DOCSLIB.ORG

Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer Thereby Reducing the Risk of Infanticide

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer Thereby Reducing the Risk of Infanticide mating with multiple males to confuse paternity, Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer thereby reducing the risk of infanticide. LYNNE A. ISBELL In her two later books, Hrdy focused on University of California, Davis, United States mothers and infants. Hrdy (1999) explored why humans can reproduce again before the previous ofspring is nutritionally independent, a feat not accomplished by other hominoids. Sarah Blafer Hrdy (b. 1946) is a highly recog- She concluded that such rapid reproduction nized pioneer in modernizing our understanding could have only evolved in species that are of the evolutionary basis of female behavior in cooperative breeders, who, by defnition, obtain both nonhuman and human primates. Hrdy help from others to care for and feed their young. earned her B.A. (1969) from Radclife College Tis book won the W. W. Howells Book Award and her Ph.D. (1975) in anthropology from from the Biological Anthropology Section of Harvard University. Her early work (Hrdy 1977), the American Anthropological Association in anchored by a feld study of Hanuman langurs 2001. In her next book, Hrdy (2009) pursued the (Semnopithecus entellus)inIndia,arguedthat implications of helpers for child development. infanticide in primates (including humans) is She argued that natural selection would have an adaptive behavioral expression of sexual favored children who could more easily monitor, selection acting upon individuals, rather than assess, and engage with helpers, and that this led amaladaptivebehavioroccurringathighpop- to the uniquely human ability to be interested ulation densities. Hrdy reasoned that males can increase their breeding opportunities by in the thoughts and intentions of others, which killing unweaned, unrelated infants because the itself was a precursor to other unique human cessation of lactational amenorrhea ofen brings abilities, including language and well-developed females into estrus earlier than if the infants had coordination toward common goals. In 2012, the survived. Controversy erupted in response to book won the W.W.Howells Book Award and the Hrdy’s argument and led to her edited volume on J. I. Staley Prize from the School for Advanced infanticide with Glen Hausfater (1984). Te con- Research. troversy has largely subsided now that infanticide Hrdy has received many honors for her intel- has been confrmed in many species of primates lectual contributions, including being elected a and is most ofen committed by males unrelated member of the National Academy of Sciences to the infants killed, as Hrdy predicted. (1990), induction as a fellow of the California Using langurs as exemplars, Hrdy (1981) Academy of Sciences (1985), the Animal Behav- also argued that females are not the coy, passive ior Society (1990), the American Academy of creatures Darwin described, but are highly com- Arts and Sciences (1992), and the American petitive as well as cooperative with each other Philosophical Society (2011), being listed among in matters of interest to them. Hrdy described Discover Magazine’s “50 Most Important Women prime reproductive females rising and then in Science” (2001), and receiving the Human falling in rank as they got older, with similar Behavior and Evolution Society’s Lifetime Career rising and falling interest in the infants of others Award for Distinguished Contribution to Science with increasing age. Nonetheless, it was the older (2013) and the National Academy of Sciences females who fought hardest against infanticidal Award for Scientifc Reviewing (2014). males to protect the infants of their female rela- tives. She also considered female sexual behavior SEE ALSO: Alloparental Behavior; Infanticide; toward males strategic, with females actively Sexual Selection Te International Encyclopedia of Primatology.EditedbyAgustínFuentes. ©2017JohnWiley&Sons,Inc.Published2017byJohnWiley&Sons,Inc. DOI: 10.1002/9781119179313.wbprim0297 2 HRDY, SARAH BLAFFER REFERENCES Hrdy, Sarah Blafer. 2009. Mothers and Others: Te Evo- lutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding.Cam- bridge: Belknap/Harvard University Press. Hausfater, Glenn, and Sarah Blafer Hrdy, eds. 1984. Infanticide: Comparative and Evolutionary Perspec- tives.NewYork:Aldine. Hrdy, Sarah Blafer. 1977. Te Langurs of Abu: Female FURTHER READING and Male Strategies of Reproduction.Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Ellison, Peter T. 2009. “A Growing Tought: A Hrdy, Sarah Blafer. 1981. Te Woman that Never Review of Sarah Blafer Hrdy, Mothers and Others: Evolved.Cambridge:HarvardUniversityPress. Te Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Under- Hrdy, Sarah Blafer. 1999. Mother Nature: A History of standing.” Evolutionary Psychology,7:442–448. Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection.NewYork: DOI:10.1177/147470490900700306. Pantheon..
