7
COMFORT
THE PLACE WHERE the environment comes into direct contact with an animal – its body surface – receives a great deal of rough treatment during the course of its life. It is astonishing that it survives the wear and tear and lasts so well. It manages to do so because of its wonderful system of tissue replacement and also because animals have evolved a variety of special comfort movements that help to keep it clean. We tend to think of these cleaning actions as comparatively trivial when considered alongside such patterns as feeding, fighting, fleeing and mating, but without them the body could not function efficiently. For some creatures, such as small birds, plumage maintenance is a matter of life and death. If the feathers are allowed to become bedraggled, the bird will be unable to take off fast enough to avoid its predators and will be unable to keep up its high body temperature if conditions become cold. Birds spend many hours bathing, preening, oiling and scratching themselves and carry out this performance in a long and complicated sequence. Mammals are slightly less complex in their comfort patterns, but nevertheless indulge in a great deal of grooming, licking, nibbling, scratching and rubbing. Like feathers, the hair has to be maintained in good order if it is to keep its owner warm. If it becomes clogged and dirty, it will also increase the risk of disease. Skin parasites have to be attacked and reduced in numbers as far as possible. Primates are no exception to this rule.
In the wild state, monkeys and apes can frequently be seen to groom themselves, systematically working through the fur, picking out small pieces of dried skin or foreign bodies. These are usually popped into the mouth and eaten, or at least tasted. These grooming actions may go on for many minutes, the animal giving an impression of great concentration. The grooming bouts may be interspersed with sudden scratchings or nibblings, directed at specific irritations. Most mammals only scratch with the back foot, but a monkey or ape can use either back or front. Its front limbs are ideally suited to the cleaning tasks. The nimble fingers can run through the fur and locate specific trouble spots with great accuracy. Compared with claws and hooves, the primate’s hands are precision ‘cleaners’. Even so, two hands are better than one, and this creates something of a problem. The monkey or ape can manage to bring both its hands into play when dealing with its legs, flanks, or front, but cannot really get to grips efficiently in this way with its back, or the arms themselves. Also, lacking a mirror, it cannot see what it is doing when it is concentrating on the head region. Here, it can use both hands, but it must work blind. Obviously, the head, back and arms are going to be less beautifully groomed than the front, sides and legs, unless something special can be done for them.
The solution is social grooming, the development of a friendly mutual-aid system. This can be seen in a wide range of both bird and mammal species, but it reaches a peak of expression amongst the higher primates. Special grooming invitation signals have been evolved here and social ‘cosmetic’ activities are prolonged and intense. When a groomer monkey approaches a groomee monkey, the former signals its intentions to the latter with a characteristic facial expression. It performs a rapid lip-smacking movement, often sticking its tongue out between each smack. The groomee can signal its acceptance of the groomer’s approach by adopting a relaxed posture, perhaps offering a particular region of its body to be groomed. As I explained in an earlier chapter, the lip-smacking action has evolved as a special ritual out of the repeated particle-tasting movements that take place during a bout of fur-cleaning. By speeding them up and making them more exaggerated and rhythmic, it has been possible to convert them into a conspicuous and unmistakable visual signal.
Because social grooming is a co-operative, non-aggressive activity, the lip-smacking pattern has become a friendly signal. If two animals wish to tighten their bond of friendship, they can do so by repeatedly grooming one another, even if the condition of their fur hardly warrants it. Indeed, there seems to be little relationship today between the amount of dirt on the coat, and the amount of mutual grooming that takes place. Social grooming activities appear to have become almost independent of their original stimuli. Although they still have the vital task of keeping the fur clean, their motivation now appears to be more social than cosmetic. By enabling two animals to stay close together in a non-aggressive, co-operative mood they help to tie tighter the interpersonal bonds between the individuals in the troop or colony.
