Sea Otters Are Jerks. So Are Dolphins, Penguins, and Other Adorable Animals

http://www.slate.com/blogs/wild_things/2013/10/28/sea_otter_dolphin_and_penguin_behavior_your_favorite_animals_are_jerks.html

by aaron695 • 13 years ago

93 43 13 years ago

slate.com

elwell• 13 years ago

I loved the conclusions at the end. The "naturalistic fallacy" has been on my mind for quite a while.

saraid216• 13 years ago

"The other wrong lesson [the philosopher William James] thought people took from On the Origin of Species is, in effect, the flip side of the first. It is the belief that evolutionary science can lay a foundation for norms–that natural selection serves as a kind of "bottom-line" arbiter of merit. This is the doctrine of "the survival of the fittest," .... It makes the logic of evolution the logic of human values: it suggests that we should pursue policies and honor behavior that are consistent with the survival of characteristics understood to be "adaptive," and it justifies, as "natural," certain kinds of coercion."

– Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club.

eli_gottlieb• 13 years ago

Yes, well, that logic is certainly clear and valid if you actually believe that we can't beat the Darwinian process at its own game.

The fallacy, of course, is that yes we can, and in fact, that's exactly what we've been doing with these whole "civilization" and "culture" things since day 1.

novalis78• 13 years ago

yes, indeed. It's easy to forget the terror and brutality of survival that is a daily given for most animals and a certain percentage of humans when you live in the "developed" world. Amazing how quickly we get accustomed to a safe and routine life when all it takes is a month in a jungle - or Calcutta for that matter - to re-appreciate how far we have come using reason, stepping beyond what could be classified as "natural".

gurkendoktor3• 13 years ago

We are safe not just thanks to reason in our social behaviour, but also our hygiene:

http://www.amazon.com/Parasite-Rex-Bizarre-Dangerous-Creatur...

I thought that anyone who has raised a cat knows that animals are jerks (playing with bleeding mice for hours and all), but I was shocked by the added layer of terribleness from parasites in almost all species.

tobylane2• 13 years ago

Cats, pigs and bettafish continue unslandered, no one wants to annoy Reddit.

selmnoo2• 13 years ago

That actually bugs me a lot. Cats are wreaking environmental havoc: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/29/cats-wi...

Raising this point on Reddit only gets you downvotes.

lurkinggrue2• 13 years ago

Gonna have to downvote you.

nikatwork2• 13 years ago

You know who's wreaking environmental havoc? Humans.

forktheif• 13 years ago

The impact cats are having has been greatly overstated for two main reasons.

1. Original studies over estimated the amount of animals a typical cat kills.

2. Cats roam over a lot less area than you'd think, rarely going even half a mile away from their home. Putting the majority of wild animals out of reach of a house cat's range.

aac7• 13 years ago

I'm sure you're aware this isn't Reddit. Are you saying that HN has become so diluted that it's become another Reddit? (But you might be right unfortunately).

aaronbrethorst• 13 years ago

Here's why this comment was downvoted: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

tobylane2• 13 years ago

Slate is more affected by the feelings of Reddit than of HN, as pageviews count.

gurkendoktor3• 13 years ago

Why would reddit want to romanticise pigs? Last time I've signed in, there were plenty of discussions about whether it was right to eat animals. Pigs being jerks would certainly have made it easier for one side, and I didn't get the impression that people really fawned over them...

lurkinggrue2• 13 years ago

To be fair, the baby seals were asking for it.

aac7• 13 years ago

Please don't troll.

noonespecial• 13 years ago

Teleological reasoning is always trouble when it comes to evolution. The biggest problem these days seems to be going from valid assumptions like "the best foods to eat are the ones we evolved to digest" to the less valid "that's how we evolved so that's how we should be". The first makes one healthy, the second makes one Nazi.

aac7• 13 years ago

And yet another instance of Godwin's law being invoked. What do Nazis have to do with this topic? None. Please don't post this type of comment in the future.

stcredzero2• 13 years ago

What do Nazis have to do with this topic?

Eugenics. Sloppy reasoning using evolution.

Please don't post this type of comment in the future.

As far as I can tell, you didn't have the background to know what the gp commenter was saying, so you counterfactually knee-jerked a reaction amounting to censorship.

It would be nice if we could rationally talk about the Nazi regime in a historical and cultural context. It's especially instructive, as they sincerely believed they were "the good guys." What was the most used word referencing an emotion at the Nuremberg Rally the year Leni Riefenstahl filmed Triumph of the Will?

