How and when can we use tradition to divide populations for conservation?
Introduction
What is tradition? Relying on whom you ask—an artist, a historian, a linguist—you’ll get radically completely different solutions. And when you ask a social scientist, you could get a number of of 164 definitions. Maybe the very best response to such a profound and plaguing query is a joke, on this case one borrowed from David Foster Wallace. “There are these two younger fish swimming alongside they usually occur to satisfy an older fish swimming the opposite means, who nods at them and says ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ And the 2 younger fish swim on for a bit, after which finally one in all them appears over on the different and goes ‘What the hell is water?’”
Picture by Danny Abriel, courtesy Dalhousie College.
Tradition incorporates methods of life, information, and practices so frequent that we don’t at all times acknowledge them as such. Tradition, it seems, is just not so very completely different from nature. But it surely’s not simply our nature, it’s throughout us—and never solely us. Greater than twenty years in the past, the primatologist Frans de Waal exclaimed of animal cultures, “one can not escape the impression that it’s an concept whose time has come.” Although some scientists disagree over using the time period “tradition,” Nature and different distinguished journals have printed the findings of dozens of research demonstrating that many species be taught socially and cross on traditions or expertise—from chimpanzees to birds to fish.
Dr. Hal Whitehead has lengthy held a fascination with the language and tradition of whales. He was observing and decoding cetacean language lengthy earlier than Mission CETI fashioned in 2020 to use synthetic intelligence and robotics to “translate the communication of sperm whales.” Whitehead is professor of biology at Dalhousie College in Nova Scotia, Canada, the place he runs the Whitehead Analysis Lab, which research sperm whales, northern bottlenose whales, and long-finned pilot whales. Whitehead has printed dozens of articles on facets of cetacean tradition, given a preferred TED Discuss on the topic, and written a number of books, together with The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins (with Luke Rendell, College of Chicago Press, 2015) and Sperm Whales: Social Evolution within the Ocean (College of Chicago Press, 2003). His work stands out as thorough and insightful, respectful of the variations between people and different animals, and attuned to the similarities—together with tradition, which de Waal defines as “a lifestyle shared by the members of 1 group however not essentially with the member of different teams of the identical species. It covers information, habits, and expertise, together with underlying tendencies and preferences, derived from publicity to and studying from others.”
Whitehead was type sufficient to satisfy with me in February 2024 to debate his present insights into whale tradition and the way the sphere of cultural biology has modified during the last 80 years.
I don’t need to have interaction with the whales. I need to perceive how they stay their lives and work together with one another, with as little influence from us as potential.
Interview
Helena Feder: The examine of nonhuman animal cultures could also be traced again to Kinji Imanishi’s and Satsue Mito’s work with primates within the Fifties and, as you’ve famous in your chapter in Deep Thinkers (College of Chicago Press, 2017), Ken Norris’s conclusions about dolphins within the Nineteen Eighties. What share of cetologists do you assume now confidently view sperm whales and bottlenose dolphins, amongst different cetaceans, as cultural animals?
Hal Whitehead: Nicely, just about all of us who examine habits within the wild assume tradition has a task of their lives, however we range when it comes to how a lot we attribute to tradition. Some individuals are way more conservative than others.
Helena Feder: Extra conservative, which means they attribute much less to tradition versus to, say, genes or surroundings?
Picture by Jennifer Modigliani, courtesy Dominca Sperm Whale Mission.
Hal Whitehead: Sure. For instance, some cetologists may articulate assist for a selected habits as cultural as, “it virtually definitely has some cultural element, however we don’t understand how a lot.” There are subdisciplines of cetology that don’t examine habits within the wild. There’s a honest quantity of excellent information on dolphins in captivity (psychologists usually do that), which helps social studying and thus tradition within the wild. Molecular geneticists, who are inclined to imagine that if we perceive genes then we perceive every thing, usually discover it very onerous to attribute nonhuman habits to tradition, particularly once we begin speaking about tradition and evolution. I comply with Boyd and Richerson’s twin inheritance formulation, through which tradition and genes operate as completely different however interacting types of inheritance. Some geneticists will ask, effectively, what do you imply by cultural inheritance? And I say when the behavioral phenotype of 1 particular person will get handed to the phenotype of one other via social studying, we are able to say there was a switch or inheritance of knowledge or habits—cultural inheritance.
