On 'paying attention'

I've been watching Alan Alda's mini-series on the Human Spark on PBS. The first episode dealt mostly with an interesting probe of how Cro-Magnon were different from Neanderthals. I don't exactly know what the intended focus of the second episode was, but the thing that jumped out at me was the similarities and the differences in how chimps and humans pay attention to others. Paying attention to the surroundings and what predators in the area are doing is a fairly fundamental skill for all complex animals including invertebrates. The advantages for say a fish of running away, hiding in the rocks on the bottom or in a large school are pretty clear. On land the benefits of the correlated skills of tracking and silent stalking are fairly obvious for predators. But at some point the skills become more social and complex. Small birds cooperate in harassing larger predator birds away from nesting areas. Animals of various sorts will set up a noisy ruckus which results in making others aware of approaching danger.

In people the awareness of others is very noticeable. As the show pointed out a very small tot will observe an adult trying unsuccessfully to reach something, and trot over to pick up the item to help without prompting (of course if the kid isn't distracted by something else). A chimp will do the same thing. I personally would have thought that pointing is just an extension of the reaching gesture. But it turns out not to be. You can point at something a small child can't see and get the child's attention in that direction. It doesn't work with chimps. It does work with at least one other animal, dogs. If a dog is searching, you can point and once the dog notices, it will narrow its search in the direction you are pointing. A scientist on the show believes that in dogs it was a skill bred for (intentionally or not) over thousands of years of living in cooperation with humans.

To my knowledge cats with an equally long history with humans don't have the follow-the-point skill. But they do have the capability of purposely sharing food (when the mood strikes them), as do chimps. Dogs don't purposely share food, but they will purposely share a substitute in order to play-fight. Grab the other end of a dog's dinner and the dog had better know you very well. Stand around a dog in the yard and you may find the dog bringing you a stick to pay fetch or tug-of-war with, whether you know the dog well or not.

Cats have their own version of this trust of non-threatening humans, which you may see if you are lucky. I used to live in a place with a very large yard, and garage well away from the house. I used to see a particular cat in the yard sometimes. I never tried to bother it or get close to it. It surely lived in one of the houses nearby. Like all cats it was wary and if I moved generally in its direction, going to the garage for instance, it would scurry away toward its own home long before I was anywhere near it. Not a bit unusual. But, one day I noticed the cat wasn't moving away. It was intently looking at something in the grass. That made me curious enough to walk over. The cat looked at me as I approached, but made no move to run away. I got close and saw there was a harmless snake coiled up and playing dead in the grass in front of the cat. The cat repeatedly looked at the snake and up at me. I don't know what the cat wanted from me and needing to be on my way, I left them both be. But it was interesting that the cat's curiosity about the snake changed how it reacted to me completely.