Altruistic Exchange

Social psychologists describe a very nice quality that we humans possess—something that is planted deep in our psyche; something that has been bred into us by evolution: a natural inclination to reciprocate kind behavior when it is shown to us. If someone does something nice to us, we feel an urge to return the favor.

However, there's another, negative side of the coin: when someone mistreats us we often have an equally natural inclination to reciprocate with like mistreatment. Revenge is a deep instinct of ours. Indeed, much of human history is replete with violence, as humans often strike back, in retaliation. Although that is an important topic on its own, I will focus here on the positive side of the coin: our returning favor for favor.

It makes sense that we feel a yearning to return kindness with kindness, when we consider it from an evolutionary perspective. When our deep ancestors reciprocated the altruistic behaviors of community members, it pulled the community together. The clan became stronger and more cooperative. It strengthened the group, so that they survived better than clans who didn't cooperate. The noncooperative group went extinct, while the altruistic group thrived.

So altruistic exchange strengthens our connections to one another. And thanks to evolution, it's literally in our genes. We are thankful for it and enjoy its benefits. That said, there's a bit of a problematic side to friendly reciprocity: it opens us up to being scammed. Salespeople have known this and have cleverly used it for ages. If, as a salesman, you offer someone a token favor, you've earned a little leverage to get them to cooperate with you. Thus, the reciprocity tendency can be used to manipulate people and sell them stuff they'd otherwise not want.

Salespeople are often extremely solicitous before they sell you their product. They are your best friend; they have all the time in the world to be with you; and they're apt to gift you with little mementos. Once you respond and buy, however, attempts to reach the formerly friendly salesperson—if you have a question or a complaint—very often go unanswered.

As another example, we may get “free” offers from salespeople to enjoy a gratuitous meal, in exchange for the “opportunity” to purchase a time-share condominium in some idyllic location. Watch out! After the free meal, you will be forced to endure a coercive session, where you will be expected to return the favor of a meal by buying your very own condo.

But to return to my starting point: we are genetically programmed to reciprocate, when someone does us a favor. It's nice to be able to respond in kind. There are, however, times when we can't return the kindness to the individual who benefited us. What do we do then? How do we deal with the propensity to respond kindly, when we can't? Many people say that the right thing to do is to pass it on to others. That's an honorable thing to do. The “Pay it Forward” movement arose years ago to do just that. The reciprocity of kindness to others can spread around, to the benefit of everyone.

So which side of the coin predominates in society—returning kindness or revenge? That's an argument that I don't wish to wade into here. I'd just like to recognize and celebrate the fact that altruistic exchanges are inherent in us and that we all can benefit from this natural positive urge.

Dung Beetle

I found this guy in a bucket of water by the outdoor tub. He was a along way from his favorite plaything: a round ball of poop to roll home. He did pause long enough for me to get a photo. He's almost an inch (2 cm) long. Click to enlarge.

Eclipse Impressions

Recently I traveled more than halfway across the American continent to view the “Great American Eclipse” of 2017. I chose to travel from Virginia to the state of Wyoming, because it had an excellent chance of experiencing clear skies during the event. We also have friends out there who set us up with a superb viewing location.

For several months prior to the eclipse I did lots of research, in order to better appreciate the event. This Great American Eclipse promised a unique experience. The eclipse path would travel diagonally across the country, right through its middle. I bought the requisite solar eclipse viewing glasses—which allow you to stare directly at the sun, without frying your eyeballs. I also bought a filter of the same material, to place over the lens of my camera to allow photos. I was ready!

I was aware of the fact that viewing a solar eclipse requires one to be gazing at the sun for about three hours, as the Moon first begins to block the sun, until it again exits the scene, leaving behind a full sun again. Those three hours sandwich less than three minutes of totality—when the Moon fully covers the sun. So you patiently wait for well over an hour for totality to finally occur, and then experience a darkened sky for only a couple of minutes. It all happens just too quickly.