Helena Feder: Once I began researching the sphere, biologists nonetheless referred to tradition because the controversial “c” phrase—and many of the few individuals working in cultural biology have been primatologists. Now there’s an excessive amount of work on a spread of animals—akin to crows, tits, elephants, and others. The place ought to we be on the lookout for tradition that we haven’t but—or ought to we, in actual fact, start working from the other assumption, that the majority or all animals have tradition, even when we’ve not but noticed it?
Hal Whitehead: We should always look all over the place. For instance, there are good research on tradition in bugs. What they present is that some bugs convey info to one another that homogenizes their habits. If one defines tradition as info that’s socially realized and group particular, it might be discovered wherever. I believe we do ourselves a disservice by excluding tradition as a driver of behavioral patterns or making it the final potential clarification (after genes and surroundings). However that was, and in some circumstances nonetheless is, the belief, that we are able to solely assume tradition if genetics, surroundings, and different elements have been excluded.
Some circumstances of tradition in nonhumans are way more accessible than others. Birdsong, for instance. There’s a lot nice work on birdsong, and we now perceive which birds’ songs are tradition, and which components of songs are cultural. Conversely, we have now solely a only a few clear circumstances of the tradition of fishes within the wild, however there are indications that it might be widespread.
Different challenges to huge acceptance of the thought of nonhuman cultures could also be attributed to disciplinary variations. Whereas molecular geneticists may be very uncomfortable with the entire enterprise of nonhuman cultures, this angle is much more frequent amongst some anthropologists. An anthropologist as soon as stated that having biologists outline tradition is like anthropologists defining genes. However we who examine tradition within the wild just about agree on a definition of tradition, one which is operational for research of nonhumans within the wild.
Helena Feder: Your 2011 article “The Cultures of Whales and Dolphins” (and your 2015 e book with Rendell) discusses the necessity for a extra thorough rejection of what’s known as “anthropodenial” (the bias in opposition to, or computerized rejection of, similarities between people and different animals) within the examine of nonhuman cultures. You wrote, “New methods of learning tradition are wanted, strategies that don’t exclude however reasonably apportion behavioral variation between genetic, environmental, cultural, and presumably different causes.” In 2017, you famous that such new methods are “starting to grow to be necessary within the examine of nonhuman tradition.” Are we there but?
Hal Whitehead: We’ve come a great distance. The previous methodology of exclusion is now extra of an enormous thorn within the aspect of our work, versus the laser beam guiding our analysis. Take, for instance, new work carried out by a global scientific collaboration in a distant area of Russia on Baird’s beaked whales, one of many weirdest species on the market. These scientists printed the first discovering of tradition in Baird’s beaked whales. They made their case through the use of one in all these new methods, network-based diffusion evaluation. I used to be simply amazed by their findings; the work is so cool.
Picture by Jörg Mazur, courtesy Wikimedia.
Helena Feder: That’s actually outstanding. In the identical 2011 article, you focus on the issues of figuring out tradition within the wild, a few of that are as a result of exclusionary methodology and a few are as a result of issue of observing habits—simply the paucity of knowledge. And so, some researchers desire laboratory work, which might yield loads of information on social studying, and so a facet of tradition. However can there ever actually be tradition in a lab? Tradition is each inherited and an expression of self: aren’t most laboratory circumstances too restrictive or too synthetic for one thing as pure as tradition?
Hal Whitehead: I believe there may be examples of nonhuman tradition in labs, such because the improbable examine of bumblebees studying from one another to drag strings for a reward. It’s synthetic in as a lot as scientists skilled particular person bees, after which “seeded” the habits by inserting a skilled bee in every colony. It’s one thing bees must be skilled to do—however the end result is that one bee is usually a mannequin for the remainder; they be taught from one another, and the habits outlives the initiating bee. A normal drawback is that the majority lab research have don’t have an extended sufficient lifetime, so you’ll be able to’t observe habits over generations. And naturally, I believe it’s fallacious to maintain some animals in captivity—however most likely not bees.
Helena Feder: I realized so much out of your 2024 article, “Sperm Whale Clans and Human Societies.” I’m within the conclusion drawn out of your proof, that a few of what we’ve beforehand assumed to be the drivers for tradition (akin to bipedalism, use of fireplace, syntactic language, tool-making, and opposable digits) may be dominated out as vital circumstances for “large-scale, culturally distinctive social constructions whose members expertise within-group symbolically marked identification.” Would possibly one rephrase it this fashion: you don’t must be human, or perhaps a primate, to exhibit cultural range—to assume abstractly to create, talk, and keep complicated particular person and social identities?
