Cooperative breeding and human cognitive evolution book pdf

Cooperative breeding and monogamy in mammalian societies. Here i focus on the implications for the emotional and cognitive. No evidence for larger brains in cooperatively breeding. Book symposium open access henrike moll tension in the natural history of human thinking doi 10. 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. Jul 24, 2009 snowdon 2001 suggested for non human primates which suggest that among mammals, cooperative breeding that cooperative breeding is linked to improved skills in generally produces conditions conducive to socio cognitive socio cognitive and communicative processes, and hrdy 1999, 2005a, b, 2009, burkart et al. 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. Occasional cooperative breeding in birds and the robustness. Pdf despite sharing a recent common ancestor, humans are surprisingly different from other great apes. She is considered a highly recognized pioneer in modernizing our understanding of the evolutionary basis of female behavior in both nonhuman and human primates. The evolution of group territorial behavior and cooperative.

Language is a cognitively demanding human trait, but it is also a fundamentally cooperative enterprise that rests on the motivation to share information. 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 not directly related to caregiving. The timeline of human evolution spans approximately 7 million years, from the separation of the genus pan until the emergence of behavioral modernity by 50,000 years ago. Jul 24, 2009 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. Suzuki2 abstract cooperative breeding is a widespread and intense form of coop eration, in which individuals help raise offspring that are not their own. Human cooperation strongly relies on the ability of interlocutors to coordinate each others attentional state. In cooperative games it is possible to make a binding agreement. Jul 18, 2012 cooperative breeding and human cognitive evolution, evolutionary anthropology 18 2009. Energetics and the evolution of human brain size ana navarrete 1, carel p. Big brains consume a large proportion of the energy available to an organism, in particular in immatures. The human brain stands out among mammals by being unusually large. Cooperative breeding and human cognitive evolution burkart. Sep 27, 2011 1 a similar argument is found in dubreuils book human evolution and the origins of hierarchies. 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.

Hatchwell department of animal and plant sciences, university of shef. Fundamental problems with the cooperative breeding hypothesis. Cooperative breeding and human cognitive evolution. Sep 24, 2009 we propose that the evolution of these derived features was a consequence of the adoption of cooperative breeding by early homo. E book or pdf edited book email encyclopedia article govt. Revisiting the consequences of cooperative breeding.

There, however, the focus is more on joint attention and norm following than on executive control. May 01, 2011 this ambitious book covers many areas including policy, society, economics, game theory, sociology, neurobiology, evolution, and group dynamics, just to name a few. Matrilineality is the tracing of kinship through the female line. Group territorial behavior and cooperative breeding are now recognized as widespread phenomena among birds of warmtemperate, subtropical, and tropical climates. His book sociobiology 1975 initiated a field that has become a major research area in the behavioral sciences and included a controversial chapter on human social evolution. This breeding system permitted hominid females to produce offspring without increasing interbirth intervals, and allowed for movement into new habitats.

The evolution of human intelligence is closely tied to the evolution of the human brain and to the origin of language. Oct 26, 2009 the most obvious discontinuities are related to our cognitive abilities, including language, but we also have a markedly different, cooperative breeding system. Similarities between cooperative breeding among humans and among platyrrhines are strikingly concrete and specific. Cooperative breeding and human cognitive evolution semantic. In most cooperatively breeding species, helpers are offspring that remain with their. In eusocial insects, kin selection provides the only viable explanation for the evolution and maintenance of worker sterility 68, while in many obligately.

If so, maternaljuvenile cooperation may be an important but understudied step in the evolution of human cooperative breeding. Among many nonhuman primates and mammals in general, cooperative breeding is accompanied by psychological changes leading to greater. Cooperative breeding is a widespread and intense form of cooperation, in which individuals help raise offspring that are not their own. According to this viewpoint, human intelligence rests on a. Energetics and the evolution of human brain size nature. Although relatively rare, this behaviour entails dramatic forms of both cooperation and competition, and gives important insights into many areas including sexual selection and incest avoidance. Cooperative breeding is relevant to debates in anthropology concerning the evolution of human life history, sociality, and psychology and has implications for demographic patterns in todays world. Wilson updates his earlier groundbreaking treatment of homo sapiens. When reproduction is monopolized by one or few of the adult group members and most adults do not reproduce, but help rear the breeders offspring, the majority of these cooperative breeding species exhibit high reproductive skew.

