Book Review: The social behaviour of older animals

Before Diane Fossey, even before Jane Goodall, there was Anne Innis Dagg. Anne went to Africa in 1956 to study wildlife, possibly the first foreigner of either gender to do so, except for colonialists who were posted there. She earned her PhD studying the gaits of large mammals, including the giraffe, and had a raft of publications, including the giraffe species account in Mammalian Species (the apex achievement, for a mammalogist), and books that are still the definitive references on giraffe and camels. She became an expert on mammalian (mainly ungulate) locomotion and gaits. In 1973 she and a female colleague set off with a guide and camel driver into the Sahara (it was no safer then than now!) to study camels and their books and papers are still key references. As sort of a sideline to her research and teaching, she began challenging gender bias in biology – and who better to do so than one who had to masquerade as a man just to be accepted onto the property of a South African farmer whose wild giraffe population would be the focus of her first study? In scholarly articles and books, she destroyed gender stereotypes and challenged sociobiological theories (for example, that lion and leaf monkey males always kill young that are not their own so they can have sex with their mothers and pass on their genes; and females living past reproductive age are a useless drain on resources and contrary to evolutionary theory).

“The social behaviour of older animals” (The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore: 2009) is scholarly (and should be on the reading list of every biology student), but written in a very readable style accessible to the lay public. In it, she explores the contributions of older, and especially post-reproductive, animals to their families and societies in an evolutionary context. She shows why, for a wide range of animals, but concentrating on mammals and especially primates, the resources consumed by post-reproductive males and females are more than balanced by their roles as teachers, leaders and mediators; and how their knowledge and wisdom increase the survival chances of their families and societies.

Dagg and other researchers have largely dispelled the ideas of the sociobiologists (although many don't know it yet), which define human behaviour in terms of self-interest. Selfishness is only part (and often wrong, at that) of a much broader view that is not yet in focus. The overthrow of sociobiology has left a sort of vacuum in our understanding of us, from which a new paradigm must soon emerge. Biologists are beginning to explore the evolutionary basis for such human qualities (I'm not saying they are exclusively human) as altruism, compassion, ethical behaviour, moral values, and appreciation of art and beautify in all of its forms. Their results will be most enlightening.

Selected books and key papers by Anne Innes Dagg

Dagg, A. I. 1971. Giraffa camelopardalis. Mammalian Species 5:1-8.
Dagg, A. I. 1973. Gaits in mammals. Mammal Review 3:135-154.
DAGG AI and JB Foster (1976): The Giraffe: Its Biology, Behavior and Ecology. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York
Gauthier-Pilters, H., and A. I. Dagg. 1981. The camel. Its evolution, ecology, behavior, and relationship to man. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Dagg, A. I. 1978. Camel quest: summer research on the Saharan camel. Otter Press, Waterloo, Ontario.
Dagg, A. I. 1983. Harems and other horrors: sexual bias in behavioral biology. Otter Press, Waterloo, Ontario.
Dagg, A. I. 1998. Infanticide by male lions hypothesis: A fallacy influencing research into human behavior. American Anthropologist 100:940-950.
Dagg, A. I. 2000. The Infanticide Hypothesis: A Response to the Response. American Anthropologist 102:831-834.
Dagg, A. I. 2005. Love of shopping is not a gene: problems with Darwinian psychology. Black Rose Books, Montreal.
Dagg, A. I. 2006. Pursuing giraffe: a 1950s adventure. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Waterloo, Ontario.
Dagg, A. I. 2009. The social behavior of older animals. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.