"Love."

The Nazis thought they were the good guys, and they were able to convince enough of an entire country to achieve a totalitarian state. What they did afterwards was truly horrible -- which is a glaring indication that we have lots of valuable stuff to learn about how human beings can go horribly wrong by thinking about what happened.

Godwin's law is an anti-rational knee jerk.

The person who originally introduced me to this idea? (Not in specific reference to Godwin's law, but generally.) A young jewish woman I had fallen in love with. Chew on that.

existencebox2• 13 years ago

Maybe I'm missing the point; or that this is implied, but this seems to really beg the question of, "Humans do all of these behaviors AND MANY MORE!" what sort of "jerks" are we?

In fact, it seems that the whole "jerk" thing is rather contrived, and the occurrences as a whole seem to merely suggest "this is what it is to be an animal."(They seemed to be going in this direction; but then turned it into a "this is why animals aren't actually good and nice and our superior reasoning ability allows us to avoid this" but I would respond with, "it hasn't.")

I don't mean to legitimze, but rather to suggest that it puts any suggestions that humans are more than "just animals" (tm) in an interesting light.

aac7• 13 years ago

You don't need to be sorry for your thoughts. "Maybe I'm missing the point", "I don't mean to...", and other similar phrases can be avoided. You don't need to use phrases such as these. Just say what you think, and if you find yourself unable to post without using those phrases, then that means your comment/argument is flawed and you shouldn't be posting such a comment.

existencebox2• 13 years ago

I've found, especially in dealing with certain crowds which can often be known as adversarial to put it kindly, a lot of times you avoid conflict by coming across more defensively. Perhaps I've just had to deal with very abrasive people in my day to day work environment, but I phrase things in such a way consciously, aside from any judgement on the argument itself.

gurkendoktor3• 13 years ago

IMHO, there is a huge difference between otters who don't know they're being jerks; the majority of humans who are not actively jerks; and terrible (anti-social) humans who understand through empathy that they're being jerks.

I don't think mixing up the three groups helps. At I don't want to be punched in the face tomorrow with the excuse that amoeba do the same thing. :P

openforce• 13 years ago

I think it is our society which has encouraged the cuddly, cute side of these animals to be more recognized. Maybe, If we get to look at a wildlife conservation group's data, we will probably find that the cute pictures of these animals got through to a bigger audience and brought in more donations than a violent/non-cute picture. I am not saying it is wrong, but that is just how it is. This will continue to happen unless more people actually show interest and try to learn more about the wildlife around them.

6ren• 13 years ago

Our values do come from evolutionary fitness.

It's just that cooperation, exchange, and division of labour benefit all of us better than some zero-sum game. If this were not the case, savagery would rule the world, instead of global trade.

Enlightened self-interest favours respect of diversity and non-conformance - because exploration is more effective when everyone tries a different approach (instead of the same one). And exploration, especially in science and technology, benefits us all, particularly in increasing carrying capacity so we needn't choose between intertribal warfare, infanticide and starvation.

I took the following from studying world war two in school (though I don't think it was explicitly stated): the Nazis started WWII and sought to eliminate many groups, including Jews, on the basis of eugenics (apparently, eugenics was broadly popular at the time). Yet Einstein, a German Jew, created the basis of atomic weapons which ended the war (if not, they would have ended it).

Eugenics is a misunderstanding of the Darwinian value of a human life.

To some people, this point of view may seem cynical, ugly and horrible. But to me, it is the most hopeful view I've ever seen. It means that if some overly-controlling group tries to enslave the world, they will likely fail - because their very nature weakens them. It also means that over time, the Darwinian pressure is for us to become ever more good, as that is what gets rewarded. Therefore, if one day we meet powerful aliens, they are likely ethical aliens. Taken to the furthest extreme, one could see symbiosis as the nature of the universe.

Is that taking it too far? Maybe. But it follows from the evidence, and the logic of division of labour. Of course, it's just a probability - selfishness can strike at cooperation at any time. And does. All I claim is that cooperation is the way to bet.

Ethics is power.

aac7• 13 years ago

Why are bringing Einstein into this? That has nothing to do with the original topic. Your post also contains quite a number of inaccuracies and self-observations. Ethics is power? You can try expanding upon that a bit next time you post a comment similar to that.

nikatwork2• 13 years ago

The comment made perfect sense. OP was extrapolating the "animals are jerks because of evolutionary pressure" idea to humans, and reasoning that non-zero-sum ethics are also the result of that pressure. "Ethics is power" was the summation, not the initiation.

