Monkey Vs Dogs? From bizarre news to evolution strategy, how cooperative behaviors work in jungle.
Morning love, you just woke up in chilly winter, having a nice warm cup of tea while holding a newspaper in your other hand. But this isn’t a typical day 21st December, termed as the winter solstice, was not just remembered as the shortest day of 2021 but also a day when the bizarre news of “Monkey Vs. Dog” gang war broke out in India.
Yes! You are not dreaming. Various news outlets flooded with the overwhelming news of an investigation in Lavool village of Maharashtra where the monkeys allegedly killed 250 puppies over 2/3 months in a wave of what has been reported as revenge killings by the locals. As heard and said by residents, the story goes as before these killings. One of the infant monkeys was killed by a pack of dogs and was a reason for the incitement of this violent bloodshed that has terrorized the villagers so much that they even refrain from going to their rooftops. Monkeys were reported to kidnap these pups and take them to high-rise places like treetops and roofs to leave them there unattended, so the dogs eventually died of hunger and lack of shelter. They were also said to drop these pups from top of these places. A report from guardian states that the story of these being revenge killings may or may not be confirmed as no solid evidence was found about it but is more of gossip among residents. Still, indeed these monkeys were so notorious that even locals feared to go to their own roofs. Now that two of these “Killer Monkeys” have been apprehended by the forest department, we may take a back seat and look at this incident from a different lens.
While the whole of Twitter from the day this incident occurred has been filled with “monk-e Vs. doge” memes, it indeed made me curious enough to look a bit deeper into these inter animal relationships, and well, however much we may say nature is remarkable it is what it is, brutal, unforgiving and testing.
After going through various articles on this news, it is clear that whether it’s a revenge killing is not sure yet. However, still, it tells us a lot about animals’ behaviors within and with other species, especially primates such as monkeys, who come close to humans in having the ability to experience complex emotions like revenge, remorse, and retaliation. This gave me an idea to introduce you people to the world of evolutionary biology and game theory as a learning opportunity. The way biology and game theory come into conjunction is a beauty in its own while also blowing our minds to the very nature of evolution being this unforgiving and complex process.
We all know Darwin came up with the theory of natural selection, which, when presented in a simple-to-digest form without nuances, is “survival of the fittest.” Still, this definition lacks a critical idea which in the current scientific ecosystem is widely accepted — That animals generally engage in strategies or behaviors which would ensure multiple copies of their genes being passed onto their heirs. Although this is very accurate, cooperative behaviors among animals are also frequently seen. There are many situations in which collective behavior yields a better result than acting alone. But the efforts must be similar, creating a case of reciprocal altruism. Remarkably this is even seen in single-celled organisms. Since cheating is thus a big part of social relationships, animals have also developed skills at detecting when someone else is cheating. Animals tend to be better at picking up on cheating than noticing spontaneous altruism.
Now that we have a basic idea about social relations in the animal kingdom, we can delve more into how game theory comes to play. I guess you might have heard of a widespread problem in the game theory known as the Prisoner’s dilemma. Even if you don’t remember it no need to worry as we’ll go through it in detail.
Two prisoners, A and B, suspected of committing a robbery together, are isolated and urged to confess. Each is concerned only with getting the shortest possible prison sentence for himself; each must decide whether to admit without knowing his partner’s decision. Both prisoners, however, know the consequences of their choices:
1.) If both confess, both go to jail for five years.2.) If neither confesses, both go to jail for one year (carrying concealed weapons).
3.) If one confesses while the other does not, the confessor goes free (for turning state’s evidence), and the silent one goes to jail for 20 years.
Superficially, the analysis of PD is elementary. Although A cannot be sure what B will do, he knows that he does best to confess when B confesses (he gets five years rather than 20) and also when B remains silent (he serves no time rather than a year); analogously, B will reach the same conclusion. So the solution would seem to be that each Prisoner does best to confess and go to jail for five years. Paradoxically, however, the two robbers would do better if they both adopted the apparently irrational strategy of remaining silent; each would then serve only one year in jail. The irony of PD is that when each of two (or more) parties acts selfishly and does not cooperate with the other (that is, when he confesses), they do worse than when they work unselfishly and cooperate together (that is, when they remain silent). It might seem that the paradox inherent in PD could be resolved if the game were played repeatedly. Players would learn that they do best when both act unselfishly and cooperate. Indeed, suppose one player failed to cooperate in one game. In that case, the other player could retaliate by not collaborating in the next game, and both would lose until they began to “see the light” and collaborated again.
In 1980 the American political scientist Robert Axel rod engaged several game theorists in a round-robin tournament. In each match, the strategies of two theorists, incorporated in computer programs, competed against one another in a sequence of Prisoner’s dilemmas with no definite end. It was found out that in strategies where players cooperated success rate was high, and even in them where players were forgiving, the success was even more.
Interestingly enough, research shows that cheating gives the same level of dopamine and self-satisfaction as other high moral building activities that build confidence.
This whole idea of forgiving tit for tat strategy gives us really amusing scenarios in nature. Like Vampire bats! They are social animals; when mothers suck the blood of other animals and bring it back for kids, they will feed other’s offspring too. When researchers captured one of them and filled their sac with air, so to other bats, it looked like they had a lot of good blood to share, and then they returned to the nest and didn’t share. Other bats took note of it, and then the research bat’s offspring wasn’t also helped when they returned with blood food.
Reciprocal social altruism also includes consideration for other behavior domains, so an animal may be worthless in one area but valuable in another, and studies have shown that social groups will accept and value this approach.
Let me end this eye-opener by introducing another species with weirdly high socially function societies and complex relationships in nature. Naked Mole Rats are so truly weird in the sense that these animals have no specific purpose throughout their lifetime except for digging holes through the ground and living in massive colonies governed by a queen. Now you think of this community in the sense of game theory, and you’d say OK so these rat’s might live like workers who dig tunnels, and in return, the queen makes the decision for the colony, in case some rat doesn’t work, they may have been punished and so on. But wait, what? These eagle-eyed researchers found another anomaly, so some rats sit in the colonies and just feed and sleep without working and aren’t even punished for it. How is that possible? It must be an exception, but oh, you study them long enough across colonies you see as the monsoon approaches these sloth-like fat rats to get active. In that season, you know, they have one purpose: to plug their rear ends in tunnel entrances and ground, so seal the colony, protecting it from rains flooding down there and predators that might attack. Well, this is an excellent example of introducing real-world concepts like role diversification in nature and yet submitting in some sense to game theory as, after all, nature is perfectly asymmetrical.
Hope you enjoyed learning about evolutionary biology and game theory a bit this way; every week, I take up ideas and stories that interest me and dissect them. Give your feedback on this in the comments and tell me how I can improve the quality and even what you would like to learn more about.Connect with me on Instagram at @the.white.panda .