So I prepared well. I was ready with camera, with charts describing the event's timing, and with past eclipse stories in mind—all very objective kinds of preparations. What I was not prepared for was the emotional experience. I knew from my research that to witness a total solar eclipse was a very subjective and moving experience. All Earth's creatures expect to continually sense the sun's rays all day long, and then to experience several hours of nighttime, until the sun reappears in the morning. It's a pattern we come to presume is always there. But if the sun is suddenly turned off for a couple of minutes in the middle of the day, we become disoriented. We emotionally respond.

It is hard to describe the feelings that came over me at totality. I wish, like Joshua, I could have stopped the sun in its tracks for a couple of hours, in order to have more fully soaked up the emotions. It's over far too quickly. All you have time for is to be amazed and dazzled by the sight in that brief time frame. It's truly the experience of a lifetime.

One interesting reaction that endures for me, a few weeks later, is that the Moon I saw eclipsing the sun that day was an alien moon. I am quite a Moon freak. For most of my life I've been fascinated by the Moon. I gaze at it at length. I follow its phases through the month. I've photographed it many times. I've come to have an intimate relationship with it. I have written about it several times in this blog.

But the eclipsing Moon I saw on 21 August 2017 was not my Moon. It did not have the varied features and contrasting topography that my Moon does. It was not gray or orange. It did not shine brilliantly like on a dark night—when it illuminates my pathway through the woods. The eclipsing Moon was a black circle that slowly obliterated the sun. It seemed to be a two-dimensional disk—a flat circle without features. It did its job and then it was gone! The renewed brilliant sun banished it from the sky. Fortunately, a few nights later I once again spotted my old, familiar Moon—now a thin, bright crescent that I knew would soon wax into a round, brilliant, orange-gray ball, that would dominate the night sky, in a few more nights. My Moon will be back!

NASA Eclipse Photos

These two eclipse photos from 21 August were taken from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, a satellite, launched seven years ago, that looks directly at the sun all the time. Click to enlarge.

Whippoorwill Wrangle

As I sat in the outdoor tub recently, I heard two whippoorwills who seemed to be vying with each other—at least that's how it sounded to me. Conversations and competitions between animals can get quite complex. We humans—with our complex languages and our big brains—tend to belittle the forms of communication we hear going on in the animal world. Caught within the narrow confines of our own kind of information transfer, we are apt to look upon animal communication as primitive and simplistic. We miss the subtle details of how they talk to each other.

So I sat there in the tub, tuning into the dialog that these two birds seemed to be having with each other. The whippoorwill's call is an onomatopoeic one—meaning that their song is essentially identical to their name. These birds sing out—not with the usual “tweet tweet”—but with a robust “WHIP-poor-WILL.” The first two syllables seem to be emitted on the inhale of breath, with the last strong syllable exhaled with gusto. Because the bird calls out on both inhale and exhale, he can go on and on, uninterrupted. And sometimes whippoorwills do—much to my chagrin. They can repeatedly call out through the night, drilling their calls deeply into one's ear and brain.

The two birds I was listening to this night would each sequentially sing out a dozen or so phrases and then fall silent, as if waiting and listening to the other bird, to see what the response was. They called back and forth several times, before they both paused for a while, as the forest silence once again returned. In a few minutes their call-and-response routine would begin afresh—with now one of them having shifted to a new location in the forest.

There obviously was some kind of communication going on. I became absorbed in their game—trying to fathom what the rules were. It was rather like traveling to a foreign country, where I was ignorant of both the language and customs, and was observing a dialog between people and trying to guess what they were talking about.

Was I listening to a whippoorwill contest? If so, were they contesting territory? This late in the season, they were unlikely to be seeking mates—the broods of all of our local birds had already been fledged, so there was no need to vie for a mate. Well, maybe they weren't competing for territory; maybe it was simply to see which one had the more appealing and accomplished call. Or maybe they were discussing some aspect of forest life... such as the lack of mosquitoes to eat tonight.

