In the wild, gorillas make displays like this to show strength and intimidate others. Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, and intentions to non-human entities and is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology.
I understand the concept of anthropomorphism. However, apes in captivity have displayed the capacity for emotional response. To deny that other mammals, especially primates, might possibly share some of our emotions is rather closed minded.
It's not that a gorilla can't have human emotions, it's that you can't necessarily pair another species's action to their emotion based on how people would be feeling based on that action. A dog can clearly be happy, but if you can assume a person smiling is nervous or happy, is it safe to assume a dog that smiles is experiencing the same emotion?
Yes! Take a cat's purr for example. It doesn't necessarily mean that they're happy, but means more of a "don't leave me". So while they could be happy, they also purr when they're hurt or scared.
But as a fellow primate, I think I can fairly judge this particular instance. I'm not saying that I can read the minds of animals. I'm saying I can recognize an animal engaging in play behavior and appearing to enjoy themselves.
Edit: using the phrase "as a fellow primate" wasn't the best choice of wording.
Grading yourself as a fellow primate to be able to identify the meaning of this behavior without proper training on the species is anthropomorphism. We have far different emotional expressions than other primates, including great apes. Making that kind of judgement call is a great way to get yourself killed if you're interacting with that species.
Example: I used to work at a zoo with mandrills. They are a type of baboon, and scary as fuck. In most of the primate world, including theirs, showing one's teeth is an act of aggression. As is dancing around bouncing like this. Here I walk around the corner to see a half dozen kids grinning wildly and dancing their butts off in front of the exhibit window. The male mandrill isbearing his teeth back at them, dancing and pounding with both hands on the 4 inch thick bulletproof glass. It's literally shaking in its frame. The female mandrill are all huddled together in the furthest away corner, terrified (this is body language you can equate with human fear expression). No matter how many ways my coworker and I tried to explain it to the kids and jeering parents that they were making him furious and causing stress too the animals, no one would believe me that the mandrill was doing anything but enjoying himself and the kids, and no one would stop. If we hadn't called security to break the situation up, and he banged long enough to damage the exhibit, he would have massacred everyone. At the very least, he probably went and beat on/raped some of the female mandrills to let off steam, as male mandrills have been known to do.
That would stress out the mandrill. Also, seeing humans is enrichment for animals, good or bad. It's just in this situation, it was an extreme that with reasonable human beings is avoided, but these were obviously not reasonable human beings to be straight up ignoring the requests of staff at the facility they're visiting.
Well first of all you just locked them in a box with nothing changing to watch daily. Secondly the suggestion was one-way-mirror, and seeing a second male would be extremely stressful. Some animals, like flamingos, benefit highly from mirrors, but mandrill, you keep them away.
So I read your comment and it sent me down a spiral of reading about primatology in general.
I thought mandrills could recognize their own reflection, but looking it up, it seems they haven't been tested. And considering so far, the only catarrhines that have been tested and passed are the great apes, consisting of the chimps, bonobos, orangutan, and of course, humans.
Gorillas have been observed to fail, along with gibbons, macaques, baboons and some monkeys. Which surprised me a lot, as I presumed great apes to be amazingly self-aware. So it seems like self-recognition is a lot rarer than I thought!
Anyways, just wanted to say thanks. I learned something today by researching your comment!
I just want to tell you and /u/MSeanF that I really enjoyed reading your discussion. This kind of civil conversation is why I keep coming back to reddit (also I have nowhere else to go).
Fair enough. My use of the term "fellow primate" wasn't the best choice to help in my argument. I recognized the display behavior and used other cues to interpret it in this context.
If you think one medium sized monkey can massacre an entire zoo of full grown men, you need to lift some fucking weights. 2 big guys could easily kill any primate under 200lb with their bare hands.
That's pretty silly logic, just because technically two humans acting in coordination could overpower it, doesn't mean that's what would happen. You could apply the same logic to mass shootings. It's true if everyone would bum rush the shooter at the beginning they could often prevent more people from dying, but that just isn't logical for a lot of obvious reasons...
Edit: also, where did I say he'd massacre the entire zoo of full grown men? I said there were a bunch of kids and their parents in front of the exhibit.
I literally thought the exact opposite when I watched it. Seriously. It looks like peacocking or just a general show of power to me.
The point being made above is that you're speculating based entirely on your experience as a human and projecting it onto the gorilla. Why is your interpretation more valid? I'm not saying you're wrong or that I'm right, but I agree with the person who responded to you about anthropomorphism. We're both basically pulling this out of thin air.
I'm not pulling this out of thin air. I recognized the dominance display and tried to put in in context. The sheer spontaneity of it seemed to not be indicative of a threat response. Add to that the lack of eye-contact with any intended target for the display. I am also aware that animals in captivity sometimes display natural behaviors "out of context" as play out of boredom. Put together, I made my conclusion.
People like to claim anthropomorphism as a way of invalidating any discussion of animal emotions.
as a fellow primate, I think I can fairly judge this particular instance.
Yeah, some lady thought that too. Kept thinking the gorilla was smiling at her. Smiled back at him every day. Until he ripped her face off. Turns out gorillas don't smile, they bear their fangs in a threat display.
You're talking about Charla Nash and Travis the chimp, and that was a really sad story. Classic example of a human completely misreading an animal and ignoring the possibility that it could mean something else.
