The art of (correctly) questioning animals

What do rats take an interest in during experiments? Do goats agree with the statistics? Do birds produce art? Will penguins come out of the closet? Who has ever asked themselves this type of question? The philosopher Vinciane Despret has for her part made it the subject of her new work, Que diraient les animaux si…on leur posait les bonnes questions? (What would the animals say if…we asked them the right questions?). An A to Z tinged with both a humorous and a denunciatory tone, which examines the relationships which human beings (and above all scientists) maintain with animals. Because another way of ‘doing science’ is possible...

Andrew, Dora, Charles, Bertha, Eric and Caroline led a happy and peaceful life at Edinburgh Zoo. This group of captive penguins, observed from 1915 to 1930 by a group of zoologists, ended up having a series of nicknames attributed to them by scientists according to the place occupied by each one in the pairing. For the researchers nothing could be more straightforward: if two penguins were a perfect loving couple, that obviously meant that one was a male and the other was a female. After several years of observation they nonetheless had to face up to the facts: the majority of the couples were not mixed. Everybody thus had to be renamed: Andrew became Ann, Eric metamorphosed into Erica, Bertha was transformed into Bertrand and his companion, Caroline, changed into Charles.

Homosexuality, in nature? At the time the matter was closed and filed away in the ‘rare phenomenon’ category. A pathology no doubt connected to the conditions of captivity. The scientific literature made no further comment on this behaviour, described at the time as being deviant. Yet, over the course of the 1980s, nature seemed to overwhelmingly shift ‘against nature’ and the numbers of homosexual behaviour observed were very large.

‘Doubtless we should consider the disastrous effects, in the same years, of the queer revolution and the American homosexual movements which had contaminated the innocent creatures,’ says Vinciane Despret, a Professor at the University of Liège, with some irony. In her new book, Que diraient les animaux si…on leur posait les bonnes questions? (1), the author prefers to look at the subject from another angle: ‘Why had homosexuality not been seen in nature until that point?’

First of all, homosexuality was not seen because nobody expected to see it, she suggests, leaning on the work of the American biologist Bruce Bagemihl. Next because, generally speaking, animals prefer to copulate out of the sight of prying eyes. Maybe also because certain scientists of the era, allowing to having observed gay relationships in animals, have subsequently confessed that they kept their mouths shut for fear of being accused of being homophobes...Is homosexuality thus natural? Can we say that animals are homosexuals in the sense we mean it? Moreover, it what sense can we maintain that we are homosexual?

So many questions raised by the researcher, who is nevertheless very wary of answering them. In Que diraient les animaux si…, Vinciane Despret has ‘granted herself the luxury of not providing answers to the questions raised.’ And the work indeed poses a plethora of questions. ‘At least 26,’ she jokes. As in the number of chapters which this A-Z consists of.

Should horses provide their consent?

In addition to asking, with the letter ‘Q’ for queer, if the penguins will come out of the closet, to return to the example cited above, the philosopher also wonders: do birds produce art? Do the goats agree with the statistics? Is it indeed common practice to urinate in front of the animals? What do rats take an interest in during experiments? Can we live with a pig’s heart? So many questions which can appear both light hearted (letter ‘B’ for beasts: can monkeys really ape behaviour?) and provocative (‘Z’ as in zoophilia: should the horses provide their consent?).

Each chapter contains droll stories. Macaques living on the island of St Kitts in the Caribbean with a penchant, pushed a little too far, for alcohol. Voles which everybody believed monogamous but who in the end proved to be less faithful than imagined. A Thailand elephant who, under the eyes of the cameras and tourists, painted what the observers termed a self portrait. A monkey which simulated the signs of a serious disease to trick the crows which had got into the habit of pinching its daily ration of food. Two otters, brother and sister, which, whilst the specialists were persuaded that certain mechanisms prevented individuals brought up together from being attracted to each other, ended up becoming the happy parents of a little baby otter. Chimpanzees who throw their faeces in the faces of their experimenters...

There is no lack of examples and they are read with a smile playing on the lips: Vinciane Despret handles the humour subtly. But she leans on these anecdotes not in order to dissect forms of animal behaviour, but rather those of the people who observe them. Researchers, ethologists, breeders or simple ordinary individuals. How do we behave in the presence of these ‘companion species’? What role do they have in the laboratories? What are the scientists expecting from them? How does our perspective influence the way certain situations are perceived.

‘Staying with the trouble’

In the chapter devoted to the letter ‘V’, for ‘Versions’ (Do chimpanzees die in the same way as we do?), the philosopher takes an interest in an article published by the American journal National Geographic, which gives an account of the reactions of chimpanzees on seeing the body of an aged and particularly well liked female in a Cameroon community. The monkeys are said to have remained speechless and motionless, which is extremely unusual behaviour for these animals, who are generally bursting with energy. The comments flooded onto the internet, each person interpreting this reaction as the expression of a feeling of sadness. ‘Do animals go through mourning?’ she wonders. ‘Moreover, what is mourning? The attitude of the chimpanzees is connected to the view we Westerners have of mourning. But this notion is very different to that which other cultures might have of it, or even to what it meant to us a century ago.’

