These behavioral correlates of cooperative breeding can have implications for understanding human evolution burkart et al. Similarities between cooperative breeding among humans and among platyrrhines are strikingly concrete and specific. Oxford handbook of language evolution oxford handbooks. Modem evolutionary theorists assume that many features related to. Cooperative breeding and human cognitive evolution. Cooperative breeding and human cognitive evolution semantic. Evolutionary social psychology university of michigan.
Cooperative breeding center for academic research and. Long term studies of ecology and behaviour a variety of authors give detailed and fascinating descriptions of cooperation in birds, from the splendid fairywren and noisy miner of australia to such birds as the green woodhoopoe and arabian babbler of the great rift valley desert belts to a number of. Fundamental problems with the cooperative breeding hypothesis. Cooperative feeding and breeding, and the evolution of. Assuming that human ancestors were endowed with the basic perspectivetaking skills found in other great apes, reductions in androgen activity in recent human evolution may have been a catalyst both for the elaboration of these abilities and for their application to new types of cooperative social interactions. According to the cooperative breeding hypothesis, allomaternal assistance was essential for child survival during the pleistocene. The role of ontogeny in the evolution of human cooperation. Cooperative breeding and human cognitive evolution j. Despite sharing a recent common ancestor, humans are surprisingly different from other great apes. Evolution of cooperative breeding in birds and mammals. Examples include the evolution of flight, warning coloration, complex eyes 1 or cooperative breeding 2,3. I argue that a cooperative breeding model provides a more compelling explanation for distinctive human emotional and mental aptitudes than do competing hypotheses.
Since extrapair paternity is relatively uncommon in socially monogamous and cooperatively breeding mammals, our analyses support the suggestion that high levels of average kinship between group members have played an important role in the evolution of cooperative breeding in nonhuman mammals, as well as in birds and insects. Alternative cognitive explanations of hunting and food sharing. She is considered a highly recognized pioneer in modernizing our understanding of the evolutionary basis of female behavior in both nonhuman and human primates. Implications of this evolutionary context for the sociocognitive and emotional. Kirkpatrickthe evolution of human homosexual behavior. One of the questions raised by evolutionary theory is how cooperative behavior, which benefits other members of a species at a cost to the individual, came to exist. The most obvious discontinuities are related to our cognitive abilities, including language, but we also have a markedly different, coopera. Here we propose that these cognitive consequences of cooperative breeding could have become more pervasive in the human lineage because the psychological changes were added to an apelevel cognitive system capable of understanding simple mental states, albeit mainly in. Mutual policing and repression of competition in the evolution of cooperative groups. Therefore, although the whole of human cognition may be unparalleled in the animal kingdom, key components of our cognitive phenotype can be found in other taxa, including not only great apes, but also more distantly related species bearing cognitive resemblances to humans as a result of convergent evolution. Cooperative feeding and breeding, and the evolution of executive control. Download it once and read it on your kindle device, pc, phones or tablets.
Abstract despite sharing a recent common ancestor, humans are surprisingly different from other great apes. Ecology and evolution of cooperative breeding in birds. Pdf cooperative breeding and human cognitive evolution. Cooperative breeding scholars commonly estimate that cooperative breeding arose with homo erectus, ca. Unraveling the evolution of uniquely human cognition. Cooperative breeding and human cognitive evolution wiley online. Studies of ecology, evolution, and behavior kindle edition by walter d. Let me start with dubreuils timing of cooperative breeding. Suzuki2 abstract cooperative breeding is a widespread and intense form of coop eration, in which individuals help raise offspring that are not their own. Adult sex ratios and partner scarcity among huntergatherers. Gender identity may exist in the brain as a cognitive lens that controls who to focus on as a developmental tutor.
