Animal and Human Communication - Essay Example

? HONEST IN ANIMAL AND HUMAN COMMUNICATION Honest In Animal and Human Communication Communication is so general and it entails cue, information, response, and signal. Cue is regarded as the act of behavior of other organisms which is only effective when the effect has evolved to be affected by the act (Reby and McComb, 2003). Information in communication simply means uncertainty reduction. On the hand, response is the effect of an act portrayed by another organism which could have evolved to be affected since a different act had evolved to affect this act (Reby and McComb, 2003). Lastly, signal would be described as an act that that influences behavior of other organisms and which could have evolved as a result of some effects (Manning and Dawkins, 1998). Signal is also considered as communication. Signal would refer to act which would alter the behavior of another organism which could have evolved because of that act and is only meaningful if the receiver’s effect evolvement is noticeable. Aspects of information and signal are the basis of communication (Manning and Dawkins, 1998). Information is the functional relationship that occurs between an input and the organism. It is one of the main factors of communication. Information as a process is said to involve conditional systems and it’s the relationship between the inputs and the conditional processing systems that for the honesty in a communication (Martin and Bateson, 2007). For instance, in a case of a bat, the bat is designed to process inputs as well as outputs deliver. In other words, bats portray a typical situation which involves a processing information system. The processing information system is geared towards achieving navigation and prey capturing in the outside world (Manning and Dawkins, 1998). Evolutionary Approaches to Communication There are several approaches to evolution in communication. Darwin was one of the first scientists that applied evolution theory to illustrate behavioral sciences in organic organisms. The field of evolutionary behavioral science has been expanding everyday (Buss, 2005). Communication is basically behavior. Evolutionary theory is very vital when it comes to analysis of the functions of behavior and the honesty in a given behavior (Buss, 2005). The evolutionary theories emerged with intention of disclosing the diversity and variations that occur in life. Various behaviors that are observed in organisms human included appear to be oriented for specific purposes (Buss, 2004). In other words, the behaviors are designed to carry out some specific functions. Some of the theories such as Darwin’s, offer explanations regarding this phenomenon through natural selection (Buss, 2004). Evolutionary theory is actually a theory of design. Design in this case, involves both in-organic and organic creations (Martin and Bateson, 2007). Using an example of a robot, a robot is designed in such a way that it would move across a room while avoiding several obstacles that might be in a room (Buss, 2004). A bat just like a robot is designed in such a way that it determines the direction of a prey through evaluating on which of its ears the echo reaches first. The bat’s ear folds are designed to help it determine its vertical positioning in regard to the angle at which the sound falls on the ear. It is this echo that also acts as an indicative of food (Krebs and Davies, 1993). The sounds emitted by a bat are at very high frequencies and very large volumes. A bat would temporarily deafen itself when emitting such sounds and then would open its ears in order to receive echo. Deafening the ear helps the bat to counter the high frequency that these sounds have (Krebs and Davies, 1993). As these evolutionary approaches put it, organisms are involved in struggle for survival. As a result, these organisms encounter several problems in life that adversely affect their chances for survival (McGregor, 2006). It is actually the heritable traits that are possessed by the organisms that help them out of these problems. Since these traits vary from one organism to the other, some organisms have higher chance of survival than others (Krebs and Davies, 1997). Natural selection would be termed as economic implications of the communication between problems of survival and heritable traits (Hill, 1993). These traits may be referred to as adaptation behaviors since they enable an organism to adapt to a particular environment. The key principle behind natural selection of adaptations is therefore struggle for life. Lamarckian evolution approach provides vital explanation on the idea of the inheritance of traits that are acquirable (Hill, 1993). In life history theory and early fertility, socio-economic status is the main influencer of the population level distinctions through ecological hardship and risk. Females in harder and highly risky regions are known to adopt early fertility strategies. This would be portrayed in physiological and behavioral decisions (Hill, 1993). As evolutionary approaches would put it, the early fertility under their ecological conditions would enhance fitness as prevailing risk is informative of expected risks in future. In other words, resources accumulation would not be depended upon (Krebs and Davies, 1993). Biological evolution basically relies on these