If you’re walking around Hoboken this Valentine’s Day, it’s likely you’ll run into a pigeon blocking the sidewalk. Before you get upset with our city-dwelling birds, take a moment to appreciate their perspective on love: pigeons form tight social bonds in flocks and even mate for life. In fact, this is a quality typical of many birds. Kevin McGowan, an ornithologist at Cornell University who studies crows, says, “I would suspect they do have affection for each other…it’s not going to be the same as what humans have, but I suspect it’s close enough that we’d recognize it.”
Studying how animals interact is a complex and highly specialized task. Researchers often point to how different the way species mate is as an indication of how hard it is to make generalizations about the field. Furthermore, what we think of as “love” in humans revolves around a very specific set of chemicals, which can’t always be observed in animals. Nonetheless, animals are capable of affection towards one another. There are many reported cases of animals acting with compassion and love for others, and ecologists and neurobiologists alike have studied these cases specifically.
Most discussions about animal affection revolve around one quality we usually don’t associate with nature: altruism. Scientists have debated for decades whether animals are capable of performing actions that are truly altruistic, that is, if they can perform a behavior that benefits others at a direct cost to themselves. It seems to be in direct contradiction to Darwin’s theory of evolution, which states that evolution rewards “survival of the fittest.” Sacrificing resources for others goes against this directly.
Nonetheless, there are countless examples of animals seeming to act out of compassion for one another. Vampire bats have been known to give food to others in their roost who did not successfully find enough at night. Furthermore, a study into African grey parrots found that when the parrots were trained to exchange tokens for food, some parrots would willingly share their tokens with the parrots who had none, suggesting that they had some understanding of when their partners needed help. It is also well known that bees operate in a highly social and organized colony, with almost the entire community working in the service of the queen.
These examples can even transcend species. In 2013, German researchers discovered an adult bottlenose dolphin off the coast of Portugal that had an S-shaped spine. This problem made it difficult for the dolphin to avoid predators, causing it to be separated from its pack. The animal was temporarily “adopted” by a group of sperm whales, who were previously not known to form any cross-species bonds. The groups seemed to form a bond: when the dolphin would rub up against the whales, they would often return the gesture. Researchers do not have a clear answer as to why animals would help another species with seemingly no benefit to their own.
Scientists suspect, however, that many of these acts that we view as love are not entirely selfless. Most researchers point to the fact that when animals act in service of others, they are, in turn, helping themselves. When a bee supports its colony or a bat feeds its roost, they are ensuring that they will have a higher chance of reproducing.
Regardless of their reasons for their kindness, we can take something from observing how animals interact with one another. Author of When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals Jeffery Masson suggests that while animal emotions can be easily misread, we should take them at face value and appreciate that to care about others we see is a part of nature. Masson says simply: “Feelings just are. They justify themselves.”
