Between Species: Science and Subjectivity

Barbara Smuts
Configurations, Volume 14, Number 1-2, Winter-Spring 2006, pp. 115-126 (Article)
Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: 10.1353/con.0.0004

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/con/summary/v014/14.1.smuts.html

Access Provided by UFRJ-Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro at 10/20/11 4:42PM GMT

Between Species: Science and Subjectivity

Barbara Smuts, University of Michigan

Every now and then, I look deep into my dogs eyes and ask, Who are you? Usually the answer is a tail wag or a pointed glance at the cookie jar. But every now and then, they will get serious and stare back at me intently, as if to say, Well, who are you? Perhaps my dogs have been conferring with Donna Haraway, who understands that Beings do not pre-exist their relatings.1 Sa, Bahati, and Tex are who they are because of who I am, and conversely, I am who I am because of them. Our relationships are a perpetual improvisational dance,2 co-created and emergent, simultaneously reecting who we are and bringing into being who we will become. As Donna describes in her essay Encounters with Companion Species: Entangling Dogs, Baboons, Philosophers, and Biologists in this volume, how I think about social relationships, both within and between species, began to change during my eldwork with wild chimpanzees, dolphins, and especially baboons.3 Living
1. Donna Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People and Signicant Otherness (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003), p. 6 2. Barbara King and Stuart Shanker developed the dance metaphor in their analyses of communication that is mutually contingent, co-regulated, and creative. See S. G. Shanker and Barbara J. King, The Emergence of a New Paradigm in Ape Language Research, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 25 (2002): 605656; Barbara J. King, The Dynamic Dance: Nonvocal Communication in African Great Apes (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004). 3. Donna Haraway, Encounters with Companion Species: Entangling Dogs, Baboons, Philosophers, and Biologists, Congurations 14:1 (2008): 97114.
Congurations, 2006, 14:115126 2008 by The Johns Hopkins University Press and the Society for Literature and Science.

115

116

Congurations

with these animals, I discovered acutely sensitive social beings who would form trusting relationships with humans when approached with humility and respect.4 Subsequently, I took a break from eldwork, adopted a dog, Sa, and became intrigued by the relationships she developed with other dogs. Eventually, my students and I systematically examined social relationships among dogs by analyzing hundreds of hours of videotaped interactions among local dogs, including my own.5 Subsequently, I adopted two more dogs, and research on these dogs and others continues. Although my research on dogs resembles the work I and many others have conducted on wild animals (e.g., similar theoretical underpinnings and ways of collecting and analyzing data), it differs radically from eld research in one important way: I have close personal relationships with many of the dogs we observe, including, of course, with my own. This puts me (and my students, whose dogs also participate in the research) in the unusual position of experiencing our subjects in two very different ways: from the outside, objective perspective of a scientist, and the inside, subjective perspective of a human interacting daily with beloved companions. In Western culture, the objective and subjective perspectives are viewed as different and often competing approaches to determining what is real and true.6 Ever since I began studying animal social behavior, however, I have wondered what might happen if we recongured this rigid demarcation. In particular, I am interested in how intersubjective experiences (i.e., experiences arising through interactions between subjects) might inform the study of social relationships, and how the scientic study of social relationships might inuence the way we think about our interactions with others and thereby alter intersubjective experience. Here, I will focus on the latter
4. For in-depth discussion of my relationships with the animals I studied, see Barbara Smuts, Coming Home, Natural History 110 (1987): 2630.; Barbara Smuts, Living with Animals, in J. M. Coetzee, The Lives of Animals, ed. Amy Gutman (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 107120; and Barbara Smuts, Encounters with Animal Minds, Journal of Consciousness Studies 8:57 (2001): 293309. 5. Publications based on this research include: Erika B. Bauer and Barbara B. Smuts, Cooperation and Competition during Dyadic Play in Domestic Dogs, Canis familiaris, Animal Behaviour 73 (2007): 489499; Camille Ward and Barbara B. Smuts, QuantityBased Judgments in the Domestic Dog (Canis lupus familiaris), Animal Cognition 10 (2007): 7180; Camille Ward and Barbara B. Smuts, Partner Preferences and Asymmetries in Social Play among Domestic Dog Littermates (Canis lupus familiaris) (under review). 6. British writer C. P. Snow famously described the tension between objective (science) and subjective (literature, art, etc.) approaches to scholarship in his 1959 book, The Two Cultures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993 [1959]). For multiple responses to the two cultures controversy, see http://academics.vmi.edu/gen_ed/Two_Cultures.html (accessed July 13, 2007 ).