genes that organisms acquire. According to these biological evolutionary approaches, there have to be new variations as produced by effect of mutation for evolutionary change to occur. These variations need to be selected to enable other changes to occur too (Martin and Bateson, 2007). For instance, it is an obvious notion that the offspring of a weightlifter would inherit their father’s gym which would lead them to developing muscles. As a matter of fact, this notion is true. The children would inherit the gym and in turn pass the genes to subsequent generations. The characteristic of large muscles would appear dominant in this population (Krebs and Davies, 1997). In Darwin’s formulation, human mental function is related to animal functioning in some aspects. In Darwin’s own example, different birds are known to have different beaks (Evans, 2007). The specific beaks are adapted to specific dietary needs that are normally caused by the variations in the environment. Birds with unsuitable beaks face the danger of being wiped out as their beaks would not allow them to eat (Evans, 2007). These variations and gene inheritance, led other scientists to establish facts about intrinsic and extrinsic inheritance. In the example of the gym, the children are said to have extrinsically inherited the gym since the gym is not part of their composition (Fox, 2000). But, gene variants that are responsible for large muscles development as a result of exercise are said to be intrinsically inherited since they are part of the children. Therefore, extrinsic inheritance cannot cause variations to intrinsically inherited facts (Fox, 2000). The division that exists between intrinsic and extrinsic inheritance is the basis for evolutionary biology and in turn have implications for the behavioral changes. Gene products as well as gene expression modifier should be considered as extrinsic. Anything that is created by genes forms the basis of the gene’s selection (Dawkins, 1989). Genomes contain some responses to the ecology that are needed by organisms. Genomes in fact provide the ability to handle specific ecology provided the production of rigid and fixed responses to the ability to learn is guaranteed (Crick, 1970). Apart from the genetics, there is the epigenetic. Epigenetic would refer to the mechanisms that are involved in final development of a living organism. In other words, it is a theory about how final adult form is established (Nettle, 2009). The main idea in epigenetic is that extrinsic factors are capable of influencing expression of genes. At times, these effects of epigenetic would be passed on to the next generation without actually affecting the composition of DNA that forms these genes (Nettle, 2009). For instance, liver cells, kidney cells, and skin cells among other cells have been noted to have identical DNA sequence even though they constantly produce daughter cells of the same kind. Therefore, extrinsic factors are responsible in the alteration of gene expression through the epigenetic inheritance systems (Dawkins, 1989). The systems alter RNA functions in turn, would alter also alter chromatin packaging of DNA as well as the attachments of methyl group to cytosine (Dawkins, 1989). As behavioral scientists would put it, epigenetic inheritance system and other biological systems, through their interaction with the environment, have led to organism-typical behavior that develops from the time of conception to time of death (Martin and Bateson, 2007). For example, in a case of risk during maternal care, it is important to increase the sensitivity of stress response in an organism’s offspring and the organism itself. Since, the epigenetic mechanisms would process information as well as problem solving for the organism. This process would form adaptations for the organism (Martin and Bateson, 2007). Models of Communication and Honesty in Communication There are several models in communication. To verify these models and the honesty they portray, several experiments as well as observations have been used. These include; maternal care, sex selection in animals and sex selection in human. Maternal Care In the experiments that have been conducted to verify maternal care and epigenetic, rodent models have given the best verification. The experiments were conducted to verify the role of licking and grooming behavior in pups’ development (Martin and Bateson, 2007). When pups are denied the chance of attaining the required amount of interactions with their mothers, the pups would resort to nursing their own pups limitedly while engaging in less grooming toward them. It is clear that this maternal strategy is inheritable (Martin and Bateson, 2007). The same results have been recorded in Long-Evans rats. In these rats, the percentage of grooming engaged in by mothers though a stable individual trait varies from between these rats. The same trend is inherited by their offspring (Nettle, 2009). Daughters of low-frequency grooming mothers would in future transform into low grooming mothers to their young ones (Martin and Bateson, 2007). When extrinsic factors transform epigenetic inheritance into different variants form, these variants are then passed on to the next generations but at relatively more increased frequency. This process in itself is an evolutionary change. Epigenetic systems are major factors