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Iciumv LEADERS in ANIMAL BEHAVIOR the Second Generation
    UO1BJ3U3D iciumv LEADERS IN ANIMAL BEHAVIOR The Second Generation Edited by Lee C. Drickamer Northern Arizona University Donald A. Dewsbury University of Florida CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 13 Myths, monkeys, and motherhood: a compromising life SARAH BLAFFER HRDY Definition of an Anthropologist: "(Someone) who studies human nature in all its diversity." Carmelo Lison-Tolosana (1966) Maternal effects (1946-64) From a young age, I was interested in why humans do what they do. With little exposure to science, certainly no inkling that there might be people in the world who studied other animals in order to better understand our species, I decided to become a novelist. Born in Leaders in Animal Behavior: The Setond Generation, ed. L. C. Drickamcr & D. A. Dewsbury. Published by Cambridge University Press. CO Cambridge University Press 2010. 344 Sarah Bluffer Hrdy Texas in 1946, right at the start of the postwar baby boom, I was the third of five children - Speedway. Prevailin four daughters and finally the long-awaited son. My father's father, R. L. Blaffer, had come segregation, and pi to Texas from Hamburg via New Orleans in 1901 at the time oil was discovered at interested in the e1 Spindletop. He recognized that fortunes would be made in the oil business. He married inheritance, female Sarah Campbell from Lampasas, whose father was in that business. I was named for her, the women's moven Sarah Campbell Blaffer II. My mother's father's ancestors, the Hardins, French Huguenots Reared by a suo from Tennessee, arrived earlier, in 1825, before Texas was even a state.
    [Show full text]
  • Program for Andrew D
    Program for Andrew D. White Professors-at-Large ANNUAL REPORT to the Faculty Senate Summary of the 2010-2011 Academic Year Part 1: Overview of Committee Activities and Achievements Changes in Committee Membership The Program for Andrew D. White Professors-at-Large (PAL) held three meetings of the Selection Committee during the 2010-2011 academic year, on Tuesday, October 5 and Monday, December 13, 2010, and on March 17, 2011. The new Program Chair, Robert Raguso (Neurobiology and Behavior) began his three-year term, replacing Steven Strogatz (Applied Math). Barbara Knuth (Natural Resources) succeeded Sunny Power as the Dean of the Graduate School and Vice Provost as an ex officio member of the Selection Committee. Also, Maria Fernandez (History of Art), David Feldshuh (Theatre, Film and Dance), and Natalie Mahowald (Earth and Atmospheric Science) joined the committee as new members—also for three-year terms. Professor-at-Large Visitors and New Nominations There was a total of 17 PALs with active six-year terms during the 2010-2011 academic year. Four PALs visited Cornell this year, including Hélène Cixous (Humanities – Feminist Theory), Jeffrey McNeely (Life Sciences - Conservation), Lowery Stokes Sims (Arts – Africana Studies) and Denise Riley (Humanities – Literature & Philosophy). Lowery Stokes Sims, who visited in April, 2011, completed her tenure as an A.D. White Professor-at-Large in June 2011, as did Natalie Angier, providing space for two new nominations. Angier held the sole title of President’s Council for Cornell Women (PCCW) A.D. White Professor-at-Large. The Call for Nominations 2011 was distributed to Cornell faculty through bulk email in October, following the traditional timeline for nomination submissions and final selections.