Smuts / Between Species: Science and Subjectivity

117

direction of inuence; I address the former elsewhere.7 I begin by illustrating how general knowledge of canine behavior and specic observations of my dog, Sa, helped me to understand and nurture my relationship with her.

***
Sa was the rst dog I adopted after living with wild animals. I assumed that she, like the wild animals Id studied, was an acutely sensitive social being capable of sharing communication with a human. I approached Sa as a wise and innovative co-creator of our relationship. I did not think of myself as her owner or master, and I assumed that when resolving differences, we would meet halfway, rather than expecting her to always do what I wanted. I envisioned our relationship unfolding spontaneously, with minimal predetermined constraints or expectations. Although I wasnt sure exactly how to do this, it didnt matter, because Sa showed the way. When we rst met, Sa was an eight-month-old German Shepherd mix, a physically imposing animal with thick, black fur, erect ears, and a powerful, muscular body heading toward an adult weight of eighty-ve pounds. From the beginning, everyone who met her, canine and human, seemed to experience her as an exceptionally compelling presencethe sort of being who makes heads turn wherever she goes. She also possessed a strong will and a condent and adaptable personality. These features were immediately evident in Sas interactions with other dogs. Even before she reached physical maturation, she approached every dog she met with the posture of a high-ranking wolf: tall stance, tail raised, and ears and body leaning forward.8 Among wolves, such assertive behavior is often sufcient to establish high status; high-ranking wolves are not necessarily more aggressive than other pack members.9 This was true for Sa. In her fourteen years
7. I consider the other direction of inuence (how my intersubjective experiences with animals have inuenced my research on social relationships) in Barbara B. Smuts, Embodied Communication in Nonhuman Animals, in Human Development in the 21st Century: Visionary Policy Ideas from Systems Scientists, eds. Alan Fogel, Barbara King, and Stuart Shanker (publication of the Council on Human Development, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 136146). 8. For discussion and illustrations of body language in wolves and domestic dogs, see: Roger Abrantes, Dog Language: An Encyclopedia of Canine Behaviour (Naperville, Ill.: Wakan Tanka Publishers, 1997); and Fred H. Harrington and Cheryl S. Asa, Wolf Communication, in Wolves: Behavior, Ecology and Conservation, eds. L. David Mech and Luigi Boitani (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), pp. 66103. 9. J. Sands and S. Creel, Social Dominance, Aggression and Faecal Glucocorticoid Levels in a Wild Population of Wolves, Canis lupus, Animal Behaviour 67 (2004): 387396.

118

Congurations

with me, she never once initiated aggression toward another dog, but nearly every dog she met, even dogs larger and older than she, lowered their tails, folded their ears, and averted their eyes when Sa approached (this consistent deference earned her the nickname Empress of the Universe). In her benecence, the empress offered dispensations to dogs who were very young, very old, or very small. In these instances, Sa approached with a less imposing posture and offered a play invitation. If the dog ignored the invitation, she would simply walk away. On those rare occasions when she encountered a female like herself unwilling to submit, Sa maintained her condent demeanor, performed a perfunctory greeting, and from that point on pretended her rival did not exist (a widespread and very effective tactic among dogs). When Sa met a large, condent male dog, the encounter proceeded differently. Both Sa and the male would stand tall and stiff, wagging their tails in high arcs, ears forward, performing quick little jumps as they sought opportunities to sniff each other in informative places, especially the muzzle and neck.10 After sizing each other up, they would usually begin playing. With these guys, Sa quickly escalated to very rough play involving growling, body slamming, and chases that ended with Sa nipping the males hindquarters. If the male was cowed by her no-holds-barred play, Sa quickly lost interest. But every now and then she found a partner who could match her intensity, and they would soon snarl at each other with bared teeth, rear up simultaneously on hind legs facing each other and ght with their front paws, and take turns throwing each other to the ground. When the dogs behaved in ways that led a nave observer to fear that death was immanent, I knew Sa had found a soulmate. Based on repeated observations of this sort, I concluded that with the right dog Sa not only accepted, but actually sought an equal relationship that encouraged an unrestrained expression of her assertive personality while she, in turn, accepted similar freedom by the other dog. Ah, I thought, thats the kind of relationship I want with her. Although I wasnt a large, assertive male dog, I had
10. This kind of greeting is more typical between two assertive males, but can also occur between a male and female. A television documentary (Return of the Wolf to Yellowstone, National Geographic Films) shows an alpha female wolf meeting an unfamiliar male attempting to join her pack (which had no males). After a series of interactions in which she tests the males condence and play style, she accepts him as the packs new alpha male. Their behavior closely resembled that described here between Sa and males with whom she became good friends. See Daniel R. Stahler, Douglas W. Smith, and Robert Landis, The Acceptance of a New Breeding Male into a Wild Wolf Pack, Canadian Journal of Zoology 80 (2002): 360365.