Hal Whitehead: Sure—and by “assume abstractly” I assume you imply use symbols, not composing symphonies. The article synthesizes issues I’ve been fascinated with for some time.
Helena Feder: Sure, however talking of symphonies, on this article you argue it’s necessary “to steer a path between unthinking anthropomorphism (assigning human traits to non-humans) and anthropodenial (denying human properties to different animals).” Later, you comment that it appears unlikely that whale clans exhibit greater than a fraction of the cultural “richness and complexity” of human teams. Richness is a subjective expertise and a subjective measure. Apart from the truth that there may be nonetheless a lot we have no idea, how can scientists examine a sperm whale clan, or any nonhuman group, with out reproducing our assumptions about what constitutes richness for others?
Picture by Gabriel Barathieu, courtesy Wikimedia.
Hal Whitehead: One query to which I’m drawn, and have thought so much about, is the query of “cumulative cultures”: the mechanism that ends in a habits which no particular person might invent themselves, a technique of sequentially constructing on the work of an entire bunch of people studying from one another. Some say that is the very factor that animals don’t do. However this was as soon as stated this about tradition itself, after which they needed to transfer that barrier, elevate the bar…
Helena Feder: To maintain the opposite animals out.
Hal Whitehead: Sure. If you consider the music of the nightingale or the music of the humpback whale, that’s while you see accumulation: Might any particular person have invented such songs from scratch? Certainly they constructed up from the cumulative work of many people over time, in two methods. There’s the operate of the music and content material of the music; we see complicated constructions constructed out over time in addition to altering content material (as we people have the symphony type and plenty of variations of symphonic content material). These vocal cultures look cumulative. The proof for cumulative nonvocal nonhuman cultures, akin to akin to materials cultures (bodily objects of a tradition, issues made or used) appears much less good.
Helena Feder: You focus on how little is mostly recognized about sperm whale clan traits except for their coda dialects—that’s, their linguistic range—however that you just’re prepared to make the cheap assumption based mostly in your ten years of knowledge on the 2 Galapagos clans that “distinctive behavioral practices” and language dialects “largely line up.” Was there a second on this work that you just thought clan may grow to be the subsequent controversial “c” phrase?
Hal Whitehead: In 2003, Luke Rendell and I launched the phrase “clan” for the large-scale social constructions in sperm whales, following the terminology for killer whales. At the moment, and for each species, clans largely referred to units of animals with distinctively completely different vocal dialects, codas for sperm whales and pulsed requires killer whales. Later we discovered that in sperm whales the clans confirmed clear variations in different kinds of habits as effectively. For a lot of causes the notion of clans has grow to be increasingly central to our analysis and pondering, and maybe attention-grabbing to others; so, perhaps the time period will grow to be controversial.
Helena Feder: Are facets of your work spurred by claims of human uniqueness? For instance, Hill’s declare that nonhuman animals don’t have ethical programs or reinforce social norms with using symbols. I’m pondering of your 2022 article on symbolic marking amongst sperm whale clans, or the 2023 article on collective decision-making amongst aquatic mammals. I notably like that you just start this piece with the concept collective decision-making is, in itself, “inherent to the definition of what a bunch is.” You focus on avoiding anthropomorphic terminology, but when the shoe suits, why not name it politics? As in de Waal’s e book, Chimpanzee Politics…?
Hal Whitehead: Sure, effectively, the animals I examine within the oceans are inclined to have extra constructive relationships with members of their very own species than many land animals. That is, I believe, as a result of assets are onerous to monopolize within the fluid three-dimensional ocean, the place it doesn’t make sense to contest others for actual property or meals objects. On the land, the time period politics may make extra sense as a result of, with intense competitors over one useful resource or one other, animals with good social expertise can achieve a bonus by forming aggressive alliances and the like. In whales and dolphins, social life is necessary, however extra to assist one another discover meals, elevate infants, and escape predators, than to compete. This units up a system the place cooperation turns into extra necessary than competitors. There are definitely exceptions, however typically animals within the ocean are peaceable to members of their very own species.