    [Show full text]
  • Light from Underground
    book reviews books like this one will tell us, very enjoyably, that there is work to be done. I New in paperback Jeremy Gray is in the Department of Mathematics, Open University, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK. Constructing Quarks: A Sociological Nature Wars: People Vs. Pests History of Particle Physics by Mark L. Winston More on numbers by Andrew Pickering Harvard University Press, $15.95, £9.95 What is Random? Chance and Order in University of Chicago Press, $26, £18.50 Mathematics and Life The Handicap Principle: by Edward Beltrami Great Feuds in Science: Ten of the A Missing Piece of Darwin’s Springer, $22, £15.50 Liveliest Disputes Ever Puzzle by Hal Hellman by Amotz & Avishag Zahavi Imaginary Numbers: An Anthology of Wiley, $15.95, £9.99 Oxford University Press, £11.99, $16.95 Marvelous Mathematical Stories, Diversions, Poems, and Musings Science As A Way of Knowing: Consilience: The Unity of edited by William Frucht The Foundations of Knowledge Wiley, $27.95, £22.50 Modern Biology by Edward O. Wilson by John A. Moore Abacus, £8.99, $14 Harvard University Press, $18.95, £11.95 The Woman That Never Evolved Warmth Disperses and Time Passes: by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy Light from The History of Heat Harvard University Press, $16.95, £10.50 by Hans Christian von Baeyer underground Random House, $13.95, £11.99 Social Mindscapes: An Invitation to Mosaic Evolution of Subterranean Cognitive Sociology Mammals: Regression, The Gospel of Germs: Men, by Eviatar Zerubavel Progression and Global Women and the Microbe Harvard University Press, $15.95, £9.95 Convergence in Modern Life by Eviatar Nevo by Nancy Tomes Blind Watchers of the Sky Oxford University Press: 1999.
    [Show full text]
  • Experimental Removal of Sexual Selection Reverses Intersexual Antagonistic Coevolution and Removes a Reproductive Load
    Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA Vol. 96, pp. 5083–5088, April 1999 Evolution Experimental removal of sexual selection reverses intersexual antagonistic coevolution and removes a reproductive load BRETT HOLLAND* AND WILLIAM R. RICE Department of Biological Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064 Communicated by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, University of California, Davis, CA, February 8, 1999 (received for review December 14, 1998) ABSTRACT Although sexual selection can provide bene- We replaced the naturally promiscuous mating system of D. fits to both sexes, it also can be costly because of expanded melanogaster with enforced monogamy and random mate opportunities for intersexual conflict. We evaluated the role of assignment in replicate populations. This treatment removes sexual selection in a naturally promiscuous species, Drosophila the opportunity for both intersexual and intrasexual selection. melanogaster. In two replicate populations, sexual selection Therefore, we expected that natural selection would favor was removed through enforced monogamous mating with those individuals who are less harmful to their mate, indicating random mate assignment or retained in promiscuous con- the variety and strength of conflicts that remained in the trols. Monogamous mating constrains the reproductive suc- promiscuous control populations. cess of mates to be identical, thereby converting prior conflicts The treatment and control populations were given the between mates into opportunities for mutualism. Random opportunity to diverge for 32 generations before we began a mate assignment removes the opportunity for females to series of assays. We measured the level of male-induced harm choose beneficial qualities in their mate. The mating treat- to females, as well as changes in specific male traits that were ments were maintained for 47 generations, and evolution was expected a priori to have contributed to a reduction of allowed to proceed naturally within the parameters of the male-induced harm.