Smuts / Between Species: Science and Subjectivity

119

a slight size advantage plus considerable condence relating to individuals of other species. It seemed worth a try. And so, instead of issuing commands to Sa, I experimented with simply talking to her conversationally, as I would with another human, especially when we were in situations that required us to pay close attention to each other (e.g., if we need to coordinate our actions). I also used gestures, such as pointing to indicate the direction I wanted to go in. Sa quickly grasped not only specic meanings, but also the more general principle underlying my communications. She soon developed the habit of looking inquiringly at me when we encountered novel situations, politely waiting for me to say or do something; for any particular situation, she usually needed instruction only once. Throughout this process, she retained an alert involvement even in the absence of material rewards like food. Working together seemed to be sufciently rewarding in and of itself. This was great, but an equal partnership required a reciprocal willingness on my part to learn from her. This principle met an important test when, early in our time together, Sa growled at me. She growled when she was resting and I walked past her quickly, and also when I made other sudden movements near her (for instance, when I plopped down next to her on the couch). A dogtrainer friend interpreted this as classic territorial behavior. She told me that the next time it occurred, I had to nip Sas domineering tendencies in the bud by grabbing her neck and forcing her to the oor in a supposed imitation of an alpha wolf asserting dominance over a packmate. Im deeply ashamed to admit that I tried this once. As I loomed over Sa, she froze, looking up at me with a fearful expression. I quickly released her and we went on as usual. A few days later, however, Sa growled at me again as I was about to sit next to her. Her previous response to my so-called alpha behavior haunted me, and I never tried it again. Instead, I simply paused when she growled at me. The trainer claimed that this response would reward Sas aggressive behavior and that over time she would become increasingly dangerous. But the more I thought about our relationship as a whole, the more I doubted the traditional dominance aggression interpretation. In every other context, Sa was an extremely responsive, friendly partner; perhaps when she growled she was simply trying to say something important in the only language she knew. Based on this hypothesis, I moved more carefully around Sa, avoiding sudden approaches, especially when she was lying down. I discovered that if I moved slowly and spoke gently, Sa did not growl when I sat next to her, and she soon ceased growling at my

120

Congurations

approaches altogether. She wasnt being territorial; sudden movements just made her nervous. Weeks later, I found out why. A visiting friend was demonstrating soccer moves. When he kicked the air, Sa ed. She was also terried of brooms, rolled up newspapers, and telephone receivers. It became apparent that in her former life, Sa had been kicked and hit with objects and perhaps harmed in other ways.11 No wonder she was afraid of sudden movements near her. I felt deeply touched that, despite a history of abuse, she had tried to communicate her fear rather than retreating into abject terror or lashing out defensively. I shuddered to think how our relationship might have evolved if I had continued to follow the trainers advice. Sas fears would have been reinforced, and she would perhaps have never learned to trust anyone. Instead, we took the rst steps toward a mutually respectful relationship in which we could each set boundaries and express preferences. As a result, our friendship ourished in ways I could never have anticipated.12