Helena Feder: Conversely, are you ever involved {that a} attribute of human cultural evolution or a present concept of it would result in false assumptions—simply as biologists in capitalist cultures as soon as noticed competitors all over the place and have been much less attuned to the cooperation round them. I’m pondering of the thought of schismogenesis—the creation of cultures via distinction and friction. It is perhaps much less true of people than we expect, or it is perhaps true of primates and fewer true of different cultural animals?
Hal Whitehead: Within the whale world, schismogenesis is simply an concept, and I believe even in people it’s a bit controversial. However we have now to look broadly, to invest; in any other case, we’re going to overlook stuff. It’s onerous for us to foretell what’s necessary, particularly with animals that stay in a totally international surroundings and talk in a completely completely different means. We’d like comparative cultural work, and evaluating human and nonhuman cultures may be helpful. However we have now to watch out: a) to not assume that as a result of people do one thing, different animals don’t; and b) as a result of people do it, different animals should as effectively. As a result of, with all species, it might go both means. After which c), which hasn’t acquired a lot consideration however ought to, watch out to keep in mind that different animals might do issues that we don’t do, socially in addition to bodily.
Helena Feder: That may be a problem and could also be a spot the place the humanities might collaborate with science to think about what’s past what we are able to see. For instance, different types of human and nonhuman social cooperation. You’ve talked about just a few examples of human communities fishing with dolphins and, as soon as upon a time, with killer whales. Is such cooperation a product of cross-species studying? Are you able to envision new types of cooperation or maybe participatory motion analysis, through which nonhuman topics take part voluntarily in scientific research?
Hal Whitehead: The fishing cooperatives are fascinating in some ways, particularly as examples of cultures crossing species. I attempt to follow passive analysis, non-invasive analysis. I don’t need to have interaction with the whales. I need to perceive how they stay their lives and work together with one another, with as little influence from us as potential. Others, akin to CETI, have tasks that contain direct engagement with animals, however I don’t see that as my means ahead.
Helena Feder: I used to be going to ask about CETI, so I’m glad you talked about it. It is smart that nonhuman cultures are additionally one thing to be protected, conserved. You wrote in Science in 2019 concerning the significance of understanding nonhuman cultures for materials conservation, and famous in a a lot earlier piece in 2004 that the Committee on the Standing of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) implicitly acknowledged the significance of nonhuman cultural variations once they divided orcas into three “nationally important populations.” In a later piece you be aware the 2005 U.S. ruling that acknowledged the tradition, the precise cultural range, of killer whales of the Pacific coast of North America.
Hal Whitehead: Sure, the connection between the tradition of nonhuman animals and their conservation is one thing I’m actually occupied with. It’s stimulated by my work on the Committee on the Standing of Endangered Wildlife in Canada the place we assess the conservation standing of Canadian wildlife. Apart from the paper in Science you point out, I’ve written others, together with one simply final summer season. It addresses what I believe is an important query: How and when can we use tradition to divide populations for conservation?
Helena Feder: I agree. You’ve additionally written that whereas tradition isn’t a requirement for personhood, for individuality or the necessity for moral consideration, “it may be seen because the context through which personhood is expressed. Finding out tradition in cetaceans might subsequently instantly inform some extremely contentious ethical debates.” In your 2011 article, for instance, you be aware the calls to incorporate cultural animals in “an prolonged ethical group.”
Hal Whitehead: The work we’ve executed has thought-about tradition in teams. In some species, together with the whales that I examine, tradition is, I believe, important for the existence of people and the species as an entire. As for particular person members of a species with the capability for tradition in contexts the place they’re denied this, I’m reminded of Sue Savage-Rumbaugh’s work. When she requested bonobos what they need, they apparently instructed her that, amongst different issues, necessary for his or her welfare was “transmitting their cultural information to their offspring.”
Helena Feder: I’m very glad you talked about Savage-Rumbaugh. Sadly, her work on Pan/Homo tradition has been discontinued, and bonobos now appear to be studied on the renamed facility in Iowa largely to “uncover the origins of human language, cognition, and habits.”
Whereas tradition tends to create and propagate adaptive habits it might, as with people, be maladaptive, for instance, creating conformism that may be harmful (e.g., whale beaching or cetacean stranding). Your 2019 article, “The attain of gene-culture co-evolution in animals,” notes that what’s true of people is true of nonhumans, that “tradition favors genes enhancing variations for tradition.” How can we sq. the “cultural intelligence speculation” with maladaptive cultural habits? Or this the fallacious query?
