Charles Darwin and the Dominance Meme, Part 2

Does Human Observation Create Dominance Hierarchies?

“Although it has been shown that in horses … dominance hierarchies are so poorly developed as to be invisible, needing artificially created competition to develop, … there is a reluctance on the parts of both trainers and some scientists to abandon human attitudes about dominance.”

—Lucy Rees, horse trainer.

The Baby and the Bathwater
Some scientists have tried, with little progress, to dismiss the idea of dominance hierarchies in animals entirely. Others, who still believe the myth, and who toil honestly in the vineyards of animal behavior, are fond of the phrase “Let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater,” meaning just because there are gaps in logic pertaining to how and why some social animals seem to form dominance hierarchies, the really important stuff remains.

But are there any real contradictions in dominance theories?  

Yes. And as usual, the clearest window into these contradictions comes from David Mech. These two quotes sum things up perfectly.

“Dominance contests are rare, if they exist at all.”  —1999.

“Dominance is one of the most pervasive and important behaviors among wolves in a pack.”  —2010.

So why is there a seemingly conflicting difference between Mech’s two statements? Did conditions on Ellesmere Island change substantially between the late 1980s and 1990s to what they were in 2009? Was there a difference in the technology of the radio collars? Being anesthetized can also cause deep stress, and since hierarchies are more apparent when animals are under stress, was there a difference in the types of anesthetic darts used?

The Stressful Effects of Human Observation

“Just when we think we know it all ...” —Marc Bekoff, 2013.

In an online essay published on June 5, 2013, Dr. Marc Bekoff discusses how the behaviors of animals change in very substantial ways when they’re aware of predators in their environment.

“It’s not an overstatement to say that many animals live in constant fear. Consider the reintroduction of grey wolves into Yellowstone National Park in 1995. While most of the attention focused on these magnificent animals, biologist John Laundré was more interested in the elk who had been living in the park.”

Bekoff recounts the realization that Laundre came to: wolves don't just kill elk, they also change the elk’s daily behavior simply by living in the same general area. This is true in other habitats as well. Whenever predators live in the same environment as their prey—they don’t even have to live in close proximity—it creates a perpetual state of apprehension and stress.

Wolves are apex predators, meaning they’re at the top of the heap: no other animal preys on the wolf, at least no other non-human animal does. But since humans are the only animal that poses a real and serious danger, it would make sense that wolves might behave differently when they feel our presence in their environment, particularly if we’re also shooting them with tranquilizer darts. 

It seems to me that if stress is the chief factor causing the formation of dominance hierarchies, and if being watched increases an animal’s stress, then being observed by scientists may very well be stressful to wolves, increasing incidents of so-called dominant and submissive behaviors. These effects would most likely be multiplied in situations where wolves were shot with tranquilizer darts and then outfitted with radio collars.  

Artificial Selection 
Primatologist Linda Marie Fedigan has criticized the way many researchers set up artificial food-competition scenarios designed to test or, more to the point, create dominance relationships in selected dyads (groups of two).

“It has been found that food tests do not generalize to other conflict situations in any consistent way. Not only does the test-situation only exist in the artificial laboratory-test setting, it has been found that priority to food does not necessarily correlate with priority to other incentives, and that dominance, determined through dyadic tests, does not generalize to dominance relationships for the same individuals within the group as a whole. ... Rather than peeling away the layers of the behavioral onion, to arrive at the core of an underlying ‘real’ dominance rank or dominance relationship, it can be argued that the experimenter has in fact created [it].” (1992, Fedigan, “Dominance and Alliance: Chapter 7 of Primate Paradigms: Sex Roles and Social Bonds, University of Chicago Press.)

Lee Alan Dugatkin, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, writes: “Winner and loser effects are defined as an increased probability of winning an aggressive interaction.” He goes on to say that “Prior theoretical work on dominance hierarchy formation has demonstrated that … loser effects always produce a clear top-ranked (alpha) individual, but all other ranks in a group remain unclear; whereas winner effects always produce strict linear hierarchies in which the rank of each individual is clear. Paradoxically, however, when individual recognition—a phenomenon long thought to stabilize hierarchies—is possible, winner and loser effects have no impact on the probability of forming strict linear hierarchies.” (2004, “Individual recognition, dominance hierarchies and winner and loser effects,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London.)

