Explaining the lack of empathy in supersocial monkeys, part 2

(writing in progress)

...continued fromhttps://www.inaturalist.org/journal/milewski/67191-explaining-the-lack-of-empathy-in-supersocial-monkeys-part-1#

The hamadryas baboon (Papio hamadryas) differs from other baboons, apparently owing to its semi-arid habitat. The male ‘marries’ one or more (up to 10, but usually two) females, and leads them forcibly as if ‘owning’ them.
 
This series of Posts examines this social pattern through the lens of a lack of compassion/empathy/giving/altruism in cercopithecid monkeys. For the current Post, my sole source is Hans Kummer’s (1995) book ‘In Quest of the Sacred Baboon’.
 
On page 39-40, Kummer points out that, in the hamadryas baboon, disagreements “follow a logic different from our own..seem paradoxical...fear rather than audacity is ‘punished’; and a ‘fleeing’ [instraspecifically] baboon rushes into the midst of [instraspecific] danger. Let’s try to decipher this paradoxical flight...In moments of great fear they always chose to flee toward the larger animal, even if no third party was involved and the large one was itself the source of the terror”.
 
I can explain this as follows.

Baboons have no sense of justice, but have a strong inhibition against harming a submissive individual, particularly when this ‘presents’ by showing the dominant individual its posterior.

So when an individual fears being punished, it ‘hands itself in’ as rapidly as possible to the dominant, in order to placate the dominant, and thus turn any punishment on a third party (particularly where there are two quarrelling individuals who fear irritated intervention by the dominant male).

The various interactions can all get rather complicated. However, the main point is that no individual can rely on the dominant individual punishing according to justice. Instead, it is simply a question of ‘pushing the right buttons’ to switch off the threat of punishment, whether deserved or not.
 
In a strange way, this ‘explains’ the marriage system that occurs in the hamadryas baboon.

In this ‘marriage, the male is ‘faithful’ but the female not so if she can get away with it. The female sticks with her ‘husband’ only because he forces her to. When he dies, she seems to retain no attachment to him, so this is not a ‘loving’ marriage but a ‘jealous’ one. It’s worth noting, however, that the male will defend his ‘wife’ determinedly against predators – a reaction that can be parsimoniously explained not by any sort of gallantry but rather by the role of the female as a vulnerable ‘possession’ of the male.
 
The way the male manages to herd his wife/wives is to force them to follow him, by biting any tardy or errant wife. Do readers see how this conforms with the pattern I have described above? When an individual (in this case the wife) feels that the male is angry with her, her reaction is to approach him as rapidly as possible.
 
In human terms such ‘marriage’ would seem abusive on both sides. Not only does the husband retain his wife by means of violence and the threat of violence (as opposed to volition and a loving attraction), but the wife has no intention of being faithful unless she is forced to. The male winds up being faithful only because he is so busy watching, guarding and leading his wife.
 
My point in all of this (and this is not a point made by Hans Kummer, as such) is that it fits a theme of ‘amorality’, albeit in a way refreshingly different from what we have seen in savanna species of baboons such as the chacma baboon and the anubis baboon.
 
Kummer’s ecological explanation for the ‘marriage’ system in the hamadryas baboon:

On page 110, Kummer re-summarises as follows: “As a specialist in barren habitats, the hamadryas has evolved small, stable foraging groups so that the troop can subdivide without fuss, ‘unzipping’ itself along predetermined lines. The result is that at least one large male protector goes along with each small group. To forage in a small, protected group is no doubt also useful to the females, but the fact that the group takes the particular form of a polygynous family probably arose because herding turned out to be the best reproductive strategy for the male.”
 
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=A6w69c2y1MIC&pg=PR19&lpg=PR19&dq=hans+kummer+the+fascinating+thing+about+the+patriarchal&source=bl&ots=joBaGSo-X0&sig=jU5M_igeDdX4bTQGMAryPdHvpVc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjE0Iuctv7LAhUlLaYKHUGbDmYQ6AEIKDAD#v=onepage&q=hans%20kummer%20the%20fascinating%20thing%20about%20the%20patriarchal&f=false

(writing in progress)

Posted on July 13, 2022 10:30 PM by milewski