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Animal empathy
OPINION LETTERS Impossible frontier From Michael Hartley Theunis Piersma’s article regarding the health issues of weightless space flight, while certainly correct about the biology (13 November, p 30) was incredibly pessimistic. Artificial gravity should solve all the physiological issues mentioned. While the exact level of artificial gravity required to maintain health is unknown, Earth’s gravity would likely be the upper limit. Constant acceleration at 1 g may be beyond the capabilities of current propulsion techniques for an interplanetary journey, but 1 g centrifuges are a possibility. James Lackner and Paul DiZio showed that, by gradually increasing spin rates, humans can acclimatise to over 7 revolutions per minute without motion sickness (Journal of Neuroscience Research, vol 62, p 169). Tether systems, in which one vehicle is rotated around another, could also be used to keep mass, costs and motion sickness down. Why has so little effort has been put into space-based centrifuges? I know only of a brief tether experiment on Gemini 11, and a cancelled centrifuge for the International Space Station.
Regardless, accommodating human physiology should hardly be seen as an impenetrable barrier to crewed space flight: it is just an engineering hurdle. Hatfield, South Yorkshire, UK From John O’Hara When it comes to problems for crewed space flights, I was surprised Piersma made no mention of the ghastly problem of galactic radiation. This has been well described in New Scientist (19 September 2009, p 11), where it was pointed out that, while a Mars round trip would take 750 days, even in a spacecraft with 4-centimetrethick aluminium shielding, NASA’s radiation exposure limit for the crew would be reached in less than 200 days. Mount Waverley, Victoria, Australia
Animal empathy From Mike Flattley I was disappointed that Douglas Fox’s otherwise enjoyable article on anthropomorphism left unexamined the empathy felt by people in hunter-gatherer societies for the animals they hunt (27 November, p 32).
Enigma Number 1626
Pascal’s pyramid Bob Walker This is Pascal’s pyramid. Every stone has a positive number on it and, apart from the base stones, each stone’s number is the sum of the numbers of the two stones on which it rests.
93 27 15 7 A
B
C
D
E
F
The numbers of the six base stones are all different. What are A, B, C, D, E and F?
WIN £15 will be awarded to the sender of the first correct answer opened on Wednesday 26 January 2011. The Editor’s decision is final. Please send entries to Enigma 1626, New Scientist, Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS, or to [email protected] (please include your postal address). Answer to 1620 Pieces of eight: the candidates are C and G The winner Allen Sawitz of Gadstrup, Denmark
28 | NewScientist | 18 December 2010
survival trait favoured by evolutionary processes. Northcote, Victoria, Australia From Max Potter Douglas Fox wrote an excellent article on anthropomorphism, but don’t you think the headline “Comet caught throwing snowballs” from the same issue (27 November, p 18) is taking it a bit far? Aston, Oxfordshire, UK In David Attenborough’s series The Life of Mammals, one episode focused on Kalahari bushmen and “persistence hunting”. This examined a hunter’s techniques and his increased efficacy from “thinking like the prey”, rather than thinking of the prey as human-like. In anthropological circles, this ancient form of hunting is widely considered central to the evolution of the modern human’s physique and ability to think up strategies and predetermine events. It seems a reasonable conclusion that the most empathic hunters are the most effective hunters. From this, it seems possible that other predators have likewise developed a refined capacity for empathy. In a domestic setting, dogs and cats have a rudimentary understanding of human behaviour, perhaps drawn from empathy developed as hunters, which has allowed them to adapt their own behaviour to effect beneficial interspecies cohabitation and cooperation. Without exception, these animals behave very differently in the wild, or with members of their own species. Those decrying the assignment of “higher functions” to animals are themselves guilty of anthropomorphic conceit. Why this irrational insistence that humans alone are “special” in terms of possessing insight into the behaviour of others? The ability of any animal to anticipate the behaviour of another species seems to me to be an obvious
Did the west win? From Andreas Keller When explaining the effect of biology and geography on the supremacy of western science, Ian Morris writes: “People in Australia, Siberia or sub-Saharan Africa stuck with hunting and gathering” (30 October, p 32). With respect to sub-Saharan Africa, this is plainly wrong. In his book The Civilizations of Africa: A history to 1800, Christopher Ehret reports that archaeological and linguistic evidence suggests agriculture, both arable and livestock-based, has been invented in Africa independently at least four times, in the regions of the Nile, Sudan and Ethiopia, perhaps as early as 10,000 BC. The Neolithic technologies of agriculture, livestock breeding and pottery reached north-west Europe considerably later. Whatever caused the industrial revolution and western science to start there thousands of years later, it certainly has nothing to do with the Neolithic revolution. It is also worth noting that Africans invented both copper and iron technology independent of the Middle East. The copper smelting and copper alloy technology of Africa that culminated in the marvellous bronzes of Benin and Ife goes back to an invention of copper smelting in Niger’s Air mountains, dated at 3000 to 2500 BC, from where copper technology spread
Regardless, accommodating human physiology should hardly be seen as an impenetrable barrier to crewed space flight: it is just an engineering hurdle. Hatfield, South Yorkshire, UK From John O’Hara When it comes to problems for crewed space flights, I was surprised Piersma made no mention of the ghastly problem of galactic radiation. This has been well described in New Scientist (19 September 2009, p 11), where it was pointed out that, while a Mars round trip would take 750 days, even in a spacecraft with 4-centimetrethick aluminium shielding, NASA’s radiation exposure limit for the crew would be reached in less than 200 days. Mount Waverley, Victoria, Australia
Animal empathy From Mike Flattley I was disappointed that Douglas Fox’s otherwise enjoyable article on anthropomorphism left unexamined the empathy felt by people in hunter-gatherer societies for the animals they hunt (27 November, p 32).
