Bat Speak

The nature of animal communication has been of interest to humans for ages. We do know that they communicate with each other. We watch them and observe the sounds and gestures they use and wonder how they speak to each other. How much information are they able to exchange, and how complex might it be? We assume that human communication is far more intricate, since we have a much greater cognitive ability and we have developed countless words that we string together in endless ways. But are we really that much more loquacious?

The biggest barrier to understanding animal communication is the fact that we cannot get inside their minds to figure out what's going on. The so-called “theory of mind” that allows one human to guess fairly well what's going on inside the head of another human is helpful, because every human brain works pretty much the same. But how does the mind of an animal operate? What goes on inside the head of beavers or elephants, when they send messages to each other?

In Stephan Budiansky's 1998 book If a Lion Could Talk, he says that we humans simply can't get inside the mind of an animal because (1) they communicate with each other in a wordless manner and (2) our anthropomorphic attitude gets in the way: we can't help but attribute human characteristics to what they're doing. When we do this, we miss who they really are. It causes us to view animals as some sort of defective version of what a human is. We completely miss their special kind of intelligence. So if a lion could talk, we'd totally not understand what it said.

Rene Descartes didn't help cross-species communication, because he believed that animals were more like machines than conscious beings. He thought that they have no feelings or emotions. Descartes paved the way for 20^th century cognitive scientists, who thought that, although animals might be more conscious than a machine, they still insisted in seeing animal consciousness as a lame version of ours.

These limitations we've had regarding animal communication are finally beginning to be cast off. In 1974 the philosopher Thomas Nagel wrote a seminal paper titled “What Is it Like to Be a Bat?” he took issue with the then-current view of animal consciousness and claimed that bat communication is quite sophisticated; that in fact bats' echolocation is similar to human vision and contains lots of information. But since consciousness is a very subjective phenomenon, we humans will never be able to experience the world the way a bat does. Nagel maintained that each critter knows only what it's like to be themselves. We will never be able to know what it's like to be a bat—even if we could decipher their language. Even if a bat could talk, we'd not understand what it said.

A recent fascinating forward step in the process of learning how animals communicate was taken by researchers at the Bat Lab for NeuroEcology at Tel Aviv University, who showed that bats not only do a very good job of communicating, but that they jabber among themselves quite a bit. The scientists recorded the vocalizations of Egyptian fruit bats and then analyzed the sounds. What initially sounded like a meaningless cacophony was really an abundance of “bat speak.” They were even able to identify individual bat voices and learn, to a limited extent, what the messages were. They found that bats bicker a lot—they quibble over food, space, where to sleep, and with whom to have sex... just like humans! Bat communication is indeed much more sophisticated that we thought.

So the evidence mounts. Animals do communicate, and if we can drop our anthropomorphic bias, we are beginning to learn how well they do it. Many indigenous peoples have long known that animals are articulate—that they possess sophisticated nonverbal skills. Animals employ subtle ways of sending messages that don't require all the verbiage we humans seem to need. While we fire off long strings of words at each other—often without listening—animals use different but effective ways of getting their messages across. Maybe if we shut up and honed our listening and observational skills, we could learn a thing or two about communication from them.

Up a Tree

My dog loves to tree raccoons and other critters who wander too close to our dwelling. Click to enlarge.

Prejudicial Perceptions

Why is it that we humans so easily develop negative images of people unlike us? We seem to be predisposed to have prejudicial perceptions of the other: people of a different color, religion, politics, etc. We seem to be quite ready to believe the worst about “those people.” With minimal information about them we leap to conclusions that they are “bad guys,” and then require mountains of positive data to turn our impressions around, in order to look upon them favorably.

This propensity for negative stereotyping is a serious problem in society, especially as social media and biased websites feed us prejudicial beliefs. Society has become increasingly polarized, as people become swayed by these negative images. Why can't we be kinder to each other?

Some recent research sheds a little light on the issue. The findings of sophisticated brain scans conclusively show that our brain responds more strongly and quickly to information about groups who are portrayed unfavorably, than it does about people we like and view favorably. The researchers were not trying to examine existing built-in prejudices of the subjects tested, but instead created new negative feelings about some previously neutral object and then watched what happened in the brain, in order to gain knowledge of what is going on in there.

What they found is that activity in the anterior temporal pole (ATP) occurred when subjects were fed prejudiced information about an object or person. As the negative information was repeated, ATP activity gradually increased—reinforcing the created bias. In contrast, when a test subject was informed that a “bad person” had done something good, the ATP was quiet. Similarly, when the subject was given information about “good people,” the ATP was also quiet.

Interestingly, for these two latter situations—while the ATP was inactive—the prefrontal cortex (PFC) of the subject became activated. This is the part of the brain where higher-level cognitive functioning occurs. So, while the ATP seems to be involved in knee-jerk prejudicial thinking, when we respond more positively, we seem to use the analyzing skills of the PFC to counter our bias. It seems that we need to consciously work on seeing the positive.

This research, as is true for much scientific research, does a neat job of answering the “How?” question. But why do we react so intolerably? It seems that the reason is most likely the result of evolution. Here's the process: Our brain uses many tricks to simplify its job. Every second, our senses bombard the brain with mountains of information. In order not to become swamped, the brain cleverly simplifies and abbreviates this information. One of the simplifying tricks the brain does is to cluster people into groups, since it cuts down on the amount of data that the brain must process. Long ago, when we lived in small bands, it was advantageous for us to automatically lean toward classifying the “other” (say, someone in another tribe) negatively—it was safer to do so. Better to think that that guy I meet out in the bush means harm to me—especially if he looks weird—and take defensive action. To do so, I might live another day, especially if he is threatening.

