The group dynamics of bonobos, a species of apes that is genetically one of our closest relatives, is predominantly cooperative and peaceful. The reason for this behavior can be explained by the abundance of resources and the relative smallness of the bonobo groups. These preconditions lead to the forming of strong social bonds and a sense of fairness between the apes. In this essay, a point is made that the same external conditions can be also found in the society of modern science, without leading to the same group dynamics. I motivate a more “bonobo-like” culture of science, where fairness and cooperation are key.
This is a guest post. It is a slightly updated version of an essay submitted to this year’s FQxI’s essay context “How could science be different?”.
The western world has been a society of abundance at least for the last 30 years. We live in a society where only a fraction of the whole population is concerned with covering the basic needs of humans, such as food, shelter, medical treatment and so on. In the meanwhile, a big part of paid jobs are in areas which are a luxury in the sense that they are not immediately needed for survival. In science for example, a lot of people are funded to concern themselves with finding out interesting things, satisfying our curiosity about the world that surrounds us. Given that you are a scientist, jobs and funding might be scarce. Coming from a society of abundance though, one would expect scientists to have been shaped by this environment and values.
From monkeys…
Abundance or scarcity of resources have a strong impact on the behavior or our closest relatives, the chimpanzees.1 Studying their behavior in the wild, we see that it changes drastically depending on the availability of food.2 Perhaps the most striking example of behavioral changes can be seen in studying the common chimpanzee in contrast to the pygmy chimpanzee or bonobo. Genetically almost identical (they share 99.6% of their DNA), these two species split around two million years ago. The reason for this split was the emergence of the Congo river, which created a natural barrier as chimpanzees can not swim.
In male-dominated chimpanzee groups, aggressive fights for food, competition and cunning between each other are common. Although they are also able to cooperate, e.g., when it comes to hunting, fights for dominance and killing the offspring of rivals have been observed. When meeting a group of strange peers, strong territorial actions are normal.
This conduct would not be tolerated in the bonobo society. In contrast to their counterparts from the other side of the river, bonobos are extremely peace loving. Their society is characterised by cooperation and trust. In bonobo groups, the dominance of the alpha-female is based on a group effort. Male bonobos, like their chimpanzee counterparts, are superior in strength and size. Nonetheless, they do not get to control their female peers because of the strong bonds between the females, supporting each other to avoid possible harassment. Bonobos are not territorial: when mixing two different groups, they will soon begin to mingle.
So why is their behavior so different? One possible explanation is the difference in food supplies. The common chimpanzees live north of the river Congo, where food is scarce. Additionally, the chimps have to share the food with gorillas who have a similar diet. This results in spread out groups through a large territory. Because every animal is physically relatively isolated, female bonds are weaker. The bonobos, which live south of the river do not have that necessity. Because here food is available in abundance, they do not need to spread out and thus form much closer clusters.
Researchers assume that the different conduct of these very closely related species is not due to their genetic disposition but a social or learned behavior. One argument for that is their very similar genetics. Another is the dynamical changes in comportment of both chimps and bonobos when outer conditions change. In captivity, bonobos will begin to be male-dominant if you put together only one female with a male. In contrast, a group of chimpanzees in captivity, where the group is closer together physically and with enough food supplies, will start behaving more like bonobos. This means that their hierarchies will soften, and females will become more dominant.
One thing that (to our knowledge) all primates share is their sense of fairness. There have been a range of experiments with chimpanzees, bonobos and also other primates, where one trial participant is rewarded less for the same effort as its peer, as shown below.
This unfair treatment will not be tolerated in any of these experiments. Capuchin monkeys will revolt if their own reward is lesser than the one of their counterpart. Chimpanzees will not even take their larger prize before making sure that their counterpart has been given the same treat. Bonobos take it even one step further. When given the choice, they will decide to share their food, even with a complete stranger. There is a logical explanation for this kind of behavior: If the survival of one individual depends on cooperation in the group, you cannot afford to behave unsociable. Unfair conduct will be punished in the worst case by being banned from the group in the future. As humans are sociable animals and closely related to apes, it seems reasonable that the same sense of fairness in principle also holds when it comes to us. A logical conjecture is that playing unfair becomes a viable option in our society only because it is dominated by anonymity (already due to the large population of humans). Thus, we lack accountability between each other.
