June
2001
Animal
Economics—What Do Animals Value?
By Marc Bekoff
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While many nonhuman animal beings (hereafter animals)
display remarkable cognitive skills and experience the deepest and
richest of emotional lives, ranging from debilitating depression to
exuberant
joy, none to the best of my knowledge worries about their bank account,
the stock market, or what might have happened at Y2K. So, while pieces
of paper and tiny bits of metal don’t drive animals to compete
with one another, they do behave in ways that lead students of animal
behavior to infer that many do indeed assign value to various resources,
both animate and inanimate. For most animals, the currency of choice
is usually food, a potential mate, or a comfortable or safe place to
rest after the day’s ups and downs.
In many species, individuals compete for food. And they’ll fight
harder for food of higher quality than for food that isn’t as appealing.
Food’s also valued differently depending on whether an individual
is sated or starving. I’ve seen coyotes stroll by an elk carcass
that has plenty of meat just waiting to be consumed, only to hunt for
mice or squirrels and defend small rodent meals vigorously. Dogs, as
those of you who are lucky enough to share your home with a canid companion
know, can be pretty picky eaters. So too can cats. Both will often turn
down some food item when they’re sated, only to beg for the same
food when hungry. My companion, Jethro, who joins me for meals, loves
bagels and almond butter. Even if he has just eaten he’s always
ready to munch with me and keep his buddies, Zeke and Cody, at bay.
But he’ll take a bit more time to crunch into a lowly and boring
morsel. Jethro’s also more likely to share a bone, but not a bagel,
with his friends. But, they’re all dogs of few barks when they’re
content, and refusing to share a warehouse of bones just isn’t
part of who they are.
Other observations of animals with food indicate that they value it.
Rhesus monkeys and other primates have been observed to ignore food
when others are around, only to retrieve it when others leave. Rhesus
monkeys will also withhold calls announcing the presence of food when
others are around. Many animals also cache food. Wolves will take into
account who’s around before caching and retrieving food, indicating
that the food has some value. Why share if you don’t have to?
Researchers have also studied what they call “optimal foraging”
and have developed numerous highfalutin and complex theories and mathematical
models about what individuals ought to do in certain situations. Many
animals do indeed forage optimally, maximizing gains from food energy
and minimizing energetic losses due to searching for, defending, or
consuming food. This reveals that they are, in their own ways, assigning
value to food—in this case caloric intake.
How animals value food is a complex affair, even in birds. We found
that Steller’s jays, those large blue birds with regal crests and
annoying squawks, show food preferences that are influenced by such
factors as the type of seeds available, where they are located, who
else is around, the relative dominance of the birds, and the distance
of a feeding platform to the protective cover of nearby trees. Jays
made complex decisions after evaluating the total situation, and not
just one variable at a time. For example, they selected an unoccupied
feeder over one occupied by another jay or a squirrel, with squirrels
being avoided more than other jays. Jays also usually chose the feeder
further from cover possibly because it was more accessible—there
were more arrival and departure routes. The more open feeder also might
have allowed them to watch other animals more easily.
Another source of evidence that leads us to believe that animals have
some sense of value comes from studies of courtship and mating. Dominant
males of many species, including primates and wolves, will relentlessly
defend a female in heat but will allow other males access to a female
who isn’t reproductively active. In bower birds, females select
males who have the most attractive home adorned with scraps of various
colors, indicating that they’re taking into account the resources
that a male possesses.
Finally, more evidence that shows that individuals make choices that
may be related to some measure of value concerns preferences for individuals
with whom to share food, to protect in an altercation, or to help in
rearing young. In many species, kin (relatives) are chosen over non-kin,
to insure that relatives’ rather than non-relatives’ genes
are propagated. When this occurs, researchers say that behavior has
evolved via kin selection. While kin selection isn’t necessarily
a conscious process, there’s something about relatives, perhaps
their odors or vocalizations, that leads them to be preferred or protected
over non-kin. In some species, familiar individuals are preferred regardless
of whether they’re kin. These friends are provided food or given
help in rearing their young, indicating that friendship is also a valued
commodity.
So, while many animals do indeed behave as if they assign differential
value to different individuals and other resources, and dominance and
power are associated with who has what and who has access to desired
individuals and items, most animal societies that are characterized
by group or pack living are so dependent on the cooperation of all individuals
that competition is rarely so divisive so as to split families or to
have friends harm or maim one another. Long-term research on Isle Royale
by David Mech showed that pack size in wolves was regulated by social,
not food-related, factors. Mech discovered that the number of wolves
who could live together in a coordinated pack was governed by the number
of wolves an individual could closely bond with versus the number of
competing wolves an individual could tolerate. Codes of conduct, and
consequentially packs, broke down when there were too many wolves.
Humans aren’t alone in assigning value to certain objects or individuals,
pursuing and defending some harder than others, and occasionally even
cheating and deceiving others. But it’s not typically a “dog
eat dog world.” Regrettably, we often refer to animals when describing
the worst of human attributes. Humans seem to be quite unique in allowing
for the uncontrolled and unequal distribution between haves and have-nots
(the haves possessing multiple cars and homes with the have-nots living
in streets, alleyways, and homeless shelters) and in how vigorously
we’ll fight to exclude others from having a reasonably decent
life.
Marc Bekoff teaches biology at the University of Colorado,
Boulder, and is author of Strolling with Our Kin: Speaking For and
Respecting Voiceless Animals (Lantern Books, 2000) and The Smile
of a Dolphin: Remarkable Accounts of Animal Emotions (Discovery Books/Crown,
2000), and is editor of Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Animal
Welfare (Greenwood, 1998). He is co-founder with Jane Goodall of
Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (www.ethologicalethics.org).
