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Book Notes
Fido Wants Fun, Too
Since the 1859 publication of Darwin's The Origin of the Species , scientists have indulged a rather Hobbesian view of animals: that they're selfish, brutish and bent on nothing but survival. But D.C.-based biologist Jonathan Balcombe takes issue with the Hobbesian view. On a recent Sunday, working the podium at Politics & Prose book store, the poised, almost balletic scientist argued for a full range of bestial motivations. Beyond hunger, reproduction, survival and pain, Balcombe posited pleasure. His animal-loving audience purred.
Balcombe first stumbled upon his idea in Assateague, Va., while spying on two fish crows happily grooming each other in a marsh.
  Georges Braque meets the naked Picasso (From "Alternative Comics #2") |
Stepping back from his telescope, Balcombe thought, "What have I read about pleasure in animals?" By that point, he'd studied biology for 10 years in three different universities. He'd spent countless hours probing through scholarly journals and reading books about nature. "My jaw rather dropped," he said, "to realize that I hadn't read anything" on the subject.
Thus Pleasurable Kingdom: Animals and the Nature of Feeling Good (Macmillan, $24.95), the first survey of pleasure in animals, was born.
Going against his training, Balcombe prowled for other examples of pleasure, turning up more than enough for a book. The results contribute, he says, to "a revolution" in the field.
Balcombe baited his audience with tidbits of research -- lettuce-loving iguanas, bunnies who somersault in joy-induced flips. Lemurs and capuchin monkeys, he said, harvest millipedes for nibbling and rubbing on their lips, savoring the "very powerful defense chemicals" the millipedes produce. The monkeys "get floppy and drooly," he said. "They kind of hang out. And in parallel with certain human behavior that might be familiar to some, they pass [the millipede] around." The audience laughed.
Balcombe doesn't throw Darwin out with the bathwater. He's simply broadening the field of interpretation. Pleasure, he argues, is adaptive. "The way I like to put it," he said, "is: Just as pain is nature's way of punishing bad or dangerous behaviors, pleasure is nature's way of rewarding good or adaptive behaviors."
But he's quick to admit that, in the case of the aforementioned monkeys, pleasure could be "maladaptive" as well. A lemur under the influence "might be more vulnerable to predation," he said. "Or he might fall out of a tree."
-- Marcela Valdes