Hal Whitehead: There’s a spread of ways in which tradition may be maladaptive, akin to younger human males operating as shut as they’ll to an oncoming prepare or elephants raiding crops. After which there are the puzzles, like mass whale strandings. It’s a bizarre one as a result of it’s not a brand new factor (an instance was mentioned by Aristotle) and it’s not depending on people. A variety of seemingly wholesome whales operating up onto the seaside on the similar time makes little evolutionary sense, however might be partially pushed by tradition as when people behave maladaptively, turning into Kamikaze pilots or becoming a member of celibate spiritual orders.
Helena Feder: Pondering of the mysteries of this work, I’ve observed that cultural biologists at all times say social studying, maybe as a result of it doesn’t prescribe intent. What do you consider “educating” as a substitute? Does it presuppose Concept of Thoughts (ToM), that’s, the concept one other being has a consciousness, one which is perhaps tricked or, on this case, taught?
Hal Whitehead: Biologists have a really clear operational definition of educating which will get across the concern of Concept of Thoughts. Educating is when a person adjustments their habits, doing one thing at some price or with out profit to the trainer, in order that one other particular person may be taught the habits (and the learner advantages).
Helena Feder: Doesn’t the idea of educating indicate Concept of Thoughts—the notion that one particular person acts with an intent based mostly on the concept one other particular person can be taught? I don’t ask to attract a line to maintain some animals “out”—to order this attribute for our species or shut family—however to counsel that Concept of Thoughts could also be extra frequent than is usually thought.
Hal Whitehead: Ants train, meerkats train, some birds train, killer whales appear to show. There is no such thing as a proof that I do know of for nice apes educating. Educating is clearly restricted to extremely social and cooperative species, not essentially ones with giant brains, which is smart. I’m not positive the place Concept of Thoughts suits in.
Helena Feder: Okay. Yet one more query alongside these traces. The identical 2019 article explores the fascinating concept that “tradition might drive early phases of speciation,” noting that hen species present the very best proof as a result of “music studying will increase charges of species diversification.” In a 2022 article, you and the opposite authors make a compelling case for evaluating hen and whale music, highlighting comparable physiological processes. Do you speculate about tradition driving speciation in cetaceans?
Hal Whitehead: Sure! One of the best instance is in killer whales, the place matrilineally-based pods of killer whales begin specializing on explicit methods of creating a dwelling, and this turns into their tradition. It could be efficient, and their numbers develop. Then, the essential step (not seen in sperm whales or people): they grow to be extraordinarily xenophobic, and solely mate inside their cultural group. Then speciation is starting.
Helena Feder: What are the most important challenges to cetacean area analysis at present? Air pollution? Local weather change?
Hal Whitehead: The paramount menace to whales was business looking, however this largely ended within the early Nineteen Eighties. Some results linger, akin to broken social programs and lack of the information held by killed people. Nonetheless, most species have proven some restoration since whaling ended. There at the moment are a spread of significant threats, a lot of that are rising. There’s growing underwater noise, collisions with ships, interactions with fishing gear, rising plastic air pollution, and local weather change. Whales face a troublesome future.
Helena Feder: It will be great if there was a wider viewers on your work on tradition, for this sense of multiculturalism and its implications for human tradition, together with our obligations to the opposite cultures of nature which have been broken or diminished by human exercise.
Hal Whitehead: Because you talked about it, Luke Rendell and I are updating our 2014 e book with the College of Chicago Press, The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins.
Helena Feder: I look ahead to the replace, and what follows.
Helena Feder has printed essays, interviews, and poems in venues together with North American Overview, The Georgia Overview, Radical Philosophy, Orion, ISLE, ASAP/Journal, The Author’s Chronicle, One other Chicago Journal, After the Artwork, Guernica, Inexperienced Letters, Western American Literature, Tikkun, and Crucial Learn. Helena is co-editor of Tar River Poetry and professor of environmental humanities at East Carolina College; she’s the writer of Ecocriticism and the Thought of Tradition (Routledge) and editor of a number of journal points and two books: You Are the River (NCMA) and Shut Studying the Anthropocene (Routledge).
Header picture by Will Falcon, courtesy Shutterstock.
