SURVIVAL OF THE FRIENDLIEST

According to Duke evolutionary anthropology professors Hare and Woods, a husband-and-wife writing team who co-authored The Genius of Dogs (2013), the concept of survival of the fittest really refers to the survival of the friendliest. In the animal kingdom, alpha males are not necessarily the fittest because they have no peers, thus they can become lonely and develop psychological problems—and the same goes for humans. Regarding the history of animals, the authors emphasize that cooperation advances a species. They devote many interesting pages to comparing adult chimpanzees, which are distinctively unfriendly and sometimes violent to humans and even to other chimps outside their own group, and their lookalike species bonobos, which are among the friendliest animals in the animal kingdom, even toward other bonobos they do not know. The authors also discuss how offering friendship to humans is how wolves and jungle cats became domesticated dogs and cats. Today, dogs and cats outnumber wolves and jungle cats by astounding numbers, and they have evolved in amazing ways as well. It’s human evolution, however, that comprises the bulk of the narrative. The authors engagingly show how, unlike dogs and cats, we domesticated ourselves; learning to cooperate with one another, especially groups with other groups, made us what we are today. The authors also note that evolution continues, and the next major change could come quickly via any animal that can overcome its fear of humans and express friendliness to us. Hare and Woods fill the text with reports of experiments that bolster their case, and although some of the scientific explanations might be a little much for general readers, they’re necessary to prove their gee-whiz results.

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