http://aeon.

co/magazine/nature-and-cosmos/why-humans-evolved-to-love-watchinganimals/

Animal magnetism
Humans are fascinated by our fellow animals is that just an
evolutionary hangover or something more profound?
by David P Barash 3,200 words

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At the zoo. Photo by Lisi Niesner / Reuters

David P Barash is an evolutionary biologist, aspiring buddhist, and professor of psychology and biology at
the University of Washington. His most recent book is Buddhist Biology.
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I like zoos. Really I do. I applaud todays zoological parks for their increasing
emphasis on naturalistic exhibits, their breeding programmes for endangered
species, and their efforts to educate the public about wildlife conservation. But
the truth is, I mainly like zoos for the same reason that other people do: because I
love watching animals.

Animals in captivity might satisfy our desire to cross the existential barrier that
separates us from other creatures. Yet the sad reality is that, for the most part,
zoo animals have become, as the art critic John Berger put it in 1977, a living
monument to their own disappearance. The greatest pleasure of animal-watching
still comes from observing free-living creatures in their natural environment.
With enough disposable income, you can go to India, South America or
Antarctica on animal-watching trips, bag a view of the African Big Five
(elephant, rhino, lion, leopard, and buffalo), or take a boat to admire great whales
exhaling geysers of salty breath.

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Why did humans evolve to be so fascinated with other animals?
The wild animals of the world have long inhabited the depths of the human
imagination no less than they have occupied the natural habitats of our shared
planet. There isnt a human society on Earth, however primitive or high-tech, that
doesnt concern itself with animal imagery, whether the critters are domesticated
or free-living. Indeed, the human fascination with animals is so ancient and so
widespread that it seems to be a cross-cultural human universal.
The Chauvet Cave in southern France contains careful, loving depictions
painted an estimated 34,000 years ago of more than a dozen distinct animal
species: predators such as cave bears, cave lions and dire wolves, as well as
herbivores such as cattle, horses and mammoths. There is at least one pair of
woolly rhinos, evidently fighting.
In our culture, animals loom large in childrens stories, not to mention as toys,
clothing, even furnishings. But many adults in urban areas and/or technologically
advanced societies lose much of their animal-interest as a concomitant of
growing up.
Most likely, growing up in this sense is itself a deformation of our deeper,
animal-oriented human nature. It is imposed upon us by a world where
transportation is by car, bus, train and airplane, rather than by horse or bullockcart. We receive meat and milk from a store rather than from our own flocks or
hunting efforts; we defend ourselves with electronic protection systems, the
police, personal firearms or social convention rather than via warnings uttered by

semidomesticated camp followers. For many of us, its simply difficult to keep or
even perceive other animals in the urban jungle. Yet, even as we are increasingly
distanced from real animals, we find ourselves confronted with ever more images
of them, cartoonish perhaps, but unavoidable.
The popularity of pets, animal films, TV shows, and books suggests that
interaction with animals derives from a deeply rooted human need. Recent
findings that companion animals contribute positively to many peoples physical
and emotional health do not in themselves explain why animals exert such
effects; rather, they suggest that animals (at least, some species) have long been
associated with human well-being. The same goes for the simple pleasures so
many of us derive from observing and interacting with animals. Pleasure is not
something that natural selection doles out without a reason and we would
expect that reason to be intimately connected with maximising fitness. When it
comes to evolution, pleasure is deployed as bait as much as for immediate
reward. The question then is simply this: what do people get from their animalwatching? And can evolution help explain this powerful yearning to observe
other creatures?

he science of why so many of us watch animals still remains largely

unexplored. One of my earliest research projects as a graduate student in zoology

at the University of Wisconsin was titled Who Watches Who at the Zoo? I sat
in front of a naturalistic exhibit of a family group of lion-tailed macaque
monkeys (adult male, adult female, a juvenile and an infant) and pretended to
watch them while, in fact, recording the conversations among zoo visitors about
the monkeys. The results were quite clear: men focused on the other adult
macaque male (Look at that big guy!), women paid particular attention to the
adult female, as well as the infant (Look, honey, theres the mommy and her
baby!), while children looked especially at their simian counterpart (How cute,
theres a tiny little monkey!). One plausible explanation is that people, at least
some of the time, look at animals non-human primates in particular as
reflections, albeit distorted, of themselves.
This is true across many cultures: animals are widely perhaps universally
used to signify various human types, such as the trickster, the wise one, the
diligent worker, the brave warrior, etc. Victorian society, especially after Charles

