Do You Think That Humans Are As Controlled By Their Biology As Other Animals?

Taking ADvantage
The Biological Footing of Human Behavior

by

Richard F. Taflinger

This page has been accessed since 28 May 1996.

For further readings, I suggest going to the Media and Communications Studies website.

This chapter examines human being biological development over the last several millions years, and how that evolution has influenced how homo respond to stimuli today.

Basic Biological Influences on Human Behavior:

• Self-Preservation
• Survival Through Evolution
• Survival Through Strategy
• Self-Preservation and Humans
• Sex activity
• Greed

Chapter 3

Biological Evolution

Human beings are animals.

This is non a reference to our behavior (although, of course, some people do act similar animals). Information technology is a reference to the fact that humans are biological creatures, every bit much as crocodiles, cougars, and capybara. Nosotros are the product of millions of years of evolution, our physical brand-up changing to make us fitter to survive and reproduce.

Yet, although humans are animals, we as well have something that no other creature has: the most complex social structure on Globe. We assemble in families, tribes, clans, nations. We have an incredibly sophisticated method of interacting -- voice communication. Nosotros can communicate over time and distance through printing and broadcasting. Our memories are the longest, our interactions the most intricate, our perception of the world simultaneously the broadest and most detailed.

The combination of biological science and society is what makes us what nosotros are and do what we do. Biology guides our responses to stimuli, based on thousands of generations of ancestors surviving because of their responses. Our social structures dictate restrictions on and alterations in how we carry out our biological responses.

Neither biology nor gild stands without the other. For some people, this is a contradiction -- either nature (biology) controls people, or nurture (society) does. Only in fact we filter everything through both to determine how we react to stimuli. The following is a discussion of the two sides of human nature: get-go, the biological footing of our responses to the world around united states of america, and 2nd, the social factors that impact those responses and brand us human being.

THE BIOLOGICAL Ground OF HUMAN Behavior

The three main elements biology contributes to human beliefs are: 1) cocky-preservation; 2) the reason for cocky-preservation, reproduction; and 3) a method to enhance self-preservation and reproduction, greed. I volition discuss each in turn.

Cocky-PRESERVATION

Self-preservation is keeping yourself alive, either physically or psychologically. The latter includes mentally or economically good for you. (Since human beings are very social creatures, nosotros may as well apply self-preservation to other people, such equally our families. However, I will talk over that in the next chapter.)

BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF SELF-PRESERVATION

A lioness slowly, stealthily, works through the alpine grass toward the herd of wildebeest. A doe, unaware of the danger lurking in the grass, separates slightly from the herd. With a rush, the lioness bursts into a run to accept down the doe. The startled doe premises away, running and swerving, trying to escape. The lioness, unable to keep up the footstep, gives up, and the doe escapes back into the herd.

A zebra is non so lucky, and the pride feasts.

The Donner Party was a group of settlers trekking to California in 1846. Trapped by snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains , they survived as all-time they could. This included resorting to cannibalism when they ran out of food, eating the bodies of those who had died.

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To be successful every bit a species, the members of that species must take a desire to survive long enough to pass on their genes to offspring. A species with a death-wish dies out rather quickly. Those species that don't die out have members that have devoted some attention to staying alive long plenty to have immature. It is from those individuals and therefore species that all living things are descended.

The desire to stay alive is an instinctive i, built into the psyche of the organism. The organism will seek those elements of its environment that will enhance its chances for survival. These include food, water, oxygen, and periods of rest to allow the torso to repair whatever wear and tear on the tissues.

Alternately, it will avert or evade those elements that might reduce its chances for survival. Such dangers include predators, starvation, aridity, asphyxiation, and situations that can cause harm to the body.

These seek or avert drives influence the behavior of organisms: iron seeking bacteria will move toward magnetism, gnus will drift hundreds of miles to discover new pastures, a human volition resort to cannibalism; an amoeba will catamenia abroad from an electrical current, an antelope volition run from a lion, a homo will obey a killer or withstand torture.

The want to stay alive is also a selfish instinct, since it is personal survival that the organism is seeking. The reason for that is explained under REPRODUCTION.