Out of this friendly signalling system have grown two remotivating devices, one concerned with appeasement and the other with reassurance. If a weak animal is frightened of a stronger one, it can pacify the latter by performing the lip-smacking invitation signal and then proceed to groom its fur. This reduces the aggression of the dominant animal and helps the subordinate one to become accepted. It is permitted to remain ‘in the presence’ because of services rendered. Conversely, if a dominant animal wishes to calm the fears of a weaker one, it can do so in the same way. By lip-smacking at it, it can underline the fact that it is not aggressive. Despite its dominant aura, it can show that it means no harm. This particular pattern – a reassurance display – is less often seen than the appeasement variety, simply because primate social life requires it less. There is seldom anything that a weak animal has which a dominant might want and could not take by a direct use of aggression. One exception to this can be seen when a dominant but childless female wants to approach and cuddle an infant belonging to another member of the troop. The young monkey is naturally rather frightened by the approach of the stranger and retreats. On such occasions it is possible to observe the large female attempting to reassure the tiny infant by making the lip-smacking face at it. If this calms the youngster’s fears, the female can then fondle it and continues to calm it by gently grooming it.
Clearly, if we turn now to our own species, we might expect to see some manifestation of this basic primate grooming tendency, not only as a simple cleaning pattern, but also in a social context. The big difference, of course, is that we no longer have a luxuriant coat of fur to keep clean. When two naked apes meet and wish to reinforce their friendly relationship they must therefore find some kind of substitute for social grooming. If one studies those situations where, in another primate species, one would expect to see mutual grooming, it is intriguing to observe what happens. To start with it is obvious that smiling has replaced lip-smacking. Its origin as a special infantile signal has already been discussed and we have seen how, in the absence of the clinging response, it became necessary for the baby to have some way of attracting and pacifying the mother. Extended into adult life, the smile is clearly an excellent ‘grooming-invitation’ substitute. But, having invited friendly contact, what next? Somehow it has to be maintained. Lip-smacking is reinforced by grooming, but what reinforces smiling? True, the smiling response can be repeated and extended in time long after the initial contact, but something else is needed, something more ‘occupational’. Some kind of activity, like grooming, has to be borrowed and converted. Simple observations reveal that the plundered source is verbalized vocalization.
The behaviour pattern of talking evolved originally out of the increased need for the co-operative exchange of information. It grew out of the common and widespread animal phenomenon of non-verbal mood vocalization. From the typical, inborn mammalian repertoire of grunts and squeals there developed a more complex series of learnt sound signals. These vocal units and their combinations and re-combinations became the basis of what we can call information talking. Unlike the more primitive non-verbal mood signals, this new method of communication enabled our ancestors to refer to objects in the environment and also to the past and the future as well as to the present. To this day, information talking has remained the most important form of vocal communication for our species. But, having evolved, it did not stop there. It acquired additional functions. One of these took the form of mood talking. Strictly speaking, this was unnecessary, because the non-verbal mood signals were not lost. We still can and do convey our emotional states by giving vent
to ancient primate screams and grunts, but we augment these messages with verbal confirmation of our feelings. A yelp of pain is closely followed by a verbal signal that ‘I am hurt’. A roar of anger is accompanied by the message ‘I am furious’. Sometimes the non-verbal signal is not performed in its pure state but instead finds expression as a tone of voice. The words ‘I am hurt’ are whined or screamed. The words ‘I am furious’ are roared or bellowed. The tone of voice in such cases is so unmodified by learning and so close to the ancient non-verbal mammalian signalling system that even a dog can understand the message, let alone a foreigner from another race of our own species. The actual words used in such instances are almost superfluous. (Try snarling ‘good dog’, or cooing ‘bad dog’ at your pet, and you will see what I mean.) At its crudest and most intense level, mood talking is little more than a ‘spilling over’ of verbalized sound signalling into an area of communication that is already taken care of. Its value lies in the increased possibilities it provides for more subtle and sensitive mood signalling.
