How to avoid the Darwin Awards
Courtesy of University of Leicester
You know the moment. You're hanging out with a group of friends when one of the group, typically a guy, decides to do something dangerous. He jumps off a cliff into a river. He runs into a busy road for a real-life game of Frogger. He balances a loaded shotgun on his nose.
And just before he leaps into harms way he says with a smile: "Come on guys, this will be fun!" Then he leaps. The moment arrives.
The rest of the group watches him go, then, simultaneously, everone's eyes meet. Should we follow? This, folks, is what they call an evolutionary moment. This is where natural selection meets the pavement. And the key to survival?
The ability to count. That's according to a study by behavioral ecologists at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom and published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Grouping animals, a catagory that includes fish, sheep and humans, have to decide when to follow a maverick leader and when to hang with the group. To test how animals do this, the researchers conducted a behavioral experiment with schooling fish known as threespine sticklebacks.
They put the live sticklebacks in with schools of glass replica fish that looked just like them. A model of a predator fish was put in the tank and the live fish were reluctant to swim past it. Scary fish, stay away.
However, the researchers found that loneliness breeds trust. A lone live fish would follow a single replica fish past the fake predator. With no other fish around to veto the replica leader, the live fish opted for companionship.
When more fish were added, both live and replica, the equation changed. When the test fish were placed in groups of 4 to 8 fish, it took more convincing to for the test fish to decide to swim past the scary predator. It wouldn't budge until 2 or 3 replica "leaders" swam past the predator together.
Simply put, the fish were counting. One maverick fish might be acting irrationally. It was less likely that two or three fish would make the same bad decision.
The researchers concluded that there is a threshold at which a grouping animals decide to join others in some action. That's the evolutionary moment. A moment spent counting.
So next time that guy jumps off a bridge, take a look around. Wait a few moments. See if anyone else jumps. Stay in the gene pool a little longer.
Comments
Grouping animals, a catagory that includes fish, sheep and humans, have to decide when to follow a maverick leader and when to hang with the group.
I base the intelligence of journalists on the capacity to use Spell Check.
FR: Um, that's "category."
Posted by: Anonymous | May 30, 2008 10:53 AM