So, if it was a territorial contest, I wondered which bird might be the challenger and which one the defender. One bird's pitch was a little lower than the other's. Does pitch convey information? Does the more aggressive bird sing at a lower pitch? I also tried to guess which bird's call seemed to be more eloquent than the other. Would the challenger or the defender sound more impressive and resolute? I know that birds often try to bluff each other, and maybe a kind of deceit was going on.

When, after a pause, one changed position, I tried to guess if he was yielding and backing off, or maybe losing interest in the game and simply moving on. On the other hand, birds will sometimes alter the quality of their call—in order to signal that they are possibly acquiescing, when actually they seek to deceive the other into believing they are closer and more intimidating that they really are. It's part of the game.

As in most cases when I am treated to the calls and exhibitions of our wildlife, I am left wondering—with more questions than answers. Their sophisticated communication is yet beyond my comprehension. I've reposed in the tub for a couple of decades now, eavesdropping on their conversations. Bit by bit, I sometimes begin to understand what they are up to. Maybe in another half century—when I am a hundredtwentysomething—I may get it.

Lady Grasshopper

This grasshopper is about 1.5 inches (4 cm) long. The closeup is of her ovipositor, by which she deposits her eggs. Click to enlarge.

Evolution and Fitness

One of the basic pillars of the theory of evolution is the fact that every species gives birth to far more offspring than the planet can sustain. This fact sets up a perpetual competition for survival among species. Those creatures who are the most fit survive in a given situation and pass their genes into the future. Those less fit die out, or never get a chance to procreate. It's that simple.

A key part of this scenario is the fact that tiny mutations randomly occur, each time a newborn comes into the world. The DNA of every species is duplicated at birth with an amazingly high degree of accuracy, but because there are millions upon millions of DNA copies to be made, tiny copying errors will inevitably creep in.

Those errors are precisely the source of tiny variations between otherwise identical offspring. Thus, one baby within a family will slightly be different from another. One sparrow born in Georgia will be a wee bit genetically different from one born in Florida, or even within the same locale in Georgia.

These slight differences rarely have any import, but should the environment—or other external conditions shift ever so slightly, one critter may fare better than another. The Georgia sparrow, for example, may have a slightly more yellow color. That yellower sparrow may be less visible to new predators—who, say, have migrated there due to climate change—who don't see yellow as well. Thus the yellow birds will live to have babies, who will also have the yellower gene. The result: yellower sparrows win the competition for survival.

This is basically how life has evolved on Earth. Every time environmental conditions have shifted, some critters—just by luck—are more fit in the new environment, and they successfully send their modified genes into the future. This amazing process is what has allowed life on our planet to adapt to changing conditions, and then to evolve new life forms to thrive in new conditions. This process would not happen without an overabundance of babies born to each species (otherwise every baby would prosper and never face the prospect of an early death). There would be no competition between their minuscule differences, to see which one wins.

One way to appreciate this magnificent process is to ponder what might happen if life on Earth had settled into some kind of happy stasis, where no competition occurred. What if the number of babies born was exactly what was needed to sustain each species? Wouldn't that be much more peaceful? If that were the case, there would be far less competition, no survival of the fittest, no dog-eat-dog world. Every critter would find its happy place; the lion could even lie down with the lamb.

But what would such a world be like? For one, evolution would simply not occur. Every critter would be content, would be secure, and would be very comfortable. No changes. Everything would become static and unvarying. This might sound nice, but what would happen if a small perturbation in the environment happened to occur? All those placid critters would suddenly be faced with challenges for which they are totally unprepared. There would be massive extinctions. Life, that would long have ago settled into a kind of inactivity, would now be unable to respond. Most creatures would go instinct!

So we might well celebrate what appears to be a brutish form of competition in nature, where too many babies are born and most of them die or get eaten. It may appear to be cold-hearted and devoid of any gentleness, but it has kept life vital, robust, and progressive, for several billion years. Let us be thankful for nature's wisdom.