    [Show full text]
  • Genes, Games and the Sexes Natural Selection Selects the Fittest, but the the Sexes, Rather Than Competition
    NATURE|Vol 458|30 April 2009 SPRING BOOKS OPINION Genes, games and the sexes Natural selection selects the fittest, but the the sexes, rather than competition. fittest need not be selfish, according to two new The two tiers break the genetic deter- books. Starting from different backgrounds, minism implicit in single-tier evo- evolutionary biologist Joan Roughgarden lutionary models by granting and anthropologist and primatologist more plasticity to individu- Sarah Blaffer Hrdy converge on als of both sexes when that message regarding sex and bargaining. The main reproduction. innovation, however, The authors also converge concerns the bar- on another point. Theorists gaining process go wrong less because of the itself, and involves assumptions they know they game theory. are making, and more because of Game theory tra- the ones they don’t. Roughgarden ditionally analyses an interac- shows how modellers can agree tion between two players; in about the maths and the results of this case, a male and a female. particular models, yet, thanks to Mathematician John Nash rival metaphysical assumptions, developed its principal theo- still disagree fiercely about the rems in the 1950s, including verbal narratives they attach to the concept of Nash equi- the models. For Blaffer Hrdy, libria, whereby neither player the problem is simpler: it stems in a game can do better by largely from the sex of the research- changing strategies. John ers. She is interested in primate, ape and human Maynard-Smith introduced mothers. Early researchers were mostly men, game theory to biology — by but recently, large numbers of women scientists between the sexes.
    [Show full text]
  • Infanticide-Among-Animals.Pdf
    Infanticide Among Animals: A Review, Classification, and Examination of the Implications for the Reproductive Strategies of Females Sarah Blaffer Hrdy Peabody Museum, Harvard Unirqersity Infanticide among animals is a widespread phenomenon Within the same species, infanticide may occur in some with no unitary explanation. Although the detrimental areas but not others, as evidenced by the variable outcome for the infant is fairly constant, individuals expression of infanticidal behavior among Hanuman responsible for infanticide may or may not benefit, and langurs. At present, the most obvious factor influencing when they gain in fitness there may be considerable facultative expression of the infanticidal trait is popu- variation in how they gain. Sources of increased fitness lation density. from infanticide include: (1) exploitation of the infant Where it occurs, sexually selected infanticide is a as a resource, (2) elimination of a competitor for re- significant cause of mortality. As such, it has important sources, (3) increased maternal survival or lifetime re- implications for the evolution of behavior, particularly productive success for either mother or father by elim- for patterns of association between males and females, ination of an ill-timed, handicapped, or supernumerary for female reproductive physiology, and for the pat- infant, and, finally, (4) increased access for individuals terning of sexual receptivity by females. It is hypothe- of one sex for reproductive investment by the other sex sized that the threat posed by infanticide is one of sev- at the expense of same-sex competitors. Predicted attri- eral pressures selecting for a shift among higher butes of the perpetrators (such as sex and degree of primates away from strictly cyclical estrous receptivity relatedness to the infant), attributes of the victim (i.e., towards socially determined or situation-dependent re- age and vulnerability), as well as schedule of gain, vary ceptivity.
    [Show full text]
  • The Evolution of Darwinian Sexualities
    BJHS Themes (2021), 1–23 doi:10.1017/bjt.2021.7 RESEARCH ARTICLE The evolution of Darwinian sexualities Erika Lorraine Milam* History Department, Princeton University *Corresponding author: Erika Milam, Email: [email protected] Abstract Charles Darwin’s Descent of Man was suffused with questions of courtship, mating and sex. Following in his footsteps, biologists throughout the twentieth century interrogated the sexual behaviour of humans and animals. This paper charts the fate of evolutionary theories of sexuality to argue that – despite legal and social gains of the past century – when biologists used sexual selection as a tool for theorizing the evolution of homosexual behaviour (which happened only rarely), the effect of their theories was to continuously reinscribe normative heterosexuality. If, at the end of the nineteenth century, certain sex theorists viewed homosexuality as a marker of intermediate sex, by the late twentieth a new generation of evolutionary theorists idealized gay men as hyper- masculine biological males whose sexual behaviours were uncompromised by the necessity of accommodating women’s sexual preferences. In both cases, normative assumptions about gender were interwoven with those about sexuality. By the twenty-first century, animal exemplars were again mobilized alongside data gathered about human sexual practices in defence of gay rights, but this time by creating the opportunity for naturalization without recourse to biological determinism. Charles Darwin’s Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex was suffused with questions of courtship, mating and sex.1 Darwin’s reconstruction of animal history positioned ani- mals as vital sources of information on the development of the sexes and the mechanisms of courtship.
