Page 55 - CULTURE IN THE COMMUNICATION AGE

EDUARDO NEIVA

Then what to make of the mutual restraint of animals involved in fighting
for territory and mates? In an animal conflict between males of the same
species, it is easy to see that the contenders are to some extent co-operating
with one another; they seem to agree to avoid combats that are completely or
treacherously aggressive; they appear to be involved in a form of conventional
or ritualized dispute. Why is it that animals – themselves allegedly thoughtless
individualists – are involved in conflicts that follow rules and ritualized tactics?
Is it not better just to employ any strategy, as long as victory is attained? The
fact is that snakes fight without using their fangs; deer interlock antlers but do
not hurt each other; fish grasp each other’s jaws and the fight is then a
sequence of pushing and pulling; antelopes’ combats are enacted in a restricting
posture, with their knees down; and how about threat displays where physical
contact does not occur? To whom is restraint beneficial?
It would seem that the group is the direct bene ficiary. But this explanation,
like all of those that give credence to groups in natural selection, is blemished.
Darwinian interpretation asserts that selection tends to occur at the level of the
individual and its genes, not only because each individual is a new and unique
evolutionary starting point, but also because it is much more economical for
natural selection to weed out particular organisms that cannot cope with an
antagonistic environment. A single selective death should be enough to do
away with the harmful mutation. And if the mutation is individually beneficial
but harmful to the group, it will spread itself through the population, demand-
ing its whole extinction (Maynard Smith 1972: 11). Individual selection is
frequently stronger than group selection.
It was with this in mind that Maynard Smith (1972, 1982; see also Maynard
Smith and Price 1973) set out to prove that a ‘limited war’ strategy is beneficial
to individuals fighting, and to demonstrate that restrained contact develops into
a preferred evolutionary strategy in the natural world.
Consider what happens in the case of three possible strategies to be
developed in a conflict. The strategies could be conventional tactics, threat displays,
and escalating fight. Conventionalized conflict and threat displays have in com-
mon the purpose of avoiding injury through the restriction of physical contact.
Escalating fight, on the other hand, would lead to possible injuries. If both
contenders employ full escalating fight, the benefits of acquiring reproductive
success are impaired by the possibility of extermination or serious debilitating
injuries. Reproductive success is certainly desirable, but not at the expense of
individual physical integrity. If it is possible to combine the basic strategies, it
is evolutionarily more effective to be involved in an initial conventionalized
conflict, escalating only if the opponent does so.

A communicative exchange
Imagine now a situation in which the cost is not any form of physical harm
but a strategy committed to avoiding injuries, thus consuming exclusively time

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