Here we propose that these cognitive consequences of cooperative breeding. Cooperative breeding and the evolution of vocal flexibility. To date, scientists have made substantial progress toward defining uniquely human aspects of cognition, but considerably less effort has been devoted to questions about the evolutionary processes through which. Callitrichids including marmosets and tamarins are highly vocal monkeys that are more distantly related to humans. Joint attention skills in wild arabian babblers turdoides.

In other cooperative breeding species, pressuresthat lead to cooperativebreedinginclude predation risk, environmental unpredictability, and. Humans and chimps are the most unlike in on these measures, with humans showing a very similar profile to callitrichids. The role of cooperative breeding in modern human evolution. Cooperative behaviour has been shown to provide individuals with either direct fitness benefits e. Cooperative breeders are species in which individuals beyond a pair assist in the production of young in a single brood or litter. 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. Two key steps in the evolution of human cooperation. According to the cooperative breeding hypothesis, allomaternal assistance was essential for child survival during the pleistocene. Cognitive evolution download ebook pdf, epub, tuebl, mobi. Humans are not cooperative breeders but practice biocultural. In terms of vocal behavior, however, both monkeys and apes appear to be much less flexible, which.

Michael tomasello has greatly expanded our knowledge of human cognition and how it differs from that of other animals. 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. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading cooperative breeding in vertebra tes. Comparative analyses suggest that cooperative breeding and allomaternal care in plural and communal breeders have distinct evolutionary. Evolution of human cooperation anthropology bibliographies. This behaviour is particularly well studied in birds, using both longterm and comparative studies that have provided insights into the evolution of reproductive altruism. The origins of cooperative breeding are traced to misdirected parental care in species with intense parenting of altricial young. Studies of ecology, evolution, and behavior kindle edition by koenig, walter d. Cognitive consequences of cooperative breeding in primates. Cooperative breeding and human cognitive evolution faculty.

Second, pressure to recruit adult cooperation is most pronounced under more derived conditions of late dispersal and later ages of juvenile dependence, with a strong interaction at short birth intervals. The evolution and development of human cooperation federica amici. This is well documented in the context of ape gestural signals, which have revealed a considerable degree of flexibility in interesting ways. Cambridge core animal behaviour cooperative breeding in vertebrates edited by walter d. Cooperative feeding and breeding, and the evolution of. With this cooperative breeding hypothesis cbh rapidly gaining currency, the time is ripe for a critical appraisal. Among many nonhuman primates and mammals in general, cooperative breeding is accompanied by psychological changes leading to greater prosociality, which directly enhances performance in. Abstract despite sharing a recent common ancestor, humans are surprisingly different from other great apes. The role of ontogeny in the evolution of human cooperation. Cooperative breeding, in which more than a pair of conspecifics cooperate to raise young at a single nest or brood, is widespread among vertebrates but highly variable in its geographic distribution.

Evolution of human cooperation anthropology bibliographies in harvard style. Cognitive evolution provides an indepth exploration of the history and development of cognition, from the beginning of life on earth to presentday humans. Chapter 6, meet the alloparents, focuses instead on the development of cooperative breeding in the human lineage. Longterm studies of behavior and ecology 1990, hb isbn 0521 372984, pb isbn 0521 378907. The expensivetissue hypothesis 1 explains its evolution by proposing a tradeoff between the size of the brain and that of the. Ecology and evolution of cooperative breeding in birds. Ultimately, the absence of any compelling evidence that cooperative breeding is associated with elevated cognitive ability or large brains indeed data suggest the opposite is true in non. Pdf cooperative breeding and human cognitive evolution. Among many nonhuman primates and mammals in general, cooperative breeding is accompanied by psychological changes leading to greater prosociality, which directly enhances performance in social cognition. Although relatively rare, cooperative breeding is widespread taxonomically and continues to pose challenges to our understanding of the evolution of cooperation and altruistic behavior. This book highlights the theoretical, empirical and technical advances that have taken place in the field of cooperative breeding research since the publication of the seminal work cooperative breeding in birds. Fundamental problems with the cooperative breeding.