    [Show full text]
  • Primatology Is Politics by Other Means
    Primatology Is Politics by Other Means Donna J. Haraway History of Consciousness Department University of California Santa Cruz 1. The Field: Origins Adam and Eve, Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday, Tarzan and Jane: these are the figures who tell white western people about the origins and foundations of sociality. The stories make claims about "human" nature, "human" society. Western stories take the high ground from which man -- impregnable, potent, and endowed with a keen vision of the whole -- can survey the field. The sightings generate the aesthetic-political dialectic of contemplation/exploitation, the distorting mirror twins so deeply embedded in the history of science. But the momentof origins in these western stories is solitary. Adam was alone, Robinson was alone, Tarzan was alone; they lacked human company. But each couple, each solution to the illogical insufficiency of a rational autonomous self, was fraught with the contradictions of domination that have provided the narrative materials of "the West's" accounts of its devastating collective history. The tragedy of the "West" is rooted in number: One is too few and two are too many. Memory, the origin, is about a lost oneness, sameness. The telos is about perfect union. The process of mediating the beginning and the end, called history, is a tale of escalating domination toward the apocalypse of the final transcendence of difference. Until the end, difference is dialectical, dynamic antagonism; at the end, difference is transubstantiation and communion. This essay in the history of zoology and bio-anthropology is part of a world-wide oppositional effort, rooted in social movements like feminism and anti-racism, to retell these stories as a strategy to break their power.
    [Show full text]
  • Citation for Sarah Blaffer Hrdy (Delivered by Rebecca Dobkins) Willamette University Salem, Oregon May 16, 2010
    Citation for Sarah Blaffer Hrdy (Delivered by Rebecca Dobkins) Willamette University Salem, Oregon May 16, 2010 President Pelton, Trustees, Graduates, and Guests: on behalf of the faculties of Willamette University, I am honored to present Sarah Blaffer Hrdy for the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters. Sarah Hrdy is a gifted storyteller--the story she tells is that of the human family and our primate kin over the long stretch of our evolutionary past. She graduated summa cum laude from Radcliffe College in 1969 and earned her doctorate in Anthropology from Harvard in 1975. Throughout her career as an anthropologist, Hrdy has sought to understand the human capacity for caring for others, how this capacity came to be, and the role it plays in the development of the human experience. In her 2009 book, Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding, Hrdy argues that the emergence of cooperative child-rearing—the raising of offspring by an extended family—was essential to the development of many of the traits we have come to associate with being human: the ability to cooperate, to empathize with others, and to trust and rely on one another. Her argument challenges long-held notions that aggression, warfare, and competition played the major roles in our evolution. The book, called “mind-expanding and paradigm-shifting,” confirms Hrdy as one of the world’s most influential evolutionary scientists. In addition to Mothers and Others, Hrdy is the author of four other books, including the award-winning Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection, which established her as a leading scientific authority on motherhood.
    [Show full text]
  • The Death Mother As Nature's Shadow: Infanticide, Abandonment
    Psychological Perspectives A Quarterly Journal of Jungian Thought ISSN: 0033-2925 (Print) 1556-3030 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/upyp20 The Death Mother as Nature’s Shadow: Infanticide, Abandonment, and the Collective Unconscious Daniela F. Sieff To cite this article: Daniela F. Sieff (2019) The Death Mother as Nature’s Shadow: Infanticide, Abandonment, and the Collective Unconscious, Psychological Perspectives, 62:1, 15-34, DOI: 10.1080/00332925.2019.1564513 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00332925.2019.1564513 Published online: 03 Jul 2019. Submit your article to this journal View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=upyp20 Learn more about Daniela Sieff and her work at: https://danielasieff.com/ Psychological Perspectives, 62: 15–34, 2019 Copyright # C. G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles ISSN: 0033-2925 print / 1556-3030 online DOI: 10.1080/00332925.2019.1564513 The Death Mother as Nature’s Shadow: Infanticide, Abandonment, and the Collective Unconscious Daniela F. Sieff The archetypal Death Mother symbolizes women whose behavior or feelings threaten the lives of their children. Western culture, however, believes that women evolved to love their children instinctively and selflessly, and that women who abandon, neg- lect, harm, or kill their children are unnatural. Thus the Death Mother has no place in our cultural consciousness. This can be problematic, because it means that the Death Mother is buried deep in the shadow and surrounded with shame. n this article, I introduce Jungian and psychodynamic perspectives on the Death IMother archetype, and then focus on evolutionary and anthropological perspectives.