Asking questions without answering them, thus. And accepting to ‘live within contradictions. ‘Staying with the trouble,’ as the philosopher Donna Haraway has said. I didn’t want to respect the usual rules, which consist of explaining and justifying one’s position, only to  sometimes return to and revise it and unsettle the reader. Being able to state, for example: ‘animal suffering is terrible,’ then ‘I eat meat.’ Without having to explain that I eat little meat or that I do so out of obligation or that it disgusts me, etc. Without having to justify myself.’

Humour, but no irony

Between the lines one can also detect in this work a calling into question of certain ways of ‘doing science.’ A gentle, never head on questioning, rarely aimed at a particular researcher, tinged with humour or even mockery, but never with irony. ‘Because if I had been asked to carry out such or such research twenty years ago, I would doubtless have accepted,’ she concedes. ‘The humour is due to giving the appearance that I believe what the researchers are trying to make me believe.’

A position taking which is rather new for Vinciane Despret who, up until now, had instead deliberately held back from this denunciatory posture. ‘When, at the beginning of my career, I began to work on the subject of the animal question, I had the impression that it didn’t go down too well. That it wasn’t what you needed to do in philosophy to embark on a good career. As a result, I thought it was necessary to avoid taking positions subject to suspicion, contestation or disqualification. Subsequently, from a more epistemological point of view, I noted that critical denunciation was in contradiction with my pragmatic stance: it was a question of observing what scientists are doing, which is a lot more valuable, often, than what they say they are doing.’ And she cites the example of a researcher, originally a primatologist, who thinks that the monkeys have earned an unwarranted privilege in intelligence terms. Are sheep really more stupid than primates? But how have they been checked? What questions were put to them? How is it that descriptions are so stereotyped – sheep without real relational ties who are constantly fighting amongst each other? ‘This researcher noticed that the flock of sheep on which research conclusions had been reached had been bought just before the observations started and that thus the sheep did not know one another. It is natural that they didn’t have any friends and fought each other! What did she do? Write a critical article? No! She began the experiment again by buying a new flock and giving it the time to get settled in. And she got results which are a lot more interesting.’

The philosopher thus decided to proceed in the same way, by observing scientists ‘who render the animals interesting. Because there is more of a chance of making the animals and humans interesting by analysing them through what they do best. But it is true that in the book I adopt a liberty of tone which allows me to say, from time to time, ‘this isn’t working’.’

Certain chapters are thus more biting. Such as the one devoted to the letter ‘K’, for ‘Kilos,’ in which the author wonders why we continue to quantify in weight the number of dead animals each year. Even if the term ‘kilo’ is supposed to contribute to a calling into question of the industrialisation of breeding (doesn’t Donna Haraway remind us that the most frequent form of relationship humans have with an animal is in killing it?), the use of this word, according to her, means precisely that now ‘the animals are no longer bred but produced as consumer goods.’

Experimental folly

In ‘Separations’ (Can an animal be led to break down?), Vinciane Despret does not miss the opportunity to give vent to how strongly she feels about the experimental obsession of a psychologist like Harry Harlow, who, in trying to understand the food preferences of rats which have not yet been weaned (rather cow’s milk or other liquids?) ended up subjecting these young rodents to what others would term torture. In trying to confirm that rats cease feeding themselves if they are not in the presence of their mother, Harlow didn’t hesitate to starve the mothers to see if they preferred to head towards food or their young offspring once released from the cage. Then, still in order to confirm his hypothesis, he ended up blinding them, removing their ovaries, extracting their olfactory bulbs. The history would subsequently be repeated with young rhesus macaques, through the well known experiment of a steel dummy and a fabric dummy aiming to prove to what extent contact is a basic need.

‘Withdrawing, separating, mutilating, extracting, depriving. [...] The experiment of separation does not end with separating living beings from one another; it consists of destroying, dismembering and, above all, removing. As if this was the only act that can be accomplished,’ writes the researcher. ‘[...] These theories finally come down to only one thing: a systematic and blind exercise in irresponsibility.’

On reading such acerbic language, do not however imagine that Vinciane Despret is claiming the position of a militant. ‘I am not a champion of the animal cause,’ she states. ‘What interests me as a philosopher is knowing what that changes from an ontological point of view, all the time knowing that ontology has practical and concrete effects: how we extend this idea of human exceptionalism, for example, with these experiments, in theory and in practice. Thus human exceptionalism, this idea according to which ‘they are only animals’ does a lot of harm, whose scale we are only just starting to gauge. In encourages an instrumental view of the world and living beings. If you go looking for what defines what is important for scientists, whoever they might be, you discover that each parcel of knowledge defines itself as an opportunity to change something in the world. I am a researcher, and I am a philosopher, and as such I am looking for how to provide back-up guidance for these changes of the world; supporting these changes also means giving them a chance, if they seem to me to make this world a little less uninhabitable, less unjust, less disconnected and more civilized. Thus, I might say, certain experiments turn us into monstrous beings, which leave a better world no chance.’

And that could take the path of epistemology; in any case it is through there that Vinciane Despret is trying to take it. Through asking for another way of ‘doing science.’ A more human, less arrogant, manner. ‘We have to ask ourselves if carrying out certain experiments is really worth the cost. Is it really worth verifying such or such a hypothesis? We have to accept that there exist things which we cannot know…’

(1) Vinciane DESPRET, Que diraient les animaux si... on leur posait les bonnes questions?, Paris, La Découverte, coll. "Les empecheurs de penser en rond", 2012, 325p.