This predilection to look unfavorably on the “other” may have been once useful for survival in that simple world. It's not so useful today, when we have societal mechanisms in place to better insure that people behave and that the “other” may turn out to be a pretty good guy after all. Maybe it's time we exercised our introspective prefrontal cortex more and let our knee-jerk anterior temporal pole relax. 

Butterfly Weed

A well-named wildflower. It attracts many gorgeous butterflies. Click to enlarge.

René's Response (1/17/17)

There have been countless words strung together in response to René Descartes' cryptic quote; “Cogito ergo sum”. This Latin phrase of his is usually translated as “I think, therefore I am.” For most of us who can't read or speak Latin or who are not steeped in Enlightenment philosophy, Descartes' quip sounds very erudite, but what the hell did he mean? Is its significance of any relevance to the average modern mind?

I confess to feeling rather confused when I ponder René's response. I've read numerous interpretations over the years, but comprehension of “Cogito ergo sum” still pretty much escapes me. Then I recently read an article in the New Yorker magazine that helped me get a much better handle on the meaning of this phrase, in an article by Adam Kirsch, who is on the faculty of Columbia University. What really helped me was to get some background on 17^th century thinking in Europe, to see the context in which Descartes was pondering the weighty quandaries of existence.

As the Enlightenment unfolded, the West was the world's economic, military, and intellectual leader. Western science was flowering and, in the process, was refuting much of Christianity's long-established dogma. As people's minds were being freed to open to new realities, their old truths were having to be abandoned. No, the Earth is not at the center of the universe. No, many of the supernatural explanations you've counted on for ages are now seen to be false. No, the paths of the planets are not determined by the perfection of God's “harmony of the spheres,” but by simple physical laws discovered by Isaac Newton. The list goes on.

In short, much of the old certainty was being cast aside, and it rattled many people. There were so many new facts and verities flooding the Western mind that people felt cast adrift. Where were they now supposed to anchor their convictions? Many of their previous ways of thinking were being trashed. What was reality? What was truth? What was illusion? Is there anything people could count on?

Descartes was a philosopher and many people at the time turned to philosophers—if only because these thinkers had been pondering these same questions for centuries. One of the unique qualities of philosophy is that there are no final answers to the big questions of life. Humans may have found a definitive answer in the 17^th century as to why the planets did their dance, but the same philosophical questions that had puzzled Socrates and his fellow Greek sages 2000 years earlier were still being examined and debated by Enlightenment thinkers; as they are today.

One crucial thing that science did in the Enlightenment period was that, as it led to truths, it helped people understand that our human senses give us but a partial understanding of reality. So what can I believe in? What can I count on? Descartes pondered these questions. He decided to go back to the beginning, to doubt everything, to strip one's existence to the bare bone. After doing so, he wondered if there is anything one can be certain of? Is the world real? Do my senses tell me anything about the actual world? Do I even exist?

His conclusion: the only thing I can believe in is the fact that I'm thinking; that I'm conscious. My mind—being the only thing I can experience—must be real. Without my mind, there's no me. So I am thinking, thus I must exist. He stripped it back to the basics; back to the only thing we can count on and experience: the workings of our mind. With that fundamental reality, I can then conclude that I must be. Then, with that grounding, one could rebuild one's worldview.

The Noble Toad

Click to enlarge.

Act Versus Actor

A lesson I learned several years ago is to separate the act from the actor. When someone acts—the impact being either good or bad—I have come to believe that it's crucial to focus on that action, not the actor. An action is a temporary thing; it occurs and then is gone. Actors can stick around.

What this means to me is, if someone commits an act that is problematic for me, it's better for me to focus on that act. If the act is harmful, I can oppose or condemn it, without condemning the actor. I can see the act as wrong and direct my attention toward responding to it.

If, however, I put my focus on the person who committed the spiteful act, it's easy to label him a bad person. Labels stick. Maybe that person was confused and upset when he did that “dastardly” deed. If I label him as defective or wicked, I fix him in my mind as someone who is irredeemable; a “bad guy,” who must be dealt with harshly. The danger is that I do not allow him to change his ways and become a “good guy.” This negative labeling of certain people leads to divisions and wars. It leads to our unforgiving prison system.

By focusing on the act, however, I can avoid stigmatizing offenders and give them space to reform, or for me to develop some compassion for them. This makes forgiveness a far easier thing to do, because it allows people to change.

There's another side—a flip side—to this coin: when someone acts in a good way or a moral way, I think it's still better to focus on the action, rather than the actor, and be thankful for it. Just as we tend to condemn bad actors and conclude they are defective individuals, we elevate those who do good things; and by so doing, we turn them into demigods. Rather than celebrate what they did, we tend to honor their person; we put them on a pedestal, as if they were superior to us normal human beings. We lose sight of the fact that they are just another person who has done something special.

This kind of hero worship can be as insidious as the denunciation of someone who commits a harmful act, because we transform the good actor into someone better than most people. We lose sight of the fact that we should be honoring the act, not the person. We thus feed their ego and transform them into some kind of icon. What's worse, if they don't keep performing good deeds, we often become vindictive and vicious towards them.

I think it's more positive and productive to put attention to the act, rather than the actor. Acts come and go. Acts can be mistakes or graceful behavior. Either oppose them or honor them. Then allow the actor to be just another normal human being who happened—in this one instance—to do something either reprehensible or wonderful. Don't make them into either a scoundrel or a god.

Swallowtail Butterfly

Click to enlarge.