Add to this the fact that when researchers isolate two members of a social group, and study their “dominance” relationships, an odd thing sometimes happens: Animal A is said to be dominant over Animal B, and Animal B is dominant over Animal C, yet Animal C is strangely dominant over Animal A, creating a peculiar dominance loop not found anywhere in Nature. 

Natural vs. Artificially-Created Models 
Creating artificial conflicts in “laboratory settings” is one thing. But does that flaw also translate to observations made of the behaviors of animals in Nature?

Yes and no. 

In the 1960s, biologist Thelma Rowell, the first scientist to study baboons in the wild, found that dominance hierarchies didn’t exist in the animals she studied. According to Rowell captive animals only form dominance hierarchies under two sets of conditions: a) where the animals are total strangers to one another, and b) where they lack ready access to resources available to those living in the wild. (This partially coincides with what Dr. Mech wrote in 1999—that captivity stress causes wolves living in confinement to behave differently than those living in the wild.)

Rowell took this idea even further. In her book The Concept of Social Dominance (1974) she wrote, “The experimenter will report that his trials have demonstrated a dominance relationship between the monkeys while in fact they (the trials) have actually caused it.”

Rowell found that baboon males were extremely peaceful and were not at all competitive. There was much positive or friendly interaction. Aggression was rare. “The dominant impression of interaction between males,” Rowell concluded, “was that of active cooperation.” 

Shirley Strum, who studied baboons in the 1970s, took a stronger stance, claiming that dominance hierarchies were a myth.

The differences both women saw in baboon behavior were seemingly related to one thing: stress. Captive baboons, who were under more stress than those living in their natural habitat, formed dominance hierarchies. Wild baboons didn’t.

Like Rowell, Jane Goodall also began her studies in the 1960s, and initially saw no signs of dominance in the chimpanzees at Gombe Stream. That changed after about 10 years when she first saw “dominant” females killing the young of other females of the troop, in some cases eating their young. “During the first ten years of the study I had believed … that the Gombe chimpanzees were, for the most part, rather nicer than human beings. … Then suddenly we found that chimpanzees could be brutal—that they, like us, had a darker side...”

Was this change due to changes in the chimps’ external environment, or due to changes in the way  Goodall and others were observing them?

In their 1995 book When Elephants Weep Masson and McCarthy wrote, “In recent years the idea of the dominance hierarchy has become more controversial, with some ethologists now asking if such hierarchies are real or a product of human expectation.”

I’ll go beyond that and—siding with Thelma Rowell—say that dominance is not only a product of human expectation, it’s a product of human observation.  

LCK 
Life Is an Adventure—Where Will Your Dog Take You?

Dogs On Motorcycles, Dolphins Riding Whales, and the Myth of Deliberate Intent in Jellyfish

Is Animal Behavior a Product of Deliberation + Intent or Attraction + Momentum?

Actor Harry Dean Morgan and His Motorcyle-Riding Dog

Do Jellyfish Think About What They’re Doing?  
The Nature World News website recently touted the fact that a new laboratory study suggests that a species of jellyfish has been seen “deliberately” catching fish, this despite the fact that jellyfish don’t have brains or a central nervous system.

According to lead researcher, Robert Courtney, “They’re using their tentacles and nematocyst clusters like experienced fishers use their lines and lures.” He goes on to say that “the nematocyst clusters look like a series of bright pearls, which the jellyfish twitches to attract the attention of its prey, like a series of fishing lures. It’s a very deliberate and selective form of prey capture.”

Interesting, huh? According to Dr. Courtney, the jellyfish deliberately twitches these pearl-like nematocysts not just to attract its prey, but to attract the attention of its prey. 

Okay … but how does the jellyfish know that its prey has mental states? It seems to me that in order for a jelly to produce these behaviors for the reasons given it would have to have a fully-developed theory of mind, meaning it would have to have a mind of its own and would also have to be capable of knowing that other organisms have minds similar to its mind in some ways, yet dissimilar in others. Yet Dr. Courtney seems convinced that they’re fishing deliberately.