A third form of verbalization is exploratory talking. This is talking for talking’s sake, aesthetic talking, or, if you like, play talking. Just as that other form of information-transmission, picture-making, became used as a medium for aesthetic exploration, so did talking. The poet paralleled the painter. But it is the fourth type of verbalization that we are concerned with in this chapter, the kind that has aptly been described recently as grooming talking. This is the meaningless, polite chatter of social occasions, the ‘nice weather we are having’ or ‘have you read any good books lately’ form of talking. It is not concerned with the exchange of important ideas or information, nor does it reveal the true mood of the speaker, nor is it aesthetically pleasing. Its function is to reinforce the greeting smile and to maintain the social togetherness. It is our substitute for social grooming. By providing us with a non-aggressive social preoccupation, it enables us to expose ourselves communally to one another over comparatively long periods, in this way enabling valuable group bonds and friendships to grow and become strengthened.
Viewed in this way, it is an amusing game to plot the course of grooming talk during a social encounter. It plays its most dominant role immediately after the initial greeting ritual. It then slowly loses ground, but has another peak of expression as the group breaks up. If the group has come together for purely social reasons, grooming talk may, of course, persist throughout to the complete exclusion of any kind of information, mood or exploratory talk. The cocktail party is a good example of this, and on such occasions ‘serious’ talking may even be actively suppressed by the host or hostess, who repeatedly intervene to break up long conversations and rotate the mutual-groomers to ensure maximum social contact. In this way, each member of the party is repeatedly thrown back into a state of ‘initial contact’, where the stimulus for grooming talk will be strongest. If these non-stop social-grooming sessions are to be successful, a sufficiently large number of guests must be invited in order to prevent new contacts from running out before the party is over. This explains the mysterious minimum size that is always automatically recognized as essential for gatherings of this kind. Small, informal dinner parties provide a slightly different situation. Here the grooming talk can be observed to wane as the evening progresses and the verbal exchange of serious information and ideas can be seen to gain in dominance as time passes. Just before the party breaks up, however, there is a brief resurgence of grooming talk prior to the final parting ritual. Smiling also reappears at this point, and the social bonding is in this way given a final farewell boost to help carry it over to the next encounter.
If we switch our observations now to the more formal business encounter, where the prime function of the contact is information talking, we can witness a further decline in the dominance of grooming talk, but not necessarily a total eclipse of it. Here its expression is almost entirely confined to the opening and closing moments. Instead of waning slowly, as at the dinner party, it is suppressed rapidly, after a few polite initial exchanges. It reappears again, as before, in the closing moments of the meeting, once the anticipated moment of parting has been signalled in some way. Because of the strong urge to perform grooming talk, business groups are usually forced to heighten the formalization of their meetings in some way, in order to suppress it. This explains the origin of committee procedure, where formality reaches a pitch rarely encountered on other private social occasions.
Although grooming talk is the most important substitute we have for social grooming, it is not our only outlet for this activity. Our naked skin may not send out very exciting grooming signals, but other more stimulating surfaces are frequently available and are used as substitutes. Fluffy or furry clothing, rugs, or furniture often release a strong grooming response. Pet animals are even more inviting, and few naked apes can resist the temptation to stroke a cat’s fur, or scratch a dog behind the ear. The fact that the animal appreciates this social-grooming activity provides only part of the reward for the groomer. More important is the outlet the pet animal’s body surface gives us for our ancient primate grooming urges.
As far as our own bodies are concerned, we may be naked over most of our surfaces, but in the head region there is still a long and luxuriant growth of hair available for grooming. This receives a great deal of attention – far more than can be explained on a simple hygienic basis – at the hands of the specialist groomers, the barbers and hairdressers. It is not immediately obvious why mutual hairdressing has not become part of our ordinary domestic social gatherings. Why, for instance, have we developed grooming talk as our special substitute for the more typical primate friendship grooming, when we could so easily have concentrated our original grooming efforts in the head region? The explanation appears to lie in the sexual significance of the hair. In its present form the arrangement of the head hair differs strikingly between the two sexes and therefore provides a secondary sexual characteristic. Its sexual associations have inevitably led to its involvement in sexual behaviour patterns, so that stroking or manipulating the hair is now an action too heavily loaded with erotic significance to be permissible as a simple social friendship gesture. If, as a result of this, it is banned from communal gatherings of social acquaintances, it is necessary to find some other outlet for it. Grooming a cat or a sofa may provide an outlet for the urge to groom, but the need to be groomed requires a special context. The hairdressing salon is the perfect answer. Here the customer can indulge in the groomee role to his or her heart’s content, without any fear of a sexual element creeping into the proceedings. By making the professional groomers into a separate category, completely dissociated from the ‘tribal’ acquaintanceship group, the dangers are eliminated. The use of male groomers for males and female groomers for females reduces the dangers still further. Where this is not done, the sexuality of the groomer is reduced in some way. If a female is attended by a male hairdresser, he usually behaves in an effeminate manner, regardless of his true sexual personality. Males are nearly always groomed by male barbers, but if a female masseuse is employed, she is typically rather masculine.