It seems like you need to work on your critical reading skills before getting so snarky.

stcredzero2• 13 years ago

It means that if some overly-controlling group tries to enslave the world, they will likely fail - because their very nature weakens them.

You see, the unspoken assumption of many bad-guys throughout history as well as just about all of the annoying jerks on the Internet is the same. It's the assumption that one is somehow special, ultimate, or "exceptional." It's really the unacknowledged blasphemous assumption of nearly every human being -- that we are all some kind of significant shard of God.

Well, we're all significant as valued individuals, but in the grand scheme of things, we are just one iteration and point of view amongst billions. To be unaware of this and rampage about the world is to use the confidence our species had to evolve to survive in a rough and uncertain world. To be open to the possibility of our being wrong is to be enlightened.

Ethics is power.

The ethical codes of behavior we inherited from our cultural traditions are a lousy approximation of the way a superior intellect would behave. That said, it's still a lot better for most people than no ethical code. Any ethical code that could fit into a human mind is probably such a lousy, static approximation. However, to rampage about the world without one is a good way of becoming another of history's villains -- especially if you think of yourself as one of the good guys. Almost all of history's villains thought of themselves as the "good guys."

(Also, I'm not religious.)

dctoedt• 13 years ago

For a readable popularization of the "cooperation trumps competition -- sometimes" view, see Robert Wright's Non-Zero: The Logic of Human Destiny at http://www.amazon.com/Nonzero-The-Logic-Human-Destiny/dp/067... (not an affiliate link).

From the publisher's summary at Amazon: "In Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, Wright asserts that, ever since the primordial ooze, life has followed a basic pattern. Organisms and human societies alike have grown more complex by mastering the challenges of internal cooperation. Wright's narrative ranges from fossilized bacteria to vampire bats, from stone-age villages to the World Trade Organization, uncovering such surprises as the benefits of barbarian hordes and the useful stability of feudalism. Here is history endowed with moral significance–a way of looking at our biological and cultural evolution that suggests, refreshingly, that human morality has improved over time, and that our instinct to discover meaning may itself serve a higher purpose. Insightful, witty, profound, Nonzero offers breathtaking implications for what we believe and how we adapt to technology's ongoing transformation of the world."

nichtich• 13 years ago

It also means that over time, the Darwinian pressure is for us to become ever more good, as that is what gets rewarded. Therefore, if one day we meet powerful aliens, they are likely ethical aliens.

I can't agree with this kind of reasoning. Evolution doesn't have direction, there's no such thing as "good" in this process. Even historically some factors made certain level of cooperation better for survival it doesn't mean it'll be true forever and the balance is always shifting even in recent history. And aliens is guaranteed to have a vastly different "evolution" history than us, using the word "ethical" is nonsense.

twotwotwo• 13 years ago

(I read "so are developers" for a second.)

aac7• 13 years ago

^Not a useful comment, as it tells nothing new or insightful, so please don't post this type of comment in the future.

aac7• 13 years ago

This should not be on the front page.

CodeMage• 13 years ago

So flag it. Oh, that's right, you can't -- because you created a throw-away account to post a bunch of comments on this thread, telling other people what they should or shouldn't post.

Demiurge• 13 years ago

Correction: animals are jerks.

greygoose• 13 years ago

This is especially problematic in Monterey Bay, where there are more male sea otters than females. The reason for this skew in the population is unclear, but it leaves male sea otters in a bind. The rehabilitated sea otters were released into an environment of intense competition and were at a disadvantage when it came time to find a mate. > Hello CS class.

krakensden• 13 years ago

He's missing my favorite bit of mean Adélie behavior- before they jump in the water as a group, they shove a weak or unlucky penguin in and wait for a second to see if a seal eats it.

triplesec• 13 years ago

I don't like this piece. It's anthropomorphising but to little useful effect. We know animals are not humans, and imputing American C21st values to animals, which are really doing things which animals do, doesn't enlighten us one bit. There is a good point to it, but the tone, that "they're jerks" is way too simplistic for a good undersanding of the factors and survival metrics involved here. Why do x do y, and why is that different from us, here are some factors and likelihoods would be a much more useful approach.

geoka9• 13 years ago

Actually, males of many species are mostly jerks. Females, on the other hand...

Sea Otters Are Jerks. So Are Dolphins, Penguins, and Other Adorable Animals

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