Survival Through Evolution

A phrase that has often been misquoted, "Survival of the Fittest," actually means survival of the fit. By fit, I mean an organism has those attributes that allow it to become the most out of its environment: gather nutrient, drink, oxygen, rest, sex. The improve information technology is at doing this, the more fit it is.

At this point I should discuss the niche. A niche is a position within an environment that calls for certain attributes to exploit that surround. An environs can contain whatever of a variety of elements: amount of h2o, from bounding main to desert; type of state, from marsh mud to solid stone; amount of vegetation, from none (the Arctic and Antarctic) to abundant (rainforests). It can as well contain beast life, from the tiniest insects to bluish whales and everything in between. Information technology is the combination and degree of each of these elements that create niches.

Equally an example, permit's look at but i of these elements. Say in that location are many pocket-sized animals, like mice, in an area. A small carnivore like a mutiny could find a lot of food. Thus, it would fit into this niche and thrive. Even so, when the number of mice decreases, the wildcat tin find less food, and has a lesser risk of survival.

If the wildcat has competition from other minor carnivores, like foxes, the one that is particularly proficient as a predator, through cunning or speed or another attribute, volition take hold of more food. This lessens the amount of food available for the competition, and thus drives the competition out. If the fox is ameliorate at communicable mice (that is, more than fit) than the wildcat, the wildcat volition either die or have to move to another niche in which it volition exist the ameliorate predator.

On the other hand, if there are no small animals only many big animals, like antelope, neither a fox nor a wildcat would have much success preying on them. Thus, they wouldn't fit in such a niche. However, big carnivores such every bit lions would.

Of class, zip stays the aforementioned forever. Niches change through geologic, climatic and, in the present 24-hour interval, man-made changes in land, water and air. A volcano tin create a new island. An ice age can lock upward huge quantities of water in ice caps and glaciers, creating areas of state where oceans one time rolled. Continental migrate can push seabeds to the tops of mountains. Humans tin chop down forests and build cities. All these changes alter the niches, the environmental conditions under which the life in those niches live.

Of form, this ways the life has to change as well, to match the new weather condition. If it doesn't, it dies. An example is a moth in England . It was originally a mottled white, which allowed it to blend into the low-cal bark of the trees in its area. Nonetheless, in the 19th century factories in this expanse began to belch out soot from their chimneys that settled on the trees, changing the tree bark from mottled white to mottled black. The moth could no longer blend in and thus was easy prey to birds. However, some of the moths were darker and thus less noticeable. After a few generations of these darker moths surviving and passing on their genes, the standard colour changed to mottled black, and the moth, now blending into the dark bark, survives.

Note that such changes are non conscious decisions made by the organism: the moth did non say to itself, "The bark is getting dark--I'd better change color, too." It is simply that there are variations betwixt individuals in any species (an advantage of sexual reproduction and its combining of genes). Some of those variations are detrimental: the nighttime moth variations were piece of cake prey when the tree bark was calorie-free. Yet, every bit the atmospheric condition in a niche change, those same variations can go advantageous, enhancing rather than weakening chances for survival.

Such changes in an organism's physical characteristics are, of course, accidental. If no variations exist in a species that contribute to survival when atmospheric condition change, or if weather modify too quickly for advantageous variations to exist passed on to enough descendants,(1) the species can die out.

Survival Through Strategy

Other changes in an organism tin can develop over time. These are survival strategies, rather than physical changes, that ameliorate the organism'due south chances for survival. For example, some animals have perfected the technique of hibernating during periods when the food supply is depression. Marmots accept adult a social structure that provides lookouts who watch for predators and sound a alarm when ane appears. Prairie dogs dig their burrows with multiple entrances and exits so if a predator comes in one door, the dogs can leave through another.

These survival strategies are adaptations to niche weather condition, but unlike concrete changes are non necessarily genetic changes. Such strategies as hibernation, of class, require genes that change the fauna's physiology to slow heartbeat, lower body temperature, and otherwise decrease its metabolism. Others are instinctive, hardwired genetically into the brute's encephalon, such as a fawn's crimper upward and freezing when predators are almost.