As a pattern of behaviour, hairdressing has three functions. It not only cleans the hair and provides an outlet for social grooming, but it also decorates the groomee. Decoration of the body for sexual, aggressive, or other social purposes is a widespread phenomenon in the case of the naked ape, and it has been discussed under other headings in other chapters. It has no real place in a chapter on comfort behaviour, except that it so often appears to grow out of some kind of grooming activity. Tattooing, shaving and plucking of hair, manicuring, ear-piercing and the more primitive forms of scarification all seem to have their origin in simple grooming actions. But, whereas grooming talk has been borrowed from elsewhere and utilized as a grooming substitute, here the reverse process has taken place and grooming actions have been borrowed and elaborated for other uses. In acquiring a display function, the original comfort actions concerned with skin care have been transforme
d into what amounts to skin mutilation.
This trend can also be observed in certain captive animals in a zoo. They groom and lick with abnormal intensity until they have plucked bare patches or inflicted small wounds, either on their own bodies or those of companions. Excessive grooming of this kind is caused by conditions of stress or boredom. Similar conditions may well have provoked members of our own species to mutilate their body surfaces, with the already exposed and hairless skin aiding and abetting the process. In our case, however, our inherent opportunism enabled us to exploit this otherwise dangerous and damaging tendency and press it into service as a decorative display device.
Another and more important trend has also developed out of simple skin care, and that is medical care. Other species have made little progress in this direction, but for the naked ape the growth of medical practice out of social grooming behaviour has had an enormous influence on the successful development of the species, especially in more recent times. In our closest relatives, the chimpanzees, we can already witness the beginning of this trend. In addition to the general skin care of mutual grooming, one chimpanzee has been seen to attend to the minor physical disabilities of another. Small sores or wounds are carefully examined and licked clean. Splinters are carefully removed by pinching the companion’s skin between two forefingers. In one instance a female chimpanzee with a small cinder in her left eye was seen to approach a male, whimpering and obviously in distress. The male sat down and examined her intently and then proceeded to remove the cinder with great care and precision, gently using the tips of one finger from each hand. This is more than simple grooming. It is the first sign of true co-operative medical care. But for chimpanzees, the incident described is already the peak of its expression. For our own species, with greatly increased intelligence and co-operativeness, specialized grooming of this kind was to be the starting point of a vast technology of mutual physical aid. The medical world today has reached a condition of such complexity that it has become, in social terms, the major expression of our animal comfort behaviour. From coping with minor discomforts it has expanded to deal with major diseases and gross bodily damage. As a biological phenomenon its achievements are unique, but in becoming rational, its irrational elements have been somewhat overlooked. In order to understand this, it is essential to distinguish between serious and trivial cases of ‘indisposition’. As with any other species, a naked ape can break a leg or become infected with a vicious parasite on a purely accidental or chance basis. But in the case of trivial ailments, all is not what it seems. Minor infections and sicknesses are usually treated rationally, as if they are simply mild versions of serious illnesses, but there is strong evidence to suggest that they are in reality much more related to primitive ‘grooming demands’. The medical symptoms reflect a behavioural problem that has taken a physical form, rather than a true physical problem.
The Naked Ape Page 20