Enigma Number 1626
Pascal’s pyramid Bob Walker This is Pascal’s pyramid. Every stone has a positive number on it and, apart from the base stones, each stone’s number is the sum of the numbers of the two stones on which it rests.
93 27 15 7 A
B
C
D
E
F
The numbers of the six base stones are all different. What are A, B, C, D, E and F?
WIN £15 will be awarded to the sender of the first correct answer opened on Wednesday 26 January 2011. The Editor’s decision is final. Please send entries to Enigma 1626, New Scientist, Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS, or to [email protected] (please include your postal address). Answer to 1620 Pieces of eight: the candidates are C and G The winner Allen Sawitz of Gadstrup, Denmark
28 | NewScientist | 18 December 2010
survival trait favoured by evolutionary processes. Northcote, Victoria, Australia From Max Potter Douglas Fox wrote an excellent article on anthropomorphism, but don’t you think the headline “Comet caught throwing snowballs” from the same issue (27 November, p 18) is taking it a bit far? Aston, Oxfordshire, UK In David Attenborough’s series The Life of Mammals, one episode focused on Kalahari bushmen and “persistence hunting”. This examined a hunter’s techniques and his increased efficacy from “thinking like the prey”, rather than thinking of the prey as human-like. In anthropological circles, this ancient form of hunting is widely considered central to the evolution of the modern human’s physique and ability to think up strategies and predetermine events. It seems a reasonable conclusion that the most empathic hunters are the most effective hunters. From this, it seems possible that other predators have likewise developed a refined capacity for empathy. In a domestic setting, dogs and cats have a rudimentary understanding of human behaviour, perhaps drawn from empathy developed as hunters, which has allowed them to adapt their own behaviour to effect beneficial interspecies cohabitation and cooperation. Without exception, these animals behave very differently in the wild, or with members of their own species. Those decrying the assignment of “higher functions” to animals are themselves guilty of anthropomorphic conceit. Why this irrational insistence that humans alone are “special” in terms of possessing insight into the behaviour of others? The ability of any animal to anticipate the behaviour of another species seems to me to be an obvious
Did the west win? From Andreas Keller When explaining the effect of biology and geography on the supremacy of western science, Ian Morris writes: “People in Australia, Siberia or sub-Saharan Africa stuck with hunting and gathering” (30 October, p 32). With respect to sub-Saharan Africa, this is plainly wrong. In his book The Civilizations of Africa: A history to 1800, Christopher Ehret reports that archaeological and linguistic evidence suggests agriculture, both arable and livestock-based, has been invented in Africa independently at least four times, in the regions of the Nile, Sudan and Ethiopia, perhaps as early as 10,000 BC. The Neolithic technologies of agriculture, livestock breeding and pottery reached north-west Europe considerably later. Whatever caused the industrial revolution and western science to start there thousands of years later, it certainly has nothing to do with the Neolithic revolution. It is also worth noting that Africans invented both copper and iron technology independent of the Middle East. The copper smelting and copper alloy technology of Africa that culminated in the marvellous bronzes of Benin and Ife goes back to an invention of copper smelting in Niger’s Air mountains, dated at 3000 to 2500 BC, from where copper technology spread