Glenn Harrison and Don Ross (Profile Books)
Insights into animal evolution used to come from studying a creature鈥檚 evolutionary relationships to its closest relatives. To lampoon this slightly: we once saw humans as a kind of chimp. Our perspectives widened and, looking across ecosystems, we began to see what drives animals who share the same environment towards similar survival solutions. This is convergent evolution 鈥� the process by which, say, if you are a vertebrate living in an aqueous medium, you are almost certainly going to end up looking like a fish.
In The Gambling Animal: Humanity鈥檚 evolutionary winning streak 鈥� and how we risk it all, experimental economists Glenn Harrison and Don Ross look at this process from an even further remove. They study evolution in terms of risks to a species鈥� survival, and trace the ways animals evolve to mitigate those risks. From this distance, it makes more sense to talk about communities and societies than individuals.
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We used to think that social animals thought, at least a little bit, 鈥渓ike us鈥�. But this was never more than hand-waving in the absence of good data. Now, Harrison and Ross have real data from their research station in the grasslands of South Africa. They have expanded their focus beyond humans to African elephants, running experiments where they present them with the kind of 鈥渞isky choices鈥� that are the staple of TV quiz shows. Which door hides the orange? Is it the one that hid an apple earlier? Elephants may choose for themselves, but they are allowed to (and do) confer before they come to a decision.
The pair are working on how elephants think, why they never forget and why elephants and humans acquired such huge, peculiar brains in the mid-Pleistocene Epoch, around 700,000 years ago. This encephalisation 鈥� an increase in the complexity or relative size of the brain 鈥� suggests they both co-evolved a neurological solution to a challenge: mounting climate unpredictability. They had no choice but to learn how to 鈥済amble鈥� on the likely location of future resources.
But while humans developed an overgrown frontal cortex and learned to imagine, elephants overgrew their cerebellum and learned to remember. For most of evolutionary history, elephants were more successful than hominins. But eventually human imagination led to technologies and hunting techniques that allowed them to outcompete the elephant.
While humans are mildly risk-averse, our institutions collectivise risk with astonishing effectiveness
Harrison and Ross are out to write a dense, complex, closely argued exposition of their risk and reward work with humans and elephants, and to discuss the evolutionary implications. This isn鈥檛 literature, and it may take time to settle to their meticulous style. But treats lie in store for the patient, such as when they speculate about 鈥渆lephant science鈥� (very statistical, more collective).
So how does a mind (ours) that can鈥檛 remember more than seven digits for more than 5 minutes ever arrive at an understanding of science? The authors admit that, having worked for so long with elephants, they find humans ever more baffling.
But here鈥檚 the thing. Tracing how humans evolved to manage risk, from the savannah to Wall Street, they note that while individuals are mildly risk-averse, we innovate behavioural norms 鈥� institutions 鈥� that collectivise risk with astonishing effectiveness.
The flowering of this may be the idea of limited liability, pioneered in New York state in 1811, which turbocharged runaway growth 鈥渁cross multiple dimensions, particularly of population and per-capita wealth鈥�. However much we individually fear the future, our institutions can take horrible chances 鈥� not least with climate.
This is an unbelievably high-risk strategy. The direct ancestors of Homo sapiens just got lucky, say Harrison and Ross: they won the jackpot of ecological dominance because some large-scale climate change happened at the right pace and in the right sequence.
But past performance is no guarantee of future returns, so the authors are far from optimistic: 鈥淭he history of humans,鈥� they write, 鈥渋s not a record of safe bets.鈥� We might do better to think like elephants, and weigh probabilities rather than dream up might-bes and nice-to-haves.
Simon Ings is a writer based in London
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