Genetic and cultural evolution of cooperation the mit press. Several hypotheses propose that cooperative breeding leads to increased cognitive performance, in both nonhuman and human primates, but systematic evidence for such a relationship is missing. A causal link might exist because motivational and cognitive processes necessary for the execution and coordination of helping behaviors could also favor cognitive performance in contexts. This book presents a wideranging summation of work in all the disciplines involved. Pdf despite sharing a recent common ancestor, humans are surprisingly different from other great apes. Kin selection and mutualism in cooperative vertebrates tim cluttonbrock in cooperatively breeding vertebrates, nonbreeding helpers raise young produced by dominant breeders. Bell, kathryn demps, karl frost, vicken hillis, sarah mathew, emily k. The evolution of cooperative breeding is particularly complex in humans because many other traits that directly affect parental care shorter birth intervals, increased offspring survivorship, juvenile dependence, and older ages at dispersal also emerge during the pleistocene. Evolutionary social psychology 105 common descent or common ecological demands, some are uniquely designed to solve particular problems encountered by a given species e. With this cooperative breeding hypothesis cbh rapidly gaining currency, the time is ripe for a critical appraisal. Group territorial behavior and cooperative breeding are now recognized as widespread phenomena among birds of warmtemperate, subtropical, and tropical climates. This book highlights the theoretical, empirical and technical advances.
For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription. Cognitive consequences of cooperative breeding in primates. The most obvious discontinuities are related to our cognitive abilities, including language, but we also have a markedly different, cooperative breeding system. Reliance on allomaternal assistance would make maternal commitment more dependent on the mothers. This behaviour is particularly well studied in birds, using both longterm and comparative studies that have provided insights into the evolution of reproductive altruism. We propose that the evolution of these derived features was a consequence of the adoption of cooperative breeding by early homo. Van schaik despite sharing a recent common ancestor, humans are surprisingly different from other great apes.
No evidence for larger brains in cooperatively breeding. Humans are not cooperative breeders in surveys of the literature on breeding systems, cluttonbrock 2002 and hrdy 2009 reported that between 510% of mammalian species are cooperative in breeding. Cooperative breeding and human evolution request pdf. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading cooperative breeding in vertebrates.
Kramer one conspicuous lifehistory feature of primates generally and humans speci. Recent years have seen the emergence of a novel variant of this hypothesis, suggesting that cooperative breeding is associated with the elaboration of. Hrdy is professor emerita at the university of california. It may also correlate with a social system in which each person is identified with their matriline their mothers lineage and which can involve the inheritance of property andor titles.
Cooperative breeding is a widespread and intense form of cooperation, in which individuals help raise offspring that are not their own. The expensivetissue hypothesis 1 explains its evolution by proposing a tradeoff between the size of the brain and that of the. Bobe r, leakey mg 2009 ecology of pliopleistocene mammals in the omoturkana basin and the emergence of homo. Burkhart jm, hrdy sb, van schaik cp 2009 cooperative breeding and human cognitive evolution. Fitness tradeoffs in the history and evolution of delegated mothering with special reference to wetnursing, abandonment, and infanticide. Two key steps in the evolution of human cooperation. Cooperative breeding and human cognitive evolution burkart. Most scholars of language evolution recognize that the first use of language, in particular words, presupposed an unusual ability to cooperate.
The oxford handbook of language evolution presents critical accounts of every aspect of the field. Pdf cooperative feeding and breeding, and the evolution. The cooperative breeding hypothesis cbh states that cooperative breeding. Using an integrated data set from the fossil record and contemporary human and nonhuman primate biology, we provide a fresh perspective on three important shifts in human evolutionary history. Cooperative breeding is found in only a few hundred bird species worldwide, and understanding this often strikingly altruistic behaviour has remained an important challenge in behavioural ecology for over 30 years. However, while it is possible that cooperative or communal breeding developed at a relatively early stage of human evolution and facilitated the subsequent evolution of prosociality and cognitive development, the existence of reproductive cooperation does not necessarily generate an extension of cooperation to other activities, such as foraging of hunting, and there is little evidence of any close relationship between cooperative or communal breeding and cognitive development in other. First, romantic love is a commitment device for motivating pairbonding in. Interdisciplinary activity has produced fundamental advances in the understanding of language evolution and in human and primate evolution more generally. Cooperative feeding and breeding, and the evolution of executive.
