Robin Dunbar

It looks very much like what humans do, but I think the...

There is an argument for saying, actually, the best way to study any system, be it cosmology or physics or humans or animals, is actually to immerse yourself in it so much that you actually understand it.

intimately from the inside yourself, then you have a much better sense of how the thing works and that in some ways the argument that we should be back off from anthropomorphism wasn't a great idea because it divorced you from what the animals are actually doing.

Oh, I know.

But I think at the end of the day, one has to be a little... I mean, anthropomorphism is a two-edged sword, is the risk, because you can go overboard completely on it.

So we have to... If you're going to study these things, you have to be able to live in this sort of dual world, as it were, where you can exploit this kind of intuitive understanding that we have of how organisms...

relate to each other, but at the same time step back and kind of look at it more hard-nosed and sharp.

And I suppose the hard-nosed and sharp in the end has to come down to... I don't think we'll ever get at it, studying it with behaviour, maybe, I don't know.

But my guess is...

We'll only really know if we can pick it up in the same bits of the brain firing up and the same surges of hormones in the system, in the brain, so things like oxytocin and endorphins and stuff, and the way those flood the brain during the course of interactions.

And they are the same.

I mean, the endorphin system and the oxytocin system are the same in monkeys and humans.

The root of it.

Because, I mean, bear in mind, at the end of the day, we have this problem with ourselves.

In other words, we tend to see the world as being populated by people like me.

I understand, because that's the only reference point I have, is how I think and feel inside me.

And we kind of generalise that onto other people and assume they're operating in the same way.

Robin?

That's really difficult, for males anyway, because they usually end up in fights which they lose very badly.

you can be a goat if you want so well they're as bad actually i know i spent a lot of time working on a very small miniature antelope called a clipspringer which is intensely pair bonded it's the most pair bonded loyally pair bonded species anywhere in the world i think it's such a relaxed cozy life that they have if you see one of them