However, some survival strategies are learned behaviors. That is, the young learn them from older animals that learned them from their ancestors. For case, nigh predators teach their young the techniques of successful hunting. In full general, it appears the higher the complication of the nervous organization of the brute, the more likely strategies are learned rather than instinctive. Sharks, with a relatively uncomplicated nervous system, hunt by instinct and demand no instruction on how to go about information technology. Lions, with a circuitous system, must learn the techniques of stealth, stalk, and attack.

Again, in most animals, the strategies are not conscious decisions, but responses to stimuli such as hunger, thirst, asphyxiation, fear, or exhaustion. If conditions change and so the instinctive strategy is dangerous rather than beneficial, the beast can die. For case, the fawn's freeze response to fearfulness would be deadly if there was no embrace to hibernate in while frozen. The musk ox strategy is to class a stationary circle with the immature in the middle and the older members facing outward, rather than running abroad. This is first-class against wolves, but deadly when faced with spears and guns (perfect, still, for the human survival strategy of group hunting with weapons). The musk ox cannot consciously determine that this strategy isn't working and that they must try another.

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The combination of genetic and learned responses to stimuli creates an animal'due south reaction to stimuli. For example, the genetically dictated instinctive reaction to a threat to cocky-preservation is the "fight or flying" syndrome. When threatened, an creature undergoes several physiological changes that have get genetically hardwired into the animate being's body. The changes include an increased rate of respiration to provide more oxygen to the muscles, an accelerated heart trounce to speed up the blood menses, a lessening in sensitivity to hurting, and changes in the claret stream, including an injection of adrenalin and diversion away from the organs to the muscles. These physiological changes fix the animal to either fight for survival or run abroad from danger.

All the same, learned responses can mitigate the instinctive, depending on the complexity of the animal's nervous organization. That complexity increases an animal'south options in reacting to stimuli. For example, an amoeba will avert an electrical field automatically -- an instinctive reaction unmitigated by a survival strategy. A starving rat, withal, volition run beyond an electrified grid that gives it painful shocks if there is food on the other side. It tin can learn a survival strategy -- the shocks, though causing the instinctive fight-or-flying physiological changes, aren't going to impale it. Starvation will.

Self-PRESERVATION AND HUMANS

All the above applies to humans every bit much as whatever other fauna: humans desire personal survival; seek nutrient, drink, remainder, sex; fit into niches; must adapt to changing conditions.

Humans are subject to the same stimuli and reactions every bit any other animal. Hunger, thirst, asphyxiation, fear, and burnout are physical sensations that cause instinctive physical reactions. Most of these reactions are unpleasant, and people avoid the stimuli that crusade them, or, if they're unavoidable, take deportment to reduce them. Thus yous eat when hungry, drinkable when thirsty, fight for air, run from dangerous situations, slumber. In any instance, the reactions are good in that they tell y'all you're in a situation that could issue in injury or decease. These responses are instinctive, and nosotros have no more control over them than we practice over our middle color.

Actually, we do have command over our heart colour. The reason we practice is why our approach to self-preservation is different from all other creatures. We take a encephalon that is capable of perceiving and solving bug. We change our eye color with contact lenses. We react to a threatening situation through applying our brains to the problem and finding a solution to information technology.

The departure between humans and other animals is that, unlike any other brute (as far equally we know), we can and do consciously respond or modify our response to a stimulus. The greatest case lies in the beingness of amusement parks, where people deliberately subject area themselves to stimuli that any other beast on earth would go to groovy lengths to avoid. Imagine, if yous can, the reaction of a dog to a roller coaster. If information technology didn't jump out at the first movement, it would cringe in bottom of the machine until information technology probably had a eye attack. Notwithstanding, humans go on such rides for fun, our minds accepting that the ride is safe, and thus command the terror such a matter would cause in any other beast.

Indeed, the concrete manifestations of the stress of the workplace, such as ulcers, headaches, nervous breakdowns, is often considered a event of the fight or flight syndrome at work on the body, while the mind is required to remain under stimuli that no other creature would willing accept. For instance, being bawled out by your boss would, in some other animal, crusade a fight or the chastised to run. Humans, though, stand up, listen, nod their heads, say "yep, I empathise" and become back to work (probably muttering uncomplimentary comments about the dominate under their breath).