Darwin, was typically disconcerted by the obvious similarities between human

beings and various non-human primates. Descended from monkeys? the wife of
the Bishop of Worcester was reported to have exclaimed in 1860. Let us hope
that it is not true. But if it is true, let us hope that it doesnt become widely
known!
Well, it is true, and widely known, at least among those not benighted by
religious fundamentalism. So urban (and urbane) an observer as the German
philosopher Walter Benjamin noted the potential for mutual recognition between
human and animal, with results not altogether different from those of the
Bishops wife. In an aversion to animals, he wrote in 1928, the predominant
feeling is fear of being recognised by them through contact. The horror that stirs
deep in man is an obscure awareness that in him something lives so akin to the
animal that it might be recognised. But horror isnt the typical response to
looking at animals. Im probably somewhere on the abnormally obsessive tail of
the normal curve when it comes to enthusiasm for watching animals. But Im
definitely not alone when it comes to deriving delight just from seeing other
living creatures, especially free-living ones.

We are living, breathing, perspiring, seeing, hearing, smelling,

touching, eating, defecating, urinating, copulating, child-rearing, and
ultimately dying animals ourselves
Berger has lamented that the look between animal and man a cross-species
connection that might have played a crucial role in the development of human
society has been extinguished by our loss of contact with living animals in
industrial society. Im not so sure. Urban wildlife is actually fairly abundant,
although species diversity is regrettably lacking: there are pigeons, rats,
cockroaches, and depending on location various kinds of gulls. Coyotes and
raccoons are surprisingly frequent even in our great cities, but they arent
typically seen. Even in urban India, there really are sacred cows (usually
emaciated and pitiable) and macaque monkeys that are sometimes downright
dangerous. Birdwatching is a well-populated hobby that is generally doing better
than the birds themselves. And visits to zoos and aquariums are up, as the
standards of animal-keeping in such places are also better than ever. What used
to be concrete floors and iron bars are increasingly replaced by naturalistic
habitats, in which the animals sometimes breed, occasionally lead semi-normal
lives, and provide visitors (still disproportionately skewed toward children) an
opportunity to watch the animals, perhaps stirrings some universal human
neurons dating back to our lengthy sojourn on the African savannah.

A visitor at Dudley Zoo in England, 2013. Photo by Martin Parr/Magnum

This suggests some of the evolutionary underpinnings of the human penchant for
animal-watching. First, that we are living, breathing, perspiring, seeing, hearing,
smelling, touching, eating, defecating, urinating, copulating, child-rearing, and
ultimately dying animals ourselves. It is plausible that deep in the human psyche
there resides the simple yet profound recognition of a relationship between Us
and Them. We be of one blood, ye and I, was the incantation taught to Mowgli
in Rudyard Kiplings memorable Jungle Book collections (1894-5). It confirmed
the jungle boys connection with his non-human caretakers, friends and relatives.
Perhaps it is only natural that we, animals ourselves, reach out to other
creatures. Even if we cant talk to them la Doctor Dolittle, or share the most
intimate aspects of our lives, like Mowgli, at least we can lose more likely, find
ourselves in watching them.
What is more, during most of our evolutionary (and recent) past, our well-being
survival, even depended on relationships to other animals, many of which
were predators, with us as their prey. This alone would have generated a potent
selective advantage to those of our ancestors who were attuned to the presence as
well as the habits of other beasts, especially large and dangerous ones such as
sabre-toothed cats, cave bears, dire wolves, hyaenodons and the like suggesting
that behind Benjamins horror and aversion lurks something less highfalutin
than the epistemics of ego-deflating mutual recognition: self-preservation.