Joint attention skills in wild arabian babblers turdoides squamiceps. 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. Cooperative breeding and human cognitive evolution, evolutionary anthropology 18 2009. The evolution of cooperative breeding in early homo species also promoted other prosocial behaviors such as social learning, increased social. Yitzchak ben mocha1,2,3, roger mundry2 and simone pika4,5 1research group evolution of communication, max planck institute for ornithology, seewiesen, germany. One predominant hypothesis postulates that this hallmark of the unique cognitive system of humans evolved due to the combination of an apelike cognitive system and the prosocial motives that facilitate cooperative breeding. Unraveling the evolution of uniquely human cognition pnas. Revisiting the consequences of cooperative breeding uzh. Nov 20, 20 increasingly, human parenting behavior, which has been described as cooperative breeding because allomaternal parental care is essential for the raising of human young, is recognized as having played an important role in the evolution of these characteristics. Cooperative breeders are species in which more than two individuals participate in raising young at a single nest.

Occasional cooperative breeding in birds and the robustness of comparative analyses concerning the evolution of cooperative breeding michael griesser1,2 and toshitaka n. The most obvious discontinuities are related to our cognitive abilities, including language, but we also have a markedly different, coopera. Primates communicate not only because they are biologically hardwired to do so, but also because they pursue specific goals during social interactions. The expensivetissue hypothesis1 explains its evolution by proposing a tradeoff between the size of the brain and that of the digestive tract, which is smaller than expected for. Cooperative breeding and human cognitive evolution citeseerx. Cooperative breeding and human cognitive evolution j. Most scholars of language evolution recognize that the first use of language, in particular words, presupposed an unusual ability to cooperate. Cooperation and helping behavior download ebook pdf. Humans have a number of adaptations that facilitate the creation and.

Humans take more or less twenty years to reach reproductive ma. Drawing together evolutionary and comparative research, this book. The most obvious discontinuities are related to our cognitive. Cooperative breeding encompasses a wide variety of group structures, from a breeding pair with helpers that are offspring from a previous season, to groups with multiple breeding males and females polygynandry and helpers that are the adult offspring of some but not all of the breeders in the group, to groups in which helpers sometimes achieve cobreeding status by producing their own offspring as. 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.

The questions above address different levels of explanation 1, 2 for human cognitive uniqueness, but ultimately a satisfactory account of human cognitive evolution will explain not only the mechanisms that make our species unique, but also how, when, and why these traits evolved. In this commentary to his recent book a natural history of human thinking, i first critique some of. 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. Therefore, human offspring are highly dependent on caregiver investment, a necessity that serves as the precursor for theories on the development of pairbonding, alloparenting, and cooperative breeding. 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 not directly. Review the evolution of cooperative breeding in birds. Great apes possess many of the cognitive prerequisites for language, but largely lack the motivation to share information. I argue that a cooperative breeding model provides a more compelling explanation for distinctive human emotional and mental aptitudes than do competing hypotheses. Cooperative breeding and human cognitive evolution core. Here we propose that these cognitive consequences of cooperative breeding could have become more pervasive in the human lineage because the psycho. Among the species that adopted it, cooperative breeding generally produced changes in psychology toward greater prosociality and greater cognitive abilities.

Unraveling the evolution of uniquely human cognition. Cooperative breeding and human evolution request pdf. Cooperative breeding and human cognitive evolution 2009 evolutionary anthropology. If cooperative breeding does not generate novel selection pressures on. The cooperative breeding hypothesis can plug this gap and thus complement cgs, because recent comparative. Particularly vexing has been identifying the ecological correlates of this phenomenon, which has been suggested to be favored in populations inhabiting both relatively stable, productive. Van schaik despite sharing a recent common ancestor, humans are surprisingly different from other great apes. The cultural group selection cgs approach provides a compelling explanation for recent changes in human societies, but has trouble explaining why our ancestors, rather than any other great ape, evolved into a hyper cooperative niche. Kramer one conspicuous lifehistory feature of primates generally and humans speci. The acceptance of novel foods by infants is socially. Cooperative breeding is a social system in which individuals contribute care to offspring that are not their own at the expense of their own reproduction.

Implications of this evolutionary context for the sociocognitive and emotional. Cooperative breeding in vertebrates edited by walter d. Cooperative breeding and human cognitive evolution jm burkart, sb hrdy, cp van schaik evolutionary anthropology. Cooperative breeding center for academic research and. I strongly recommend this book to any biologist interested in behavioral ecology, sociality, or ornithology. Hrdy university of california, department of anthropology, davis, ca 956168522, u. Among many nonhuman primates and mammals in general, cooperative breeding is accompanied by psychological changes leading to greater prosociality, which directly enhances performance in social.