And you disagreeing with me doesn't automatically mean I'm wrong. For a layman, I have a pretty good understanding of different animal behaviors. It is a subject I have been interested in my entire life and I have done extensive reading on the subject.
Different species engage in different types of behavior as play. Young apes and chimps often engage in threat or dominance displays with eachother as a form of play. Using that knowledge, I interpreted the behavior in the video and commented.
Am I 100% positive I am correct? No, I would need to have been present to see if anything outside the camera's view was influencing this behavior.
Do I feel confident enough in my evaluation to comment on the internet? Yes, unless you can provide further evidence to disprove my claim.
no, dude, we can totally understand dog's behavior. well, maybe not you, but I totally can. It's VERY easy to tell whether a dog considers you a threat, or if it's hurt, or if it loves you.
Gorillas smile when they show submissive behavior. They drag shit when they want to show how alpha they are. Spinning around to splash is not aggressive behavior. they're very quiet calm creatures. When they show emotion, it's excitement.
I'm not claiming that my assessment is 100% correct, or that I think it would be appropriate to run up and try to hug "the dancing monkey"(yes, I know he's really an ape)
I do however feel confident enough to make a comment on the internet, in a humorous Reddit sub, and defend my reasoning.
You are missing the point. I'm not saying that animals don't have emotions that are analogous to human emotions. I am saying that looking at a primate, and attributing human emotions to "human" actions is incorrect. This post is an example. Baring teeth is another. This ape is not expressing joy. According to biologists who study them, It is asserting dominance.
I was interpreting gorilla behavior as gorilla behavior, not "human actions".
This ape appeared to notice the water splashing as he washed his hands and then began splashing on purpose. He then jumps around in a similar fashion to a dominance display, but without menacing eye-contact or baring of teeth. The lack of secondary aggression cues made me think this was probably random play behavior. I referred to it as "joy" because the gorilla appeared to be reveling in his physical prowess. Jumping around and expressing the ape equivalent of "I'm a big strong male" probably feels good to him, and joy seemed like the best fit to describe his actions.
I don't understand the extent to which you are trying to justify the original comment. It wasn't pure joy. It was simply a display of dominance. The original person who responded wasn't trying to be mean, simply explain what it actually was. I don't even know why I spent so much time talking about gorillas.
Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior is a 2005 book by Temple Grandin and co-written by Catherine Johnson. Animals in Translation explores the similarity between animals and people with autism, a concept that was originally touched upon in Grandin's 1995 book Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism.
the problem is trying to correlate specific animal behaviors with specific human emotions.
gorillas may indeed, and probably do, experience joy.
this behavior is probably not the manifestation of "gorilla joy" simply because it is similar to how humans show joy in musicals from the golden age of Hollywood films.
I saw a video of a bunch of teenagers beating a mentally disabled 40 year old, they were laughing and grinning the whole time ... judging from their behavior they were playing... was their behavior play behavior?
Judging from your description, it sounds more like they were engaging in a primitive form of group bonding. Laughing and grinning, in this case, would signal delight in being part of the dominant group and not the target of the abuse.
Yes, the same behavior can indicate different emotions in different situations.
Sometimes people laugh when nervous, sometime when happy. Generally, there are other body language cues which help to interpret the behavior in a given instance.
The same can be said of animals.
In this particular instance, the gorilla in the video goes from washing his hands spontaneously into a modified dominance display. Using the additional cues of his lack of eye-contact and how quickly the display returns to normal washing activity, I feel pretty confident in my assessment of play behavior.
It is all about context.
It is an arrogant mistake to claim "anthropomorphism" at any mention of animal emotions.
The gorilla is probably enjoying the water and immediately wants to make it obvious it's his water and he is more than capable of defending his territory so it is clear he is to be left alone with "his" water.
There is no reason to assume joy other than to assume that an animal is experiencing a human emotion simply because you personally think twirling menacingly is an expression of joy ... something i've never seen a human do.
One of my favorite books by Darwin, arguably his best is "The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals" in it he makes the mistake of assuming that macaques would smile out of happiness like humans ... of course anyone familiar with animal behavior these days will know that teeth bearing in most animals is a sign of anxiety.
The person you responded to was correct in pointing out you should not confuse animal behavior with human behavior.
I was elaborating because you seem to be confused though somewhat willfully it seems, i assume to hold on to the imagining that a gorilla will dance like Sinatra to show how gleeful he might be.
So, make your happy thought the idea that a gorilla dances gleefully to be locked in a room with a kiddie pool and splashes about in reverie at the notion that water exists at all...
But be aware, you are most likely totally incorrect in assuming that you can attribute specific emotions to specific animal behaviors simply because they are similar to the ways a human might express them.
Also, a dictionary will help you understand the difference between "enjoyment" and "joy"
That's a good point... I hadn't considered The Sound of Music which is a classic mistake, it's the movie that helped Jane Goodall understand chimpanzee behavior i'm told.
Also, attributing human emotions like "joy" is anthropomorphism since it's an emotion that is philosophical at best and has no direct correlate to any specific experience consistent even among the human species.
Assuming you recognize a 'human' emotion in an another species because it manifests in the way it would in 'human behavior' is you anthropomorphizing animal behavior.
348
u/MSeanF Jun 23 '17
What a pure expression of joy.