***
When I nished typing the previous paragraph, I glanced up and met the gaze of the second of my adopted dogs, Bahati, who is lying on the couch directly across from me. For some time Ive been vaguely aware that she was politely trying to get my attention, but my mind was elsewhere. Now I tell her, as I have a thousand times before, that she is a beautiful foxy lady and I adore her. When I sing her praises, her triangle ears, which were standing up, fold back against her head and her wide-eyed gaze narrows and softens. Her tail thumps against the couch. Now that Ive reafrmed my love, she rolls over on her back and utters a deep, relaxed groan. We repeat a variation of this ritual many times a day, for she is an animal who needs to connect often. Bahatis origins are a mystery. When she was a very small puppy, two women found her alone on the side of a road in a Navaho reservation in Arizona. They rescued her, brought her to my town, and Sa and I adopted her when she was about seven months old. She looks a lot like a dingo and was quite wild when she joined our pack. I dont think her untamed ways reected her rearing, which had been normal, growing up in a house with another dog, a cat, and two women who, I am certain, never mistreated her. I suspect
11. The shelter reported that Sa was found wandering without a collar, so no information was available about her earlier life. 12. I describe my relationship with Sa further in Smuts, Living with Animals and Encounters with Animal Minds (both above, n. 4).

Smuts / Between Species: Science and Subjectivity

121

her wildness may have been a product of feral ancestry, since many dogs on the Navaho reservation live and breed apart from people, fending for themselves.13 Although Bahati and I quickly bonded, she was not an easy dog to live with. She was extremely cautious, wary of anything out of the ordinary: a big stump next to the path, an airplane in the sky, an unexpected sound, the motorcycle next door. Most problematic, she was frightened of unfamiliar people, especially men, and men with beards terried her. Her fear sometimes made her aggressive and I worried that someday she might bite a stranger (she has never shown any aggression toward familiar humans). In these ways, Bahati was the exact opposite of Sa, whose responses were unfailingly deliberate and appropriate; Bahatis were often impulsive and could get her (and me) into trouble. I had no experience working with a wild, fearful dog, and so again I turned to interactions between my dog and her friends to help me understand who she was and what she needed. Although somewhat aloof with unfamiliar dogs, Bahati never displays fear toward them as she used to do around strange humans. Moreover, once she gets to know another dog well, she becomes an exceptionally engaging and attentive friend. She greets higher-ranking dogs like Sa over and over in exactly the way wolves greet their superiors. She approaches with a low, wagging tail, head and body also low, ears pinned back, and eyes narrow: the epitome of supplication. When she reaches the other dog, she tries to lick the area around the mouth with great persistence. She greets friends over whom she has established dominance in the manner of higher-ranking wolves, holding her body high, approaching with a stiff gait, tail up, hackles raised, ears forward. If the dog shows submission, Bahati relaxes, but if she does not submit, Bahati places her chin over the back of the dogs neck in a dominance display. She shows a much higher frequency of ritualized status displays (in both directions, as described) than any of the other dogs in our extended pack,14 in every instance using behaviors characteristic of wolves. She even elicits wolsh behaviors in other dogs that they do not normally show, such as muzzle bites by dominant dogs. (Like Sa, she has never attacked another dog.)
13. Mark Derr, Dogs Best Friend: Annals of the DogHuman Relationship (New York: H. Holt, 1997). 14. Extended pack: after I adopted Sa, I invited neighborhood friends to bring their dogs to my large, fenced-in yard to play with her. This soon developed into an informal dog day-care, with up to eight dogs present for most of the day. Membership was fairly stable over many years, and the dogs never inicted so much as a scratch on one another.