But here’s a significant fact: we’re also told that the study was done in a laboratory instead of the jellyfish’s natural habitat. That’s because this is a very tiny organism that’s almost invisible in the open sea. So, in order to capture this species for laboratory study, the researchers trapped the jellyfish by submerging high-powered lights in its natural aquatic habitat. 

Why? Because they’re attracted to light.

So here we have two variations on the word “attraction.”

1) The jellyfish is attracted to light, and 

2) it’s reportedly behaving to attract the attention of its prey.

So why does Dr. Courtney think he’s seeing deliberate behavior in an organism that can’t possibly think about what it’s doing? Why aren’t its behaviors described through—I don’t know—a basic function of physics found in all things, living or non-living, all things on earth, organic and inorganic, a simple process found both in organisms that can think (meaning us and maybe dolphins) and those that can’t (meaning other organisms like jellyfish, plants, bacteria, and inorganic things like tectonic plates and maybe even the ocean itself)? 

The truth is simple: the jellyfish is attracted to its prey. If it weren’t it wouldn’t be able to feed itself except by sheer random chance. Fortunately for the jellyfish, it has a built-in fishing lure: its bright nematocyst clusters. 

And why do lures work? Because fish are attracted to them.

Could it be that the jellyfish is not acting in a deliberate manner — which, again, would be impossible without a highly-developed brain — but is simply moving toward its prey in what seems to be a deliberate manner because of physical attraction? (“Physical” meaning its behavior is controlled by physics, not sexual desire.)  

Dogs on Motorcycles, Dolphins Riding Whales 
Meanwhile, in another part of the world, we have a species called the dog. And dogs are known for their infatuation with car rides (or at least most dogs are). Of course, there’s nothing out of the ordinary about that. I mean it’s interesting that dogs love going for car rides, and that most cats hate it. But until recently I’d never heard of a dog who loved motorcycle rides. But in a recent television interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live, actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan described how one of his dogs absolutely loves to do just that. 

As soon as his dog hears him kick-starting the engine, she comes bursting out of the house, runs straight to the motorcycle, and jumps up between the handlebars onto the gas tank. Then, cradled safely (or perhaps precariously) between her owner’s arms, the duo takes off down the road.

This is all pretty amazing (and some would say dumb on Morgan’s part), but here’s what I think is really amazing: once this dynamic duo reach the freeway, and begin traveling 70 miles an hour, the dog falls asleep and doesn’t wake up until they reach their destination!

Can you imagine? The dog isn’t safe inside a car, with the window rolled down so she can stick her head out. She’s sleeping on top of the gas tank. At 70 mph! Fast asleep!!

And she’s not the only dog who likes to ride a motorcycle! 

I think dogs like to ride motorcycles for the same reason they like to go for car rides, chase tennis balls and fly through the air after Frisbees. They like the feelings of momentum and the pleasure of velocity. And on a motorcycle those feelings are intensified. Dogs also like the feeling of togetherness which are also intensified on a motorcycle. 

Dogs and Dolphins and Dolphins and Dogs 
Another species that seems to thoroughly enjoy feelings of physical momentum, as well as synchronous movement with others, is the bottle-nose dolphin. We’ve all seen videos or still images of dolphins arcing together in unison, either in the open water or while doing tricks at a water park.

In fact, there have been several incidents where dolphins have been seen, off the coast of Hawaii, riding on the backs of humpback whales which is quite similar to the way Jeffrey Dean Morgan describes his dog riding his motorcycle’s gas tank!

Ken Ramirez, a dolphin trainer at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium says, “It is believed that the ‘surfing’ or bow riding [behaviors] that dolphins exhibit in front of boats may have had its genesis in riding in front, or in the wake, of big whales.”

Like many +R trainers, Ramirez believe that the animals they train learn to do all sorts of amazing acrobatic feats through a process called positive reinforcement, and more specifically through sonic “markers,” usually clicks from a clicker that signal a food reward may be coming later. In fact, these trainers believe that all animals—not just dolphins—learn the same way, through a process called operant conditioning.  

