - 13:33and that turned out to be right.
-
13:33 - 13:35The one on the left is the monkey who gets cucumber.
-
13:35 - 13:38The one on the right is the one who gets grapes.
-
13:38 - 13:40The one who gets cucumber,
-
13:40 - 13:42note that the first piece of cucumber is perfectly fine.
-
13:42 - 13:45The first piece she eats.
-
13:45 - 13:48Then she sees the other one getting grape, and you will see what happens.
-
13:48 - 13:51So she gives a rock to us. That's the task.
-
13:51 - 13:54And we give her a piece of cucumber and she eats it.
-
13:54 - 13:57The other one needs to give a rock to us.
-
13:57 - 14:00And that's what she does.
-
14:00 - 14:03And she gets a grape and she eats it.
-
14:03 - 14:05The other one sees that.
-
14:05 - 14:07She gives a rock to us now,
-
14:07 - 14:10gets, again, cucumber.
-
14:12 - 14:27(Laughter)
-
14:27 - 14:30She tests a rock now against the wall.
-
14:30 - 14:32She needs to give it to us.
-
14:32 - 14:35And she gets cucumber again.
-
14:37 - 14:41(Laughter)
-
14:43 - 14:47So this is basically the Wall Street protest that you see here.
-
14:47 - 14:50(Laughter)
-
14:50 - 14:53(Applause)
-
14:53 - 14:55Let me tell you --
-
14:55 - 14:57I still have two minutes left, let me tell you a funny story about this.
-
14:57 - 14:59This study became very famous
-
14:59 - 15:01and we got a lot of comments,
-
15:01 - 15:03especially anthropologists, economists,
-
15:03 - 15:05philosophers.
-
15:05 - 15:07They didn't like this at all.
-
15:07 - 15:10Because they had decided in their minds, I believe,
-
15:10 - 15:12that fairness is a very complex issue
-
15:12 - 15:14and that animals cannot have it.
-
15:14 - 15:16And so one philosopher even wrote us
-
15:16 - 15:19that it was impossible that monkeys had a sense of fairness
-
15:19 - 15:22because fairness was invented during the French Revolution.
-
15:22 - 15:24(Laughter)
-
15:24 - 15:27Now another one wrote a whole chapter
-
15:27 - 15:31saying that he would believe it had something to do with fairness
-
15:31 - 15:33if the one who got grapes would refuse the grapes.
-
15:33 - 15:35Now the funny thing is that Sarah Brosnan,
-
15:35 - 15:37who's been doing this with chimpanzees,
-
15:37 - 15:39had a couple of combinations of chimpanzees
-
15:39 - 15:42where, indeed, the one who would get the grape would refuse the grape
-
15:42 - 15:44until the other guy also got a grape.
-
15:44 - 15:47So we're getting very close to the human sense of fairness.
-
15:47 - 15:51And I think philosophers need to rethink their philosophy for awhile.
-
15:51 - 15:53So let me summarize.
-
15:53 - 15:55I believe there's an evolved morality.
-
15:55 - 15:57I think morality is much more than what I've been talking about,
-
15:57 - 16:00but it would be impossible without these ingredients
-
16:00 - 16:02that we find in other primates,
-
16:02 - 16:04which are empathy and consolation,
-
16:04 - 16:07pro-social tendencies and reciprocity and a sense of fairness.
-
16:07 - 16:10And so we work on these particular issues
-
16:10 - 16:13to see if we can create a morality from the bottom up, so to speak,
-
16:13 - 16:15without necessarily God and religion involved,
-
16:15 - 16:18and to see how we can get to an evolved morality.
-
16:18 - 16:21And I thank you for your attention.
-
16:21 - 16:30(Applause)
- Title:
- Moral behavior in animals
- Speaker:
- Frans de Waal
- Description:
-
Empathy, cooperation, fairness and reciprocity -- caring about the well-being of others seems like a very human trait. But Frans de Waal shares some surprising videos of behavioral tests, on primates and other mammals, that show how many of these moral traits all of us share.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 16:31
Krystian Aparta edited English subtitles for Moral behavior in animals | ||
Krystian Aparta commented on English subtitles for Moral behavior in animals | ||
Krystian Aparta edited English subtitles for Moral behavior in animals | ||
Krystian Aparta edited English subtitles for Moral behavior in animals | ||
Morton Bast commented on English subtitles for Moral behavior in animals | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Moral behavior in animals | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Moral behavior in animals | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Moral behavior in animals |
Morton Bast
At 4:23, a subtitle has just been added that contains the on-screen text as displayed.
Krystian Aparta
The English transcript was updated on 11/21/2016. At 05:36, "flimsy" was changed to "clumsy."