Behaviour

Behaviour - I am pretty sure that babies look cute to almost all of us. Be it human babies or babies of some other species such as puppies or kittens, they all appear cute at their early ages, but this cuteness starts to reduce relatively as they grow older. Ever wondered why this happens? Why does our brain perceives animals in their early ages so benign, cute, and heart soothing? What could the significance of this behaviour be? What is the biological explanation/reasoning behind this? The answer to this lies in the evolution of behaviour. The babies are so weak at that age that they cannot protect themselves, and hence to reduce the aggression in others towards them, this characteristic has been wired into our systems. Every organism has certain behaviour that they display in various occasions which might or might not be cognitive. Even the single celled primitive bacteria have some certain behaviours that they display at certain events (see “Rock-Paper-Scissors in Bacteria”). Almost all of the behaviour observed in virtually every organism on this planet could more or less be explained by the set of three rules which is based on the fact that each organism tries to pass on its copy of genes to next generation as much and as efficiently as possible. Most of the behaviours are the result of this need for conservation and efficient/high payoff passage of genetic information onto the next generations. The three empirical rules that govern the most of the behaviours are, (1) individual selection, (2) kin selection, and (3) reciprocal altruism.

According to individual selection, every organism tries to behave in a manner so as to ensure as much reproductive success as possible. There is no such thing as group selection or behaving for thegood of the species. Those of us who might have heard about honey bees and their caste system (queens, drones and workers) might have wondered that if their is no such thing as the good of the species/group, then why do worker bees even exist? Why do they let themselves be used at all? The answer to this behaviour of bees lies in the second rule, kin selection. According to kin selection, an individual may reduce its reproductive success to enhance the reproductive success of its relatives (kin) as a function of degree of relatedness.

It means that since the genetic information in an individual is more and more common with a relative (~100% in twins, ~50% in siblings and each of the parents, and ~12.5% in cousins), more probable it is that the individual may take up the chance of reducing its own reproductive success to increase the reproductive success of its kin. And since the worker bees are the progeny of queen bees, which have high level of genetic similarity to the worker bees and are also carrying good genetic information, hence worker bees reduce their reproductive success to increase the reproductive success of their kin, through which their own genetic information is being conserved. The same principle lies in various other elegant behaviour observed in organisms (usually higher level organisms but not necessarily), including humans.

The third and the last piece of the empirical rules leading to behaviours is the reciprocal altruism. It is about the cooperation observed in non-relative individuals (may not even be of the same strain or species). As the proverb from John Heywood goes, two heads are better than one (may not necessarily have a head though, LOL!), i.e., more the cooperating individuals, more easily a task could be accomplished. This is one of the very interesting empirical rule which creates the opportunity for cheating. There is a very interesting game theory problem, called “Prisoners’ Dilemma” in which, if the two individuals (prisoners) cooperate they get some reward/payoff (such as reduced sentence period), but if one cheats and the other cooperates then the cheater will get more benefited (such as getting free) than cooperating (reduced sentence) and the person who was cooperating will be penalized (extended period of sentence) and vice-versa, and if both of them cheat then both will be penalized but less than getting cheated (small extension of sentenced period).

As clear from the rules of the game, cooperating is the best and safest solution, but cheating is much more rewarding. And moreover, if one decides to cooperate and gets cheated upon, then the individual will even be penalized, and both of them cheating is still better than getting cheated upon. There could also be a possibility of multiple occasions of making the choice of cooperating or cheating (such as, there is a piece of information that the individuals have which the prison warden requires and hence is giving multiple occasions of choice until either one or both of them cheat). So,what would you decide in this game? What strategy will you choose if you have only one opportunity or have multiple opportunities? Do let us know your strategy in the comment section below, and if good amount of people respond, we would be happy to use those responses and provide everyone with the bulk result of those responses and try to explain what the results may signify.

Anyway, cheating is one of the very rewarding (high payoff) strategy, but highly risky choice for the maintenance of a long term relationship. This piece of article is just to give you some taste of behavioural science. One could explore many more beautiful examples and principles of behaviour by going through any great human or animal behaviour courses or textbooks. One such course available on YouTube is this “https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL848F2368C90DDC3D”. In this course, Professor Robert Sapolsky tries to explain various bizarre yet elegant behaviours observed in the living world, and also tries to explain them with the help of the above mentioned three empirical rules (however this course also goes to more advanced level and gets interesting as it moves on).

Do also let us know your opinions on the topic of behaviour. We would be very happy to know about them.