Do Dogs and Dolphins (and Jellyfish) Learn the Same Way?
 All animals—at least those who can learn new behaviors (and jellyfish probably don’t fit that category)—learn the same way. But it’s not through operant conditioning, which only creates a fairly convincing facsimile of how animals really learn, and usually only under very tightly-controlled conditions. In fact it’s well known that behaviors learned via operant conditioning tend to break down whenever strong drives and instincts are involved. [1]

So how do animals really learn?

According to a model called Natural Dog Training—created by dog trainer and natural philosopher Kevin Behan—all behavior and learning are the products of certain properties of physics, among them the same properties that explain how a jellyfish seems to hunt deliberately: through physical attraction to its prey. 

Some obvious examples include the kind of almost magnetic attraction most dogs have for other dogs, for their owners, their toys, treats, food dish, etc. When a dog has strong feelings of attraction for something he tends to move toward it in a straight line. But, according Behan’s model, dogs also have feelings of resistance toward other types of things, like going to the vet’s office, or getting a bath. Resistance is literally the polar opposite of attraction. When a dog has strong feelings of resistance he tries to move away from the things that generate those feelings. Meanwhile, when a dog feels a mixture of both attraction and resistance he’ll move in a curvilinear fashion. 

Add to this process the idea that when a dog moves toward an object of attraction, doing so creates pleasurable feelings of physical momentum and emotional flow, the same types of feelings we have when we’re humming along on the open highway, or playing golf or tennis, or even just watching a game of football on TV, where we may unconsciously project our emotional centers of gravity onto the wide receiver reaching up to catch a football. We often stretch and strain ourselves while watching the ball’s arc and the receiver’s arms stretching and straining to reach it.

Now think of a Frisbee dog flying through the air to catch a flying disc or a ball-happy dog running full bore after a tennis ball or Kong. That’s pure attraction, which, again, also creates pleasurable feelings of physical momentum and a pure flow of emotion.

So when a puppy learns to sit for a treat, operant conditioning—or a reasonable facsimile thereof—is enough to explain that process for most purposes. The missing piece is that the puppy has to first have a feeling of attraction for the treat and for the person holding it. You can’t get a puppy to sit for a treat unless he’s focused on you and has feelings of physical and emotional attraction for you and the treat.

Attraction + Momentum = Flow  
However, things get a bit more complicated when you’re training a dog to herd sheep or run an agility course or run full speed off a diving platform or—as is the case with dolphins—when Naval personnel train them to locate enemy mines underwater.(2)

For the agility course the dog has to have feelings of attraction for moving toward and through the various challenges in the course. The diving dog is motivated by the way his owner builds his attraction to a prey object, like a tug toy: the more attraction the dog has for the object the stronger his desire to intercept it in mid-air, and the better his score in the diving competition. When dolphins are trained to swim into a harbor, then dive deep and search for possible locations of enemy mines, they need to have more motivation than an eventual “reward” from a chum bucket back at the “base.” That reward is the feeling of seeking and finding “prey,” just like it is for dogs.

Resistance enters the picture through the fact that in all three cases the animals are also pushing past feelings of physical resistance, which, again, is the polar opposite of attraction.

Of course dogs and dolphins are predators. Would prey animals have the same feelings?

Yes. It’s just that their “prey” would usually be whatever it is they like to eat. Horses, for instance, don’t chase their “prey,” but they are attracted to things like grass and hay, etc. Yet even prey animals like horses will play games of chase with each other that often involve biting or mock biting the other animal, as if they were predators at heart.

There’s a lot more to the Natural Dog Training model of learning than attraction and resistance or the pleasures of physical momentum and emotional flow. But on the most fundamental level, there is really no difference between the way a jellyfish is attracted to its prey, the way bacteria are attracted to specific substances that sustain life [3], the way fundamental particles are attracted to one another, and the way dogs are able to learn complex new behaviors like riding on the gas tanks of their owners’ motorcycles or the way dolphins enjoy body- surfing on the backs of humpback whales.  