122

Congurations

Bahati is also wolf-like in the way she responds to pack-level arousal. When I enter my yard, the pack becomes very excited. Bahati responds by bounding from dog to dog, licking their faces and wagging her tail, just as wolves do when the pack is aroused and rallying for whatever is next. Similarly, if the other dogs have a noisy altercation, she will rush around madly, going from dog to dog as if knitting the pack together with her movements. When with her dog friends, Bahati often reacts to unfamiliar dogs by placing herself between them and her pack, and if any pack members try to greet or play with the new dog, she will often intervene by placing herself between them. She makes a very clear distinction between her humandog pack and all other humans and dogs. In this way also she resembles her wild counterparts. I reasoned that if Bahati was wolf-like in her interactions with other dogs, perhaps she was also wolf-like in the way she responded to unfamiliar stimuli. As wild animals, wolves are extremely vigilant, sensitive to any changes in their environment and cautious when exploring something new. People who have reared wolves, wolfdog hybrids, or dingoes as pets often mention a heightened sensitivity to novelty compared to most domestic dogs. If Bahati did descend from feral dogs, perhaps her fear and caution were not the neurotic traits of a high-strung dog (as several dog trainers described her), but rather the natural behaviors of a feral animal reared in captivity. This made sense, because in familiar contexts, such as when she was at home with just me and Sa, Bahati was very calm right from the beginning. Viewing her as untamed rather than neurotic has made all the difference in our relationship. Abandoning the training manuals advice for working with nervous dogs, I instead paid more attention than ever to Bahatis behavior and our interactions. Although she and I were clearly attached, I felt something was missing in our relationship but couldnt gure out what it was. Then one day, after watching videos of adolescent wolves interacting with their elders, I realized that Bahati needed more than affection; she needed me to reassure her, over and over in very specic ways, that she was and always would be a valued member of the pack. Young wolves, whose survival depends on continued acceptance by senior pack members, frequently request such reassurance. Unlike most domestic dogs Ive known, who take up residence in a human family as if it is their inalienable right, Bahati was much more like a wild dog, constantly communicating her position in the pack to those higher and lower than she, profoundly concerned with all pack matters, and, as a young subordinate, lacking condence that she would always belong.

Smuts / Between Species: Science and Subjectivity

123

To gure out how to give Bahati the reassurance she needed, I turned to Sa. Bahati venerated Sa and never ignored her imperatives as she sometimes did mine. She would greet Sa over and over and try to lick her mouth; occasionally Sa turned her face away, which just made Bahati try harder to get her licks in. Usually, however, Sa tolerated the licks, and Bahati soon relaxed and went her own way. Similarly, when dominant wolves tolerate the persistent, in-your-face behavior of subordinates, they conrm the bond between them.15 And so, instead of resisting Bahatis desire to lick my face over and over, I mimicked Sas tolerant response. Sometimes this meant putting up with a full half-minute of face-licking ten times a day, but the results were worth it. Soon Bahati became more secure and condent; for example, instead of sleeping on the oor or at the foot of my bed, she began to lie close to me, and she stopped leaning away when I moved past her. She also learned to maintain eye contact when I gazed at her, instead of looking away. Bahatis ever-increasing trust in our relationship also greatly reduced her neophobia. Now, instead of automatically responding with excessive caution, she looks to me for reassurance and then explores the unfamiliar. In various other domains, Ive discovered that the key to gaining compliance from Bahati is not standard training routines with lots of repetitionshe learns what new commands mean very quicklybut rather to continuously nd new ways to reinforce our bond. The closer we grow, the more compliant she becomes. Again, this makes sense in terms of her wild-dog nature. Wolves and feral dogs like dingoes do not take their youngsters to obedience class; instead, pups are immersed in their packs culture, receiving constant information about how to behave and what not to do. Sometimes an older pack member will stare or snarl to signal a pups inappropriate behavior, but young animals probably learn more by observation and through the highly rewarding experiencing of being accepted when they do things right. As noted earlier, such acceptance can mean the difference between life and death, so wild dogs value it immensely. Some domestic dogs, like Bahati, seem especially uncertain about their pack membership; in her case and many others, being shifted from one household to another probably contributes to this insecurity.

***
These stories hold several lessons. For one, they challenge our tendency to think of individuals as primary, and relationships as
15. See Abrantes, Dog Language, and Harrington and Asa, Wolf Communication (both above, n. 8).