Even more, humans tin can alter rather than merely suit to the environments in which we find ourselves to enhance our chances for survival. The invention of agriculture and the domestication of animals improved the food supply; the edifice of dwellings enhanced shelter from the elements; scientific discipline and medicine have greatly increased homo lifespan and the quality of that life. Human ingenuity has altered every attribute of the world to heighten the human life.(2)

However, humans alive in an extremely complex order. Thus, self-preservation is a much more complicated proposition than amid other animals. Eating to satisfy hunger is more than just finding proper vegetation or hunting; shelter for residue and recuperation is more than than finding a convenient cave or nest; fugitive predators is hard because it is oft difficult if non impossible to tell what is a predator (the only existent predators on humans are other humans). Even avoiding dangerous situations (such equally motorcar crashes) is difficult because of human technology. Things can happen so quickly danger isn't apparent until it's also tardily to do annihilation about information technology.

To deal with the complexity, homo society has become, to a big extent, an economic one. That is, the connections between unrelated people is ofttimes based on distribution of resources (related people connect more through personal attachment). I volition hash out these social factors in human self-preservation in the side by side chapter.

GREED

"Greed is proficient."

Wall Street

The above quote is from the popular pic, WALL STREET , starring Michael Douglas. When it was spoken in the moving-picture show, it was used as an ironic counterpoint: the character who said it was very successful following the credo, but ultimately information technology was his downfall. The audition may have though it was poetic justice. The credo, notwithstanding, is simply a statement of biological necessity.

Greed has an extremely negative connotation for most people. It conjures up images of Ebenezer Scrooge and Shylock, chortling over their gold and ignoring the plights and miseries of others. However, it is actually the gathering of resources, the more than the better. Biologically, for any organism that is successful greed is expert.

Any form of life must gather resource that allow it to survive and reproduce. The resource may be food, water, sunlight, minerals, vitamins, shelter. Without these things, the organism dies. Since the two most basic purposes of life are to live and to reproduce, it should do everything it can to avoid dying through a lack of resources.

Greed is ane organism getting a larger piece of the pie, more of the necessary resources, than other organisms. For instance, in the Amazonian rain wood, an occasional tree dies and falls. This leaves an opening to the sun in the continuous canopy of leaf. Plants and trees race each other to abound into that opening. The winners in the race fill up the pigsty; the losers die through lack of sunlight. (Attenborough, 1990) The greed for sunlight ways life.

Again, as for cocky-preservation and sex, greed is an instinctive reaction. When presented with resources, the instinct is to take hold of them, use them, take advantage of them. This isn't a conscious decision. An fauna, when starving, wants more food; when thirsty, more water. If it means taking information technology from another animal, that's what it does if it can.

You may enquire, what about those animals who feed their offspring, though they're starving themselves? Remember that the second purpose of life is to reproduce. This requires not only producing the young. Once it'due south born it must be kept alive until it'due south self-sufficient. If it dies, so all the fourth dimension, effort and free energy to produce it must be repeated to produce another one. However, once information technology reaches self-sufficiency the parent's genes will, well-nigh probable, be passed on to another generation. Keeping the offspring live, even at the expense of the parent dying, is of paramount importance. Thus, a parent caring for its immature at its ain expense is not an act of selflessness; it's an human action of genetic selfishness.

You may also point out that humans avoid existence greedy. In fact, being greedy is something that is scorned, something to exist ashamed of. Once once again, every bit for self-preservation and reproduction, information technology'due south because humans are unique -- we have a conscious mind that influences their biological instincts. How that works is the topic of the next chapter.

NOTES

1There is a theory of critical mass, that the genetic pool for a species must be big enough (that is, the convenance population must be large enough) to provide enough variations to counter adverse conditions or events. For example, the African chetah population appears to be descended from only a few individuals; plain most of the species savage prey to a disease that just a few survived considering of a genetic immunity. Those few represented a gene pool too small to provide much in the way of variation, and there is a fear that something, maybe another disease to which the current population has no genetic immunity, will kill off the remaining cheetahs.
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2 Of course, nosotros tin also argue that this aforementioned ingenuity has enhanced human life to the point that human life, and all other life on globe, is threatened. The man ability to modify the environment to help people survive has immune so many people to survive that the Globe itself, which is need to support them, many not survive.
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Copyright © 1996, 2011 Richard F. Taflinger.
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In improver,
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