Lee Charles Kelley  
“Life Is an Adventure—Where Will Your Dog Take You?”
 
Footnotes:
 
1.) "The Misbehavior of Organisms," Keller and Marian Breland, American Psychologist, 16, 681-684.  

2.) http://www.public.navy.mil/spawar/Pacific/71500/Pages/default.aspx   

3.) Note that in his book Adaptive Behavior and Learning Dr. John Staddon discusses research done on e-coli and salmonella bacteria, organisms that show only two modes of movement—essentially either moving toward something or moving away from it—which are defined as straight-line swimming (moving toward) or tumbling (moving away). The first is found when the bacteria move toward a spot where there’s a high concentration of an “attractant,” and tumbling is found when there’s a decrease in its concentration.

Unified Dog Theory 12: The 4 Quadrants of Drive Training

Manage Your Dog’s Energy by Providing a Safe, Healthy Outlet for Aggression

Originally published in slightly different form on February 22, 2011 at PsychologyToday.com. 

We’ve all heard the expression, a tired dog is a good dog. But what does it mean, exactly?

I think the most common way this adage is interpreted is that if you give a dog enough exercise he’ll have fewer behavioral problems. In extreme cases the dog is put on a treadmill for hours at a time, or is forced to carry heavy weights around on long walks. What these things do is use up some of the dog’s energy that would otherwise be used to chase the cat, chew the carpet, or hump the mailman’s leg.  

But where does that energy come from? 

I would propose that it comes directly from the wolf’s prey drive. For one thing, modern research has shown that the hierarchical behaviors, and dominant and submissive polarities, seen in captive wolves aren’t as apparent or pronounced in wild wolves. 

Why the difference?  

Wild wolves have a natural outlet for stress: chasing, biting, taking down, and tearing at the hide of an animal that is larger and more dangerous than themselves. They only get stressed, and release it in the form of aggression towards other pack members, is when they haven’t hunted for a while, or when the pack has grown too large to sustain itself.

In previous posts I’ve stated that there aren’t just two forms of training for pet dogs, the pack leader model and operant conditioning, that there’s a third method, called drive training, which has traditionally been used only for training working dogs, attack dogs, detection dogs, search-and-rescue dogs, etc.

That all changed in 1992 when veteran police dog trainer Kevin Behan published Natural Dog Training, a comprehensive guide for training pet dogs using the prey drive as the focal point for learning new behaviors and for solving behavioral problems of all kinds.

Drive training is essentially about giving the dog an outlet for his energy, primarily the urge to bite. In Freudian terms, the trainer teaches the dog to “transfer” his urges and impulses onto objects of attraction.

Just as with operant conditioning, the 4 Quadrants of Drive Training come in pairs of opposites: attraction & resistance and tension & release. However, unlike + or - R and + or - P, which can only be measured in terms of statistical changes in behavior after the fact, attraction & resistance and tension & release can be measured empirically, in real time, via physiological changes in an animal’s body.

There are also four basic ways to use drive training to solve behavioral problems. In this article we’ll look at some old and some new ways of giving a dog a release for his or her pent-up energy. These include playing tug-of-war, which taps into the wolf’s primary tension-release mechanism (the kill bite), and which use up more energy in less time than taking a dog on long walks, running her on a treadmill, or other “energy-draining” exercises. Other healthy outlets include playing fetch with a ball or Frisbee, rough-and-tumble chase sessions with other dogs (or with you!), and even taking your dog on long walks in a park or other natural setting.

Much of what I’ve learned about how dogs relieve their internal tension and stress is intuitive or second nature. For instance, I think one of the biggest sources of behavioral problems in adult dogs comes from puppies who were punished or scolded for using their teeth during early development. Absent a definite history of the dog’s upbringing how does one know if this has happened to the pup? For me it’s a matter of observing various kinds of troubled dogs over long periods of time and getting a feeling for how, when, and in what manner a dog’s oral impulses are or aren’t being expressed normally.

For instance, I had a session a few years ago, here in New York City, with the owners of a pit bull named Latte; she’d been found on the street a year earlier in sad shape, emaciated and scared. She’d reportedly been a lovely girl during her first year with her new owners, very affectionate indoors, but she had recently started exhibiting leash aggression outdoors.

