Viewing human behavior from a strictly biological perspective opens up transformative possibilities for human-centered technologies and intuitive environments that can nurture human relationships, fostering belonging and connection, rather than defaulting to rejection and division.
A major obstacle to this understanding is the deep-seated boundary humans draw between themselves and the rest of the animal kingdom. While comparative studies often use one species (such as chimpanzees, dogs, bears, ants, bees, and so forth), such initiatives can bore and lose stamina for the simple reason that humans have little in common with any animal species in isolation. On the other hand, by analyzing humans from the perspective of the family (biologically speaking) they belong to – the ape family – a lot of great insights can arise.
Within apes, the ability to deftly navigate the social environment has observable consequences for the reproductive success and survival of individuals within the ape group, which usually has a proportion between males and females of 1:1 (while reproduction is a choice rather than a necessity in modern human societies, the underlying biological hardware remains entirely geared toward it).
From a developmental perspective, all apes have a late reproductive maturation. They have just one pair of mammary glands, which means low fecundity (offspring usually with one or two individuals). Female apes have long gestations, giving birth to large neonates, followed by a long lactational period.
All ape infants have slow postnatal growth, leading to extensive investment in each individual, with childbearing usually shared by different group members.
Considering a spectrum between precocial (animals that are fully developed after birth, need little parental care for survival) and altricial (animals that are underdeveloped after birth, need constant parental care for survival), apes are more on the altricial part of the spectrum when compared to other mammals.
During their juvenile period, little apes often learn skills from other apes through playing, where they gain experience in feeding, avoiding predators, and, most importantly, navigating the social structures of the ape group.
Motoric features of fixed action patterns like aggression display, alimentation, and sexual interest are hardwired into the apes’ bodies. Still, the appropriate display of those traits is learned from the ape group, with ape biology being extremely flexible to accommodate, first and foremost, belonging.
Moving to the realm of behavior associated with biology, things start to get even more interesting.
All apes have their reproductive traits fully developed when they reach adulthood (obviously not considering diseases). This means that apes are not eusocial (in eusocial animals, only a few members of the group are biologically able to reproduce, with all its other members cooperating for the reproduction and care of the offspring, like ants, bees, and wasps, some shrimp, and some rodents). Consequently, all rank systems within ape groups are socially constructed.
All apes present flexible and complex social organizations, often overlapping social models, with all individuals being relevant to the ape group even when they are no longer in their reproductive years.
Apes can organize themselves into
- hierarchies – a group that performs daily and seasonal activities together whose components agree on a ranking system that formalizes unequal access to limited resources
- fission-fusion societies – the size and composition of the group changes according to the tasks the members have to perform daily and seasonally
- Solitary and social – solitary group members interact occasionally, ranging through an extensive territory.
When in the wild, all animals behave as part of their ecosystem, contributing to their reproduction and survival as a whole. In the case of apes, they are agroforestry farmers (through their dietary habits, they promote the spread of various plants) and occasional predators.
All apes present some degree of tool use to assist them on daily tasks that they learned from observing other animals (several studies confirm that learning from observing other animal species is hardwired in animal behavior).
Some of the tools apes use have an important role in foraging for food and shelter, while others are simply rituals performed for social belonging that are often passed through generations without making any other practical sense (like orangutans that bathe with soap).
Grounding the human story in shared biological reality can offer a refreshing perspective for human societies in general. Cultivating this kind of scientific curiosity makes it far easier to bridge gaps, foster empathy, and design a more integrated world.
As a species, especially over the last few years, human societies worldwide are very divided and polarized. Maybe biology can give a clue as to how we can all – again- feel that we belong.
All references for this article can be found here.