monogamy

90 minutes ago, Science had a discussion about “love” with Diane Witt and Marc Bekoff.

Dr. Witt is the leader of the Neural Systems Cluster at the National Science Foundation and works on how oxytocin, otherwise known as the ‘cuddle’ hormone, promotes pair bonding and monogamy in humans and animals. Dr. Bekoff is professor emeritus at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he studied animal emotions and behavior.

People could ask questions in chat. In my opinion, Dr Bekoff totally overanthropomorphized emotions, with statements like:

“Current research on love in animals shows clearly that individuals of many diverse species form long and enduring social bonds and that they grieve the loss of loved ones very deeply. It’s not that difficult to see this in many animals. And it’s real love not ‘love’.”
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“It’s known that individuals of many different species display deep grief and heartbreak. Jane Goodall among others have seen animals, in her case chimpanzees, show radical changes in behavior after a loved one dies, the best example being Flint, a young chimpanzee who died soon after his mother Flo died. I’ve also seen first hand grief in wild elephants. There’s also some compelling new research on chimpanzees that shows deep mourning, I’ve also seen this in birds. So, there can be no doubt that other animals grieve and show heartbreak. I’ve written about this in a number of essays on my blog in Psychology Today.”
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“Many nonhumans use pheromones in all sorts of social communication and odor is often the most salient sense in their social encounters including strong social attachments that we can call love.”

These are just three random statements, the other ones are like that as well. And boy do I disagree with most of it.

Update: I guess someone shared my feelings …

Q: “How well do current research methods distinguish between what is going on within an animal’s brain and what is going on in the researcher’s brain – by which I mean anthropomorphizing the animal’s behavior or even their biochemistry?”
A: “I think that the charge of being “too anthropomorphic” is way overblown in that we HAVE to use human terms to describe, interpret, and explain what other animals are feeling. Charles Darwin put for the notion of of evolutionary continuity arguing that the differences among species are differences in degree, rather than kind. So, the bumper sticker for continuity is “If we have something, “they” (other animals) have it too. WE ARE NOT INSERTING SOMETHING HUMAN IN OTHER ANIMALS THAT THEY DON’T HAVE. And across mammals we know that we all share the same structures in the limbic system that are important in feeling emotions. I’ve written about anthropomorphism being self-serving double-talk and refer you to an essay I wrote for Psychology Today on this. One more thing – most people including researchers now don’t seem to worry that much about being anthropomorphic because when done carefully we really do learn a lot about other animals and also are very good at predicting their behavior.”

This topic is popping up regularly in the literature, and we have to be aware of this (I think in a very different way than Dr Bekoff see’s this). And I’ve been thinking about this recently again because a German TV show asked for an interview about the evolution of emotions and emotions in primates, and I feel it’ll be hard to convey these complex things in just a couple of minutes.
(I am definitely not arguing that animals don’t have emotions, quite the opposite. But I feel it’s very difficult to define emotions, and even compare emotions within the human species. Looking at the behavior in animals and calling these things by phenomenological, subjective experiences humans have sounds … imprudent).

Diane Witt, in contrast, was extremely careful. Asked whether humans are a monogamous species, she replies:

“There is ample evidence in a number of species that differences in neurochemicals and their receptors in the brain differ in their distributions in key brain areas that drive mechanisms underlying a suite of behaviors for monogamy and nonmonogamy. Monogamous and nonmogomous species behaviors include those associated with reproduction, social attachment and parental behavior.”

Really ;) ?