that greatly affect the brain development and functioning (Maynard and Harper, 2003). Several nuclei in the brain are also attributed to the activation of maternal care besides the medical peptic area (Maynard and Harper, 2003). For instance, female rats known for low grooming and lactating have also low oxytocin receptor that bind the medial proptic area. Oxytocin as a neurohormone is responsible for the reduction of social inhibition that facilitates affiliatve as well as kin bonding (Maynard and Harper, 2003). It has been proven that expression of gene is affected by low maternal care. The expression of gene is vital in the establishment of the neurobiology of maternal care (Dawkins, 1989). Low maternal care effect would be felt in the passive stress response experienced by the young ones. Through the epigenetic inheritance of the maternal care, the response could also be carried onto subsequent generations (Dawkins, 1989). There is high probability that postnatal behavior such as social enrichment may transform low maternal acre to high maternal care through attenuation of the HPA response. All this is possible since methylation process is reversible. Therefore, an organism is able to react to the environment as well as prepare its offspring for a similar future (Dawkins, 1989). Epigenetic network systems are indeed comparable to brains since the systems are effectively designed and capable of learning specific aspects of the ecology. The systems are also capable of responding to the ecological aspects (Dawkins, 1989). Sex Selection in Animals Since there is often unequal parental investment, choosing a mate is quite important. For males, desertion of partnerships is quite to the male’s low investment. Females have established strategies to of minimizing desertion (Alcock, 2005). The females have high chances of finding good quality males in regard to the females’ reproductive interests. The female choice is mostly based on sexual competence, good genes and parental ability (Alcock, 2005). Based on good genes, females highly prefer older males since the older males are perceived to have higher survival potential. In the competition for mate, male winners express high ability to compete. Most of these aspects are attributed to genetic compatibility leading to either assortive mating or disassortive mating (Alcock, 2005). Assortive mating is a situation in which there occurs a significant tendency for organisms to mate with partners having similar phenotype to them. A good example of assortive mating can be seen in lesser snow goose (Manning and Dawkins, 1998). A large percentage of all birds has been proved to mate with partners have the same color as themselves. Assortive mating may also lead to choosing of a partner of the same body size (Manning and Dawkins, 1998). As would be expected, all organisms of the same sex share a favored size although not all these organisms would be successful in exercising this disposition. For instance, if larger and more fecund females are preferred in a given species, only competitively successful males would succeed to mate with these females as a consequence (Darwin, 1985). The evolutionary consequences of assortive mating in a given species of animals majorly rely on the hereditary of the character traits upon which the mating takes place. For a high heritability, the progeny of the parents have higher likelihood of gaining the genes that are responsible for that phenotype (Manning and Dawkins, 1998). Assortive mating within a species ensures the maintenance of genetic variation among the animals (Manning and Dawkins, 1998). As a consequence of assortive mating, the dominant males grab the favored phenotype bearing females. The rest of the members of the species would then be left to mate amongst one another. These members would pair up with individuals bearing the same phenotype as them. Smaller and less fecund females would pair with less dominant males (Stenseth and S?tre, 2004). Sex Selection in Human The same trend of mating is also witnessed in humans. The possible result of sexual selection in human is sexual dimorphism. Human males are known to have relatively greater upper body strength, height, mass, deeper voices and juvenile mortality. The males also bear later sexual maturity among other traits such as lower levels of fats deposits on their hips and buttocks (Barrett, Dunbar and Lycett, 2001). Following the male-female differences the aspect of selection of good genes cannot be evaded by human. Different body parts in female perform different role in influencing males’ behaviors (Darwin, 1985). Humans; males and females fell that female breasts are attractive and as a result, very essential determinants of femininity. Breasts play a big role in sexual selection model. For instance, symmetry of the breasts is regarded as fertility indicator hence good gene estimator (Darwin, 1975). Regarding competition and mate preference, male status among other factor would be considered as the main influencers of sex selection in human. Females tend to choose well-resourced males to assist them care for their progeny after birth. This is so because the females believe that it would better the chances for their young ones. As a matter of fact, well-resourced males are known to bear high status individualism (Barrett, Dunbar and Lycett, 2001). Dominance