Cooperative breeding and human cognitive evolution, evolutionary anthropology 18 2009. Our proposal here is that a comprehensive account of the evolution of human cooperationand the psychological skills and motivations of shared intentionality that go with itrequires insights from both the interdependence and the cooperative breeding hypotheses. Building on decades of research, hrdy 2009 and others e. Occasional cooperative breeding in birds and the robustness of comparative analyses concerning the evolution of cooperative breeding michael griesser1,2 and toshitaka n. Optimizing models are commonly used to describe behavior not because they mimic the cognitive processes of the actors.
First, cooperative breeding is favored where successful dispersal is difficult, and infant helping positively affects survival rates. This breeding system permitted hominid females to produce offspring without increasing interbirth intervals, and allowed for movement into new habitats. Her recently published book on cooperative breeding presents an analysis of maya family economics and reproductive decisions. Looking at the entire range of human evolutionary history, melvin konner tells the compelling and complex story of how crosscultural and universal characteristics of our growth from infancy to adolescence became rooted in genetically inherited characteristics of the human brain. An extension of the social brains hypothesis, known as the cooperative breeding brain hypothesis, postulates that cooperatively breeding species, which live in stable social groups and provide allocare, face particularly pronounced cognitive demands because they must recognize, remember, and differentially respond to multiple group members. This book, which grew out of that meeting, addresses such topics as emotions in human cooperation, reciprocity, biological markets, cooperation and conflict in multicellularity, genomic and intercellular cooperation, the origins of human cooperation, and the cultural evolution of cooperation. Revisiting the consequences of cooperative breeding uzh. First, i explain that cooperative feeding and cooperative breeding are poor. Although the evolution of cooperative breeding has often been. Among primates, humans and callitrichid monkeys are the only.
Ecological factors which cause selection for group territorial behavior are considered to be high adult survival and saturation of suitable habitat, modified by the demands of different feeding strategies. A matriline is a line of descent from a female ancestor to a descendant of either sex in which the individuals in all intervening. Cooperative breeding and monogamy in mammalian societies. Matrilineality is the tracing of kinship through the female line. Cooperative breeding encompasses a range of unusually flexible monogamous, polygynous and polyandrous mating systems in which individuals of either sex may mate sequentially or at the same time with one more partners, with one common feature. Proponents of the cbh argue that cooperative breeding leads to increased cognitive performance, calling upon cognitive and motivational processes including spontaneous prosocial tendencies, attending to and learning from. Energetics and the evolution of human brain size nature. The human brain stands out among mammals by being unusually large. Cooperative breeding and human cognitive evolution core. Cooperative feeding and breeding, and the evolution of executive control article pdf available in biology and philosophy 271. A sketch of the evidence volume 39 peter richerson, ryan baldini, adrian v. This article evaluates a thesis containing three interconnected propositions. Figure 2 framework for studying the molecular basis of human brain evolution. Here we propose that these cognitive consequences of cooperative breeding.
Recent fossil and archaeological finds have complicated our interpretation of the origin and early evolution of genus homo. Humans are strikingly different from our close relatives, the great apes, in mind, behavior and life history. The role of cooperative breeding in modern human evolution. Hrdy university of california, department of anthropology, davis, ca 956168522, u. Owens department of zoology, university of queensland, st lucia, brisbane, queensland 4072, australia in approximately 3. Humans and chimps are the most unlike in on these measures, with humans showing a very similar profile to callitrichids. Second, i show that dubreuil likely misdates the occurrence of human cooperative feeding and cooperative breeding section 4. Cooperative behavior meshes with evolutionary theory. Humans take more or less twenty years to reach reproductive ma. The most obvious discontinuities are related to our cognitive.
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