Thus, it might be no coincidence that people are especially attuned to the doings
of predators. As Dorothy said in The Wizard of Oz: Lions and tigers and bears,
oh my! Sometimes, of course, this attentiveness is more a fear than a
fascination; in his book Snakes, Sunrises, and Shakespeare (2014), the ecologist
Gordon Orians points out that, cross-culturally, people share an innate fear of
snakes and spiders, whereas avoidance of, for example, electric sockets must be
learnt.
Conversely, whether as occasional predators or scavengers or both our
ancestors doubtless preyed upon other animals, and this would have selected for
attentiveness to what possible meals might be had at the expense of our fellow
creatures, a focus that would have included sensitivity to what was nearby, where
they could be found, and how they might best be approached. Careful animalwatching would have thus been doubly rewarded: not only rendering us less
liable to end up as prey but also more likely to feed successfully on others.
Given the antiquity of domestication including, but not limited to, dogs it is
clear that early humans also depended on various kept animals as beasts of
burden, sources of eggs, milk, meat, and so forth, as well as perhaps employing
them as colleagues in hunting, early warning detectors sensitive to the approach
of enemies, even providing warmth not only via their skins and fur, but also
their literal bodies, cuddling closely with our Pleistocene ancestors during those
long, challenging Ice Age nights.

here are many ways of looking at animals. A veterinarian looks for

signs of illness versus health. A city-dweller might well look with fascination at
red-tailed hawks or peregrine falcons nesting on a ledge of a high-rise building,
but with indifference at their pigeon prey (winged rats), not to mention horror
at cockroaches or actual four-legged, long-tailed rats. A cat can, ostensibly, look
at a king and presumably vice versa, but we are not supposed to look a gift horse
in the mouth. (By the way, as a long-time horse-keeper, I can affirm that there is
no such thing as a gift horse, since our equine cousins require hay, vitamins, hoof
care, immunisations and regular veterinary attention. Therefore, by all means,
look in the mouth of any proffered horse!) A hunter looks at her prey with a

mixture of excitement, hard-eyed calculation and determination; the wildlife

photographer eyes his subject in a manner not altogether different.

Watch the birdy. Photo by Nigel Roddis/Reuters

But for sheer pleasure, there is little doubt that watching birds tops the list.
Despite their dinosaur origins (which means that our most recent common
ancestor was a Carboniferous-era reptile, from roughly 300 million years ago),
birds are the most assiduously watched wild animals and for good reason: many
of them are fantastically lovely, brightly coloured or gloriously iridescent.
Mammals, sad to say, are comparatively drab, not surprising given that birds
have colour vision whereas most mammals with the notable exception of
primates such as ourselves see only shades of grey or brown. In addition (and I
say this as not only a fellow mammal but as one whose main empirical research
has involved mammals), birds are more vibrant, more alive, and thus more
rewarding to watch than are our closer, hair-bearing, milk-making kin, and much
more so than amphibians or reptiles, which might well frustrate the watcher by
doing absolutely nothing, for minutes even hours at a time.

Hope, observed the poet Emily Dickinson, is the thing with feathers
Even when they arent flying, darting, soaring, walking, dabbling, paddling, or
hopping about, birds are rewarding to watch. The invariable mark of wisdom,

wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1836, is to see the miraculous in the common.
Consider some of the more ordinary North American birds: the shimmering
green head of a mallard drake, the delicate upturned bill of an avocet, the
knockout gorgeous motley of the painted bunting. Such precisely defined shape
and colour can be almost too much to register dispassionately. When it comes to
watching birds and really seeing them even the common emerges as more
than miraculous, or downright shocking. Seeing can be disbelieving.
Seeing the comical red-white-and-black clown-face of a European goldfinch
really seeing it, not just absent-mindedly noting its existence and maybe jotting it
down on a checklist challenges our sense of the mundane. As does the ethereal,
ghostly whiteness of a snowy owl, or for that matter, the gleaming coat and
bright yellow bill of a starling (a troublesome species, introduced from the UK
and which we in North America are supposed to despise because they crowd out
native species), or the trim, forked tail of a barn swallow. These perceptions
challenge our sense of the mundane. And to see such animals ordinary only to
the jaded and obtuse is to experience a new appreciation for reality itself, since
their vitality not only mirrors but magnifies our own. Hope, observed the poet
Emily Dickinson in 1891, is the thing with feathers.
This seeing real seeing of animals has inspired a dizzying world of artistic
creativity, in a line that leads from the Chauvet Cave paintings through to the
Lady and the Unicorn tapestries of the Middle Ages, and including John James
Audubons bird portraits as well as Henri Rousseaus haunting painting The
Dream (1910). The poet too can be a deeply passionate observer, as in
Christopher Smarts 18th-century poem Jubilate Agno. Written in a religious
fervour while he was imprisoned as a madman, it starts with a litany of animals
before declaring an exuberant admiration for Smarts cat, Jeoffry:
For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes.
For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.
For he is of the tribe of Tiger.
...
For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.
...
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.
...
For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in complete cat.

Perhaps my favourite animal poem is by Rainer Maria Rilke. The story goes that
in 1905 Rilke had been hired by the sculptor Auguste Rodin as his amanuensis,
but one day confessed that he was suffering from writers block. Rodin advised:
Go to the zoo [actually, Pariss Jardin des Plantes], and observe an animal.
For how long? asked the young poet. Watch it until you see it. A few months
might be sufficient. Rilke followed this advice, and eventually produced what is
generally considered his greatest poem: The Panther.
One thing I love about this story (as well as about the poem itself), is that it
speaks to the difference between the scientific discipline in which I was trained
as a graduate student (ethology) and a competing, and in my opinion, far lesser
scientific enterprise (comparative psychology). Comparative psychologys
approach to studying animals traditionally takes place in a laboratory and
involves placing individuals from a limited range of animal species usually lab
rats or pigeons in a Skinner Box, with the goal of observing some measure of
output: frequency of bar-pressing, latency to begin doing so, and so forth. It
certainly does not entail watching the animal itself, once its behaviour has been
appropriately shaped, or it has learnt what the experimenter wants it to do. By
contrast, ethology the biological study of animal behaviour requires that
animals be observed whenever possible in their natural environments (if
unavoidable, in a simulacrum). Most of all, ethology insists that they
are observed rather than being measured while performing an arbitrary, imposed
act such as bar-pressing. For this, even a few months are never sufficient.
Ethology is the scientific version of good, old-fashioned animal-watching. Thus,
although the immense renown achieved by the primatologist Jane Goodall, one
of the giants of ethological research, was largely due to her notable discoveries,
the reality is that these findings were only possible because she spent literally
thousands of hours observing chimpanzees in their natural environments,
carefully watching their every move.
At ethologys core is Rodins and Rilkes deep, mindful, detailed and patient
observation, watching ones subjects with exquisite care and attention in order to
penetrate their world, rather than forcibly adjusting them to ours. The naturalist
Henry Beston captured this in 1928, in what I believe to be the finest paragraph
ever written about animals, and the best advice I know for watching them:
We need another and a wiser concept of animals. Remote from universal
nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilisation surveys the creature
through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the
whole image in distortion. We patronise them for their incompleteness, for their

tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err.
For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more
complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension
of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear.
They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with
ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail
of the earth.
My advice to all would-be animal-watchers is, in E M Forsters words only
connect live in fragments no longer. Simply open your eyes, ideally with
benefit of binoculars, to the reality of animal lives separate from your own.
Prepare to lose yourself in one of the most positive trips available this side of
hallucinogenic drugs, drawn through the lenses and deposited into the world of
the animal being watched, losing yourself while expanding however briefly
into anothers life, resonant of your own, while also ineffably different.
There is a crack in everything, sang Leonard Cohen. Thats how the light gets
in. Watching animals opens that crack just a little wider, and through it we get a
better view not only of animals, but of ourselves.
13 May 2014