in human is mainly influenced by size among other factors. Human males are relatively bigger than human females. There other factors that are also known to affect dominance in human include rank, amount of intelligence and friendships (Zahavis, 1997). Females who depict greater elements of fecundity are more likely to attract males since greater fecundity is related to higher ability of rearing children. In most cases, males get attracted to females at the age of 13 to 45 years (Manning and Dawkins, 1998). This is the period during which a female is considered fertile. Females at their 20s are said to be at the reproductive-potential peak and are also considered the group that males get attracted to the most (Manning and Dawkins, 1998). Various studies that have been carried out indicate that women prefer to marry men that are slightly older than them. Age is regarded as a good estimate of fitness and may be; disease resistance in males (Barrett, Dunbar and Lycett, 2001). Also, males are known to mature sexually later than the females. The age gap may also be due to the quest of women to find a man that is better in copulation. However, females would also not choose men that are too old and likely to pass on before the end of child rearing period (Barrett, Dunbar and Lycett, 2001). Human personal advertisements such as “lonely hearts” have also contributed to human choice regarding sex selection. The adverts normally carry the information about what the female is looking for. Though used as last resort, the people involved in these advertisements are ruthlessly honest (Seyfarth and Cheney, 2003). In these advertisements, male offer more financial security while looking for indicators of physical characteristics. On the hand, females are known to advertise their physical features while looking for indices of financial security (Manning and Dawkins, 1998). Hips and breasts in females are indicators of child bearing ability. A woman with large breasts and broad hips is expected to have high ability and success in bearing children (Seyfarth and Cheney, 2003). However, the depositing of fat on hips and breasts might be considered a dishonest signal for a male (Reby and McComb, 2003). The fat deposits would be suggesting greater potential which would not be the case. Depositing fats around these parts is a cheaper solution for females when compared to developing larger hips at skeletal status (Reby and McComb, 2003). Another aspect that would be considered to influence communication in human is fluctuating asymmetry (Martin and Bateson, 2007). Fluctuating asymmetry as defined by scientists refers to bilateral traits for which the population asymmetrical average is considered null. Fluctuating asymmetry could be used to determine mutations, parasitic infections as well as environmental stress. In other words, fluctuating asymmetry assists someone to establish negative fitness traits in another person. A person with high fluctuating asymmetry is expected to bear poor qualities (Martin and Bateson, 2007). Many scientists researchers have established that most of the psychological proximate mechanisms portrayed in human are attributed to sexual selection (Nowicki and Searcy, 2005). Even the rise in brain volume from 450 cubic centimeters to 1300 cubic centimeters is explainable using sexual selection (Seyfarth and Cheney, 2003). Through the sexual selection, females would be eager to have better understanding of the male output. As a result, the females have had their brains grow as they pile sexual selection pressure on males bear stronger cognitive capabilities (Seyfarth and Cheney, 2003). Most of the art as well as literature are said to be produced by young males in their attempt to display some form of courtship. For instance, in the Protean Behavior, there are numerous advantages attached to this kind of randomly changing behavior (Martin and Bateson, 2007). In a situation where a person has a predictable predator evasion plan, the predator would not take long to formulate a plan of attacking such person (Martin and Bateson, 2007). But for a random behavior, the predator has harder work in developing a plan to attack the person. In other words, selective retention has to be supported by well-researched strategies of judgment as well as decision making (Martin and Bateson, 2007). It is evident that protean behavior is capable of increasing chances for survival. Hence, fitness as an indicator of the abilities in protean, is likely to be favored through good sex selection (Seyfarth and Cheney, 2003). Creative social behaviors may also be influenced by sex selection. For instance, creativity in humor might be considered as protean display geared at strengthening courtship (McGregor and Peake, 2000). In conclusion, in order to achieve honesty in communication, the signal will have to be designed in such a way that it would have an effect on the receiver. On the other hand, the receiver’s response should also be designed in a situation that it would be capable of utilizing the signal appropriately. References Alcock, J. (2005). Animal Behavior: An Evolutionary Approach. Sunderland MA: Sinauer Associates Inc. Alcock, J. (2005). The evolution of communication. In Animal Behavior: An Evolutionary Approach. Sunderland MA: Sinauer Associates Inc. 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