… to scientists
Back to the society of science: Being a species that lives in abundance (as explained above), one could expect bonobo-like behavior. Nonetheless, considering the group dynamics of scientists, rather chimpanzee behavior comes to mind. Examples of this range from a dog-eat-dog mentality and a common first-come-first-served principle, over performance indicator (h-index) maximization, CV optimization and a competitive mindset up to strong de facto hierarchies. In the worst (though hopefully not very common) cases we even encounter plagiarism, fraud and data manipulation. Of course, in modern science also cooperative group work and learning from each other can be found (big-scale experiments like CERN etc. are unthinkable without working together in a big group of scientists and engineers). I would argue, though, that the society itself is not driven by social behavior and group efforts. Rather, everybody tries to be outstanding, to make a personal impact and to try to be the best possible person in your field, even at the cost of others. To some extent, one could also argue that this is necessary because the fight for permanent positions is tough, and without standing out, one’s future in science is unsure.
Additionally to living in abundance, in the scientific society we also do not live in anonymity, which makes this strong competitiveness even more puzzling. In our modern society in general there are many sectors in which we stay anonymous. But this is overall not true for the small world of science, at least if you consider small and specific subgroups. An important exception are most peer reviewing processes and applying for grants. Nonetheless, after a few years in the field, one knows the work and reputation of most of the important players, even if you never met them personally. While the dynamics in science is not comparable to a group of apes, where everybody knows each other from infancy, you should also not expect unsocial behavior to go unnoticed in the long run by the peers in your own specific research field.
Without trying to stretch the similarities between a bonobo society and the society of modern science too much, I want to make an argument that the external conditions that seem to lead to a peaceful and cooperative society in the bonobos are met also in the scientific community. For once, we have an abundance of resources. Science is not immediately needed to produce any necessary items of survival, and missing or wrong research output does not jeopardize the survival of the researchers themselves or society. Also, the community of science at times resembles a village: opposite to the whole society in general, the degree of anonymity is much lessened. Specifically, everybody knows the alpha and beta persons in their field, even if smaller players might remain unknown for a time.
What could science look like if social behavior would be the norm, keeping aggressive alpha-persons in check as a group effort? In a bonobo society, social and compassionate behavior is encouraged and even rewarded. What counts in this society, apart from being smart and having creative ideas, is being able to cooperate. Also, fairness is key.
Imagine that the Hirsch index would be substituted by the Bonobo index. Things that increase your Bonobo index would be:
- Did you include all relevant work that lead to your conclusions in your citations?
- How often are you acknowledged for fruitful discussions in papers of your peers?
- How many of the students you supervised end up with a permanent position?
- How often have you given a carefully written report for other papers?
- How many days of a conference are you physically present?
- How many questions have you answered on stack exchange?
- …
I believe that doing science in this kind of society would not only be more fun, but also more fruitful. We would have to worry much less about other people stealing our grapes or not giving us the acknowledgment we deserve. Instead, we could really focus on the science itself. In my opinion we also try to ”reinvent the wheel” to often, which could be avoided when building our knowledge on the basis of other peoples findings is even more encouraged.
As bonobos are not territorial, the relationship between scientists and people outside of science would also be different. Rather than trying to show off and insisting on keeping the role of the brightest minds in the group, one important goal in science would be to explain your research to everybody who is interested. Input would be welcome, even from outsiders, and maybe this would also lead to more inspiration and creative work. I would guess that science would be lifted from its pedestal, and reach more into society. It should not be something only some nerds are interested in and good at. Of course, we would still need professional researchers who do science as their day job, opposed to hobby researchers, who help out for fun. My hope would also be that, if science is more transparent to everybody, the trust in scientific knowledge could be elevated.
If the main goal of science is curiosity and to give back something to society, I doubt that the research topics would be the same as they are now. Maybe less prestigious research topics, which nonetheless are potentially extremely useful to society (and in my personal opinion also fascinating), like gender studies, philosophy and history, will get more attention and funding. If dominance and prestige are not all that important, I also doubt that our research interests would be as aligned as they seem right now. Fields like biology, medicine and economics, that are very prestigious nowadays, are far from uninteresting or obsolete, so they would still be of interest in the bonobo science society. Maybe the way research is currently carried out in those fields would change though. I would welcome a bigger diversity in approaches and methods towards the topics. Also, a maximization of impact and usefulness not seen through the lens of profit and CV optimization seems desirable to me.
There is a lot to criticize on how science and the society of science is performing right now. The good news is: it seems to me that we have everything we need to change this at our fingertips. Maybe we just took a wrong term in one or two points in history, but we also learn that even these wrong turns can be corrected afterward. Let’s go do bonobo science!
Teresa E. Reinhard (born 1989) got her PhD in theoretical quantum many-body physics from the Max Planck Institute in Hamburg in 2019. She currently works for Deutsche Bahn Energie as a Data Scientist.
- We share 98.7% of our DNA, which makes them our closest relatives. ↩︎
- For more information about ape behaviour, see, e.g., Sean Carroll’s Mindscape podcast with Frans de Waal on Culture and Gender in Primates. ↩︎
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