124

Congurations

secondary phenomena that are caused by the actions of individuals. In truth, when considering highly social species like humans and dogs, it is impossible to understand an individuals behavior outside the nexus of their most important relationships. Bahatis fear and caution turned out not to be xed traits determined by her genes and/or early experiences, but rather were malleable aspects of her personality strongly inuenced by her interactions with me (and with Sa and her other dog friends). As Bahati began to trust that she was not going to be abandoned or expelled from her pack, she became a different dog. People who did not know her during her rst couple of years are astonished when I describe how she used to behave. But shes so mellow and friendly! they say. Recall Donnas words: beings do not pre-exist their relatings;16 rather, they become who they are in and through their interactions with others. Second, I learned that watching dogs interact with other dogs is a really good way to nd out what matters to them. It is also a good reminder that most dogs are perfectly capable of negotiating and managing many aspects of their world without us. This bears emphasis, because most humans expectations about dogs derive from popular culture, dog trainers, and personal experience with a limited number of dogs. Because these sources of knowledge do not begin to do justice to the complexity, adaptability, and inventiveness of dogs, many aspects of doghuman relationships have more to do with our limited expectations and mistaken assumptions than with who they really are. If we believe that dogs are infantile or incapable of complex communication or likely to bite, we inadvertently help to create highly dependent, boring, or aggressive animals. But when we treat dogs as mysterious individuals with highly advanced relationship skills, myriad desires, and uncanny abilities, we are in for some wonderful surprises. A third lesson has to do with the individuality of each dog and the implications this holds for our relations with other species. Clearly, Sa and Bahati are idiosyncratic beings who engage in relationships with dogs and humans in very different ways. Anyone who knows many individual dogs (or cats or horses or sheep or pigs . . .) is aware that each individual has a unique personality. The same is true for wild animals like baboons, chimpanzees, dolphins, gorillas, hyenas, elephants, meerkats, parrots, ravens, and so on, as many people realize from watching television documentaries. I think it is important, however, to deepen this awareness until we experience the living world in new ways.
16. See Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto (above, n. 1).

Smuts / Between Species: Science and Subjectivity

125

For me, the distinction between human and nonhuman beings, so central to our culture, has diminished in importance as individual identities became paramount. As I get to know particular members of another species, that individuals identity as Sa or Fi or Daisy17 becomes more salient, phenomenologically, than the fact that she or he is a dog, a chimpanzee, or a cow. Another way to say this is that I now experience individuals of many other species rst and foremost as persons:
In the language I am developing here, relating to other beings as persons has nothing to do with whether we attribute human characteristics to them. It has to do, instead, with recognizing that they are social subjects like us, whose idiosyncratic, subjective experience of us plays the same role in their relations with us that our subjective experience of them plays in our relations with them. If they relate to us as individuals, and we relate to them as individuals, it is possible for us to have a personal relationship. If either party fails to take into account the others social subjectivity, such a relationship is precluded. Thus while we normally think of personhood as an essential quality that we can discover or fail to nd in another, in the view espoused here personhood connotes a way of being in relation to others, and thus no one other than the subject can give it or take it away. In other words, when a human being relates to an individual nonhuman being as an anonymous object rather than as a being with [his or her] own subjectivity, it is the human and not the other animal who relinquishes personhood.18

We humans relinquish personhood over and over due to our failure to recognize the subjectivity and individuality of members of other species. To take back our personhood in relation to other animals changes everything. Anyone who seriously engages in this task comes to realize that our planet is replete with opportunities to form personal relationships with many different kinds of beings. Even if most of us end up forming bonds only with domestic animals, it is important to fully digest the fact that millions and millions of potential nonhuman friends exist in our forests and oceans, savannas and swamps. Radically rethinking our relations with other species can change the future; for example, in the context of an endangered species, what if we expanded our concerns about the disappearance of an abstract category to include the concrete reality of death by
17. I do not mean to imply that an animal must be named before a human can have a personal relationship with her or him; rather, we must recognize and relate to the animal as an individual. In other words, to use the philosophers idiom (Haraway, Encounters with Companion Species [above, n. 3], p. 99), the animal must get a face. 18. Smuts, Living with Animals (above, n. 4), p. 118 (emphases in original).

126

Congurations

starvation or disease or poaching of multitudes of feeling, thinking, relational individuals? Like so many other humans, I used to sometimes feel lonely and alienated in the frenetic, modern world. However, because I now share my primary identity as an animal person with such a wide variety of other beings, I no longer feel lonely. Perhaps we humans will truly value members of other species only when we meditate deeply on the reality that, if they disappear, we and our descendants will be left here on this planet all alone.