When I came in and sat on the sofa and began talking to her owners, Latte was unable to settle down. She kept pacing, coming over to sniff me, and then pacing again, etc.
 
We tried giving her a bone or a ball to help her settle down, but nothing seemed to work, so while I was discussing options with her owners, I gently put two of my fingers into Latte’s mouth, hoping it might give her a chance to ground some of her excess energy by mouthing my hand. I did this reflexively because of a sense I had that the dog had been severely punished for mouthing when she was a puppy.

This only made her more uncomfortable. She pulled away from my hand as if it were a hot iron. She zipped around the room for a while in circles that got smaller and smaller, with me as their center. I was the problem as well as the potential solution. Finally, she  settled next to me and “sneaked” in close. I offered my hand again and she started to nibble on my fingers. 

I let her do that, praising her softly, and petting her with my other hand.

She mouthed my hand gently for about thirty seconds, then jumped up next to me on the sofa, and almost immediately went to sleep.

I didn’t pay this much attention; this happens a lot at my training sessions. I’ll let the dog nibble my fingers, the dog will become very relaxed and then fall asleep. But Latte’s owners were amazed. “She has never done that with someone new in the apartment, ever!”

That’s when I actually remembered what I’d been doing, and realized that by letting Latte nibble my fingers, I’d taken her back to puppyhood so she could complete her oral development phase, or at least start to. 

Another way to look at it is that I let her use me as a “ground wire,” and that enabled her to offload some of her pent-up aggression (or urge to bite) in the form of nibbling (one of the ways puppies bond) rather than the neurotic, social-anxiety behaviors she’d been exhibiting outdoors. And, I think, that’s why she became relaxed enough to fall asleep next to me on the couch.

A few weeks later, however, I met another dog—another pit bull—whose energy was far too ungrounded for me to feel safe about putting my fingers anywhere near her mouth. So this is not something I’m recommending for everyone to do with just any dog. You have to have a very clear sense of how far off the charts the dog’s oral impulses are.

Another, much safer way of grounding a dog’s energy is through “The Eyes Exercise,” used by many trainers as “Watch Me.”

This exercise was invented by Kevin Behan in the early 1990s, but most trainers have learned it incorrectly. It’s all in how you hold the treat when you begin the exercise, with your thumb and forefinger in a circle as you’re holding the prey object (treat). Only by holding your hand in the specific way Kevin developed (which is quite easy), and by finding that magic spot—roughly 3 - 5 inches from the dog’s nose—will the dog sit perfectly still, then automatically lock her eyes onto yours. (Then, of course, you say “Eyes,” and give her the treat at the same time.)

I’ve done this exercise both ways, and it always works much quicker and is more effective when done the way Kevin designed it.

For instance, a big love of a mutt named Bailey had a leash-aggression problem, one that manifested itself initially as an “eye-stalk” behavior. Then when he got in close enough to the other dog, he would lunge and try to bite.

After teaching him the “Eyes” exercise, I was able to replace his need to stalk other dogs simply by saying, “Eyes!” and getting him to look me in the eye, to essentially offload his predatory energy into me. After I’d done that, I was then able to get him to calmly sniff-and-greet other dogs.

With dogs who have a generalized anxiety, the “eyes” can help settle their nerves. With others it’s a bridge between feeling aggressive and releasing the energy behind that aggression via a quick game of tug.

This is a mistake I think some trainers make, of doing the “Watch Me!” game and thinking of it only as an alternative or replacement behavior. That’s because without also giving a dog the opportunity to offload even more energy by biting and tugging on a toy, they’re only accomplishing the first part of the process: re-focusing the dog. He’s still going to have some pent-up aggression that will need to be downloaded in some way, at some future point. That’s why I think it’s much better to help such a dog release as much energy as possible the instant he’s focused on you.

But what if you have a dog who won’t play tug-of-war?

We’ll cover that in the next installment. 

LCK  
“Life Is an Adventure—Where Will Your Dog Take You?”
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