    [Show full text]
  • The Evolutionary Review ART SCIENCE CULTURE
    the evolutionary review ART SCIENCE CULTURE EDITORIAL BOARD Executive Editor Alice Andrews, State University of New York at New Paltz Senior Editors John A. Johnson, University of Pennsylvania Michelle Scalise Sugiyama, University of Oregon Associate Editors Scott Barry Kaufman, New York University William Tooke, State University of New York at Plattsburgh Michael Mills, Loyola Marymount University Yasha Hartberg, Binghamton University Creative Writing Editor Leslie Heywood, Binghamton University ADVISORY BOARD David P. Barash, University of Washington Tim Horvath, Chester College of New England Brian Boyd, University of Auckland, New Zealand Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, University of California at Davis David Buss, University of Texas at Austin John A. Johnson, Pennsylvania State University at Anne Campbell, Durham University, UK DuBois Rose Sokol Chang, State University of New York at Scott Barry Kaufman, New York University New Paltz Daniel Kruger, University of Michigan Simon Baron-Cohen, Cambridge University, UK Geoffrey F. Miller, University of New Mexico at Helena Cronin, London School of Economics, UK Albuquerque Carl N. Degler, Stanford University emeritus Jeff Miller, State University of New York at New Frans de Waal, Emory University Paltz Ellen Dissanayake, University of Washington Nando Pelusi, Psychology Today Dylan Evans, University College Cork, Ireland Steven Peterson, Pennsylvania State University at Helen Fisher, Rutgers University Harrisburg Maryanne L. Fisher, Saint Mary's University Steven Pinker, Harvard University Robin Fox, Rutgers University Steven M. Platek, Georgia Gwinnett College Justin R. Garcia, Binghamton University John Price, Oxford University, UK Glenn Geher, State University of New York at New Daniel Rancour-Laferriere, University of California Paltz at Davis Jonathan Gottschall, Washington and Jefferson Gad Saad, Concordia University, Canada College David Livingstone Smith, University of New Jonathan Haidt, University of Virginia England Torben Grodal, University of Copenhagen, Murray Smith, University of Kent, UK Denmark H.
    [Show full text]
  • The Woman That Never Evolved.Pdf
    The Woman That Never Evolved SARAHBLAFFER HRDY Haivard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts, cmd London, England 1981 Contents 1. Some Women That Never Evolved 1 2. An Initial Inequality 16 3. Monogamous Primates: A Special Case 34 4. A Climate for Dominant Females 59 5. The Pros and Cons of Males 72 6. Competition and Bonding among Females 96 7. The Primate.Origins of Female Sexuality 131 8. A Disputed Legacy 160 Afterword 1 89 Taxonomy of the Primate Order 193 Notes 200 Index 243 Natural selection is not always good, and depends (see Darwin) on many caprices of very foolish animals. GEORGE ELIOT, 1867 1 Some Women That Never Evolved Biology, it is sometimes thought, has worked against women. Assumptions about the biological nature of men and women have frequently been used to justify submissive and inferior female roles and a double standard in sexual morality. It has been assumed that men are by nature better equipped to con­ duct the affairs of civilization, women to perpetuate the spe­ cies; that men are the rational, active members of society, women merely passive, fecund, and nurturing. Hence, many readers will open a book about the biology of female primates with considerable apprehension. Feminists in particular may rebel at the thought of looking to the science of biology for information that bears on the human condition. They may be put off by the fact that among our nearest relations, the other primates, the balance of power favors males in most species. Yet, if they persist, readers may be surprised by what else they learn concerning their distant cousins and, by inference, their own remote ancestresses.
    [Show full text]