Survival of the Friendliest

* Book: Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding Our Origins and Rediscovering Our Common Humanity. by Dr. Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods.

URL = https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/550437/survival-of-the-friendliest-by-brian-hare-and-vanessa-woods/

Description

0. From the Wikipedia:

"Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding Our Origins and Rediscovering Our Common Humanity is a book by anthropologist Brian Hare and writer Vanessa Woods, first published in 2020, based on Hare's research hypothesis of human self-domestication.[2] The main thesis of the book is that late in human evolution Homo sapiens underwent a process of extreme selection for friendliness that led to the Self-Domestication Syndrome, as seen in other animals. The self-domestication syndrome led to a series of cognitive changes that allowed modern humans to out compete other species of humans in the Pleistocene, including Neanderthals, and become the most successful mammal on the planet. Hare and Woods argue that self-domestication is an ongoing process that continues today."

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_Friendliest)

1.

"In this new study, from the trailblazing scientists and bestselling authors behind The Genius of Dogs, a powerful new theory about the secret to our success as a species is introduced and explored: self-domestication.

For over a century in popular culture, “survival of the fittest” has been interpreted to mean that some human lives are more valuable than others. This misunderstanding of the central pillar of biology has been used to justify eugenics and colonialism, and today continues to shape authoritarian agendas, anti-immigration sentiment, and the slow response to COVID-19. In their revolutionary new book, Dr. Hare and Woods bring forth the theory of “survival of the friendliest” at a time the world needs it most, providing actionable solutions based on the knowledge that to survive and flourish, we must expand our definition of who belongs."

2. From the publisher:

"For most of the approximately 300,000 years that Homo sapiens have existed, we have shared the planet with at least four other types of humans. All of these were smart, strong, and inventive. But around 50,000 years ago, Homo sapiens made a cognitive leap that gave us an edge over other species. What happened?

Since Charles Darwin wrote about “evolutionary fitness,” the idea of fitness has been confused with physical strength, tactical brilliance, and aggression. In fact, what made us evolutionarily fit was a remarkable kind of friendliness, a virtuosic ability to coordinate and communicate with others that allowed us to achieve all the cultural and technical marvels in human history. Advancing what they call the “self-domestication theory,” Brian Hare, professor in the department of evolutionary anthropology and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University and his wife, Vanessa Woods, a research scientist and award-winning journalist, shed light on the mysterious leap in human cognition that allowed Homo sapiens to thrive.

But this gift for friendliness came at a cost. Just as a mother bear is most dangerous around her cubs, we are at our most dangerous when someone we love is threatened by an “outsider.” The threatening outsider is demoted to sub-human, fair game for our worst instincts. Hare’s groundbreaking research, developed in close coordination with Richard Wrangham and Michael Tomasello, giants in the field of cognitive evolution, reveals that the same traits that make us the most tolerant species on the planet also make us the cruelest.

Survival of the Friendliest offers us a new way to look at our cultural as well as cognitive evolution and sends a clear message: In order to survive and even to flourish, we need to expand our definition of who belongs."

(https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/550437/survival-of-the-friendliest-by-brian-hare-and-vanessa-woods/)

Discussion

On the Self-Domestication Syndrome

From the Wikipedia:

"Hare and Woods argue that instead, humans underwent extreme selection for prosociality, and that cognitive changes occurred by accident.

Domestication is a process of human induced artificial selection that causes marked changes in an animal compared to their wild relatives. Collectively called the domestication syndrome, these changes include physiology (increases in serotonin, oxytocin), morphology (skull shape and size, tooth size, floppy ears, curly tails, star mutations), behavior (reproductive cycle, juvenile behavior), and social cognition (increase in cooperative communicative abilities). Different domesticated animals have different combinations of these changes. Until recently, it was poorly understood why different species of domesticated animals developed which traits. However, one trait that all domesticated animals share is a reduction in aggression compared to their wild relatives.

Pioneering experiments where Siberian foxes were experimentally domesticated demonstrated that domestication is directly caused by intense selection against aggression. Over 50 generations, breeding only the friendliest, non-aggressive foxes, whose fear towards humans was replaced by attraction, led to a cascade of the physiological, morphological, behavioral, and cognitive changes apparent in other domesticated animals.

The process of self-domestication is similar, but instead of humans actively selecting against aggression, natural selection favors the process instead. As an example, in our closest living relatives, bonobos, self domestication can occur entirely without human intervention. Compared to our other closest living relatives, chimpanzees, bonobos are much less aggressive, and have never been observed to kill their group members or attack neighboring groups. Recent work shows that the friendliest bonobo male is more reproductively successful than the most despotic chimpanzee. Thus natural selection could favor reduced aggression in bonobos, which would have led to the domestication syndrome. Indeed, compared to chimpanzees, bonobos have changes to their morphology, (reduced cranial size, canine dimorphism, and depigmentation of the lips and tail tufts), physiology (changes to serotonin receptors and testosterone response), behavior (more juvenilized socio sexual behavior and play) and social cognition (increase in cooperative abilities).

If self domestication could occur in bonobos, then it may also be possible in our own species. Hare and Woods propose that natural selection favored increased in-group prosociality over aggression in late human evolution. As a by-product of this selection, humans are predicted to show traits of the domestication syndrome observed in other domestic animals, including early-emerging cooperative communicative abilities.

Drawing on comparative, developmental, fossil, and neurobiological evidence, Hare and Woods propose that late human evolution was dominated by selection for intragroup prosociality over aggression. As a result, modern humans possess traits consistent with the syndrome associated with domestication in other animals. Increases in cognition, particularly related to cooperative communicative abilities, occurred by accident."

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_Friendliest)

More information

• Video presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akN0jspSXtQ