ON JUNE 30, 1860, seven months after Charles Darwin published his famous book on evolution (On The Origin Of Species), several prominent British scientists and philosophers got into a very heated discussion at the Oxford University Museum.
The Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, asked Thomas Henry Huxley, a biologist known as “Darwin’s Bulldog”, for his passionate advocacy of Darwin’s theories, whether it was through his grandfather or grandmother that he claimed his descent from a monkey.
A recent article in the British newspaper Mail Online headlined Why You Should Never Trust An Ape: Researchers Reveal How Lying May Have Evolved In Animals states: “We all tell the occasional white lie – and researchers believe they have finally found out why. Scientists studying the development of cooperative behaviour in apes and monkeys believe the animals developed the ability to lie and deceive in order to form coalitions, get food and mate.”
A New York Times article published in 2008 says: “Deceitful behaviour has a long and storied history in the evolution of social life, and the more sophisticated the animal, it seems, the more commonplace the con games, the more cunning their contours.
“In a comparative survey of primate behaviour, Richard Byrne and Nadia Corp of the University of St Andrews in Scotland found a direct relationship between sneakiness and brain size. The larger the average volume of a primate species’ neocortex – the newest, ‘highest’ region of the brain – the greater the chance that the monkey or ape would pull a stunt like this one described in The New Scientist: a young baboon being chased by an enraged mother intent on punishment suddenly stopped in mid-pursuit, stood up and began scanning the horizon intently, an act that conveniently distracted the entire baboon troop into preparing for non-existent intruders.”
How sophisticated can apes get with their deception?
Dr Dale Peterson, in an article on Those Lying Apes, refers to the book Chimpanzee Politics (1982) by primatologist Frans de Waal, who describes the case of Orr, an adolescent female at Arnheim, who would scream while she was having sex. During sneaked copulations with younger males, however, her screams sometimes caught the attention of the alpha, who would do his mighty best to interrupt the couple. Eventually, Orr learned to suppress her vocalizations when mating with lower-ranking males, while she continued the habit of screaming whenever she mated with the alpha.
Peterson pointed out that competition often motivates individuals to deceive in order to get what they want, whether it’s sex, power, or food. Once at Arnheim, the chimpanzees all observed the arrival of a box of grapefruit. De Waal then brought the box out into the public area and buried the grapefruit in sand. He left a small portion of each grapefruit still uncovered by the sand, just enough for a very observant chimpanzee to notice.
When they were released from their night cages, they raced off in search of the fruit, but none seemed to have found them. Later that day, as the chimps were taking their afternoon siesta, a young male who had been among the group that earlier rushed past the buried grapefruit, now quietly raised himself from his relaxed sprawl, casually strolled over to where the grapefruit had been hidden and dug out the fruit and consumed it at his leisure.
So when a human tells a lie, something that researchers say we do at least twice a day, even though it might not be as big a deception as the one that follows, there is a reason and an evolutionary trail.
A very distinguished lady, who was seated next to a priest on a plane arriving from Switzerland, asked him to do her a favour. The lady explained that she had bought a new sophisticated hair remover gadget which cost a lot but she was afraid that customs would confiscate it. She asked him to hide it under his cassock. The priest agreed on the basis that if asked he would not lie.
When he arrived, the first thing that customs asked him was if he had anything to declare. He replied: “From the top of my head to my sash, I have nothing to declare, my son.”
The alert customs officer asked: “And from the sash down, what do you have?”
The priest replied: “I have there a marvellous little instrument destined for use by women, but which has never been used.”
Breaking out in laughter, the customs officer said: “Go ahead, Father. Next!”
I suppose that had he been found out the priest could have replied truthfully: “My DNA made me do it.”
• Tony Deyal was last seen saying that among the biggest lies of all are “I’m from your Government and I am here to help you”; “I am getting a divorce”; “It’s not the money, it’s the principle of the thing”; and “Now, I’m going to tell the truth.”
