Boobies

Judy the booby opened her wings, letting the air push against them, slowing her down and coming to alight on a rock. Her blue feet solidly beneath her, she folded her wings, looking out into the ocean. Having successfully filled her belly during her hunt, she felt no hunger, but scanned the seas for fish nonetheless. This rock commanded a good view of this little inlet, though there were many like it here in the Galapagos island chain.

She heard another booby approach, and she turned to look.

"Hi," he said, coming nearer. "Mind if I join you?"

He was an older booby, maybe three or four. His feet were a good shade of blue, if not as deep as one might like, and they were peppered by just a few flecks, small, but obvious at a glance. His chest feathers were a pleasing, uniform white.

"Not at all. I was just scanning the water for fish. There are a few, mostly around ten feet or so."

"Oh, I just ate."

Judy studied the booby more carefully. Something about him... "You're Bill, right? Professor of Booby Behavior?"

"Yes, that's me. Have we met?"

"Not exactly. I'm working of my degree, so I've, you know, seen you around."

"Oh. Well. What are you working on?"

"My thesis is going be on why boobies dance (as in this video). My advisor..."

"Why boobies dance?! What a decidedly odd question. That's like asking why fish swim or why humans stand on the decks of their wooden beasts watching us. It's just their nature, what they do. Why would you want to spend time on such an obvious question?"

Judy shifted back and forth uncomfortably on her feet. "What are you working on these days?"

"Well, we just ran a study in which we asked boobies to evaluate their status relative to other boobies on a seven point scale. Half our boobies, about 20 of them, did the task with their wings out, and half did the task with wings folded. Boobies with their wings out rated themselves a 3.7 as opposed to a 3.5 on the scale. The theory is called "emboobied" cognition. But tell me about your work. Isn't it obvious? Boobies dance because it's fun. Having danced myself, I can tell you it is."

Judy paused a moment, finally replying, "Well... it seems to me that saying boobies dance because it's fun, well, it's not really an answer or, at least, it raises the prior question, why is dancing fun?"

"Oh, I'm starting to see. One of those, eh? Well, fine. It's fun because dancing raises self-esteem. And everybooby knows that raising self-esteem is a basic motive."

"Well, doesn't that still leave the question of why dancing raises self-esteem? Why dancing and not something else. You don't see other birds here, like the finches, dancing like we do..."

"Heh. That just shows how important booby culture is. The booby way is to dance. I think you'll have to concede that dancing is learned, right? That much we agree on..."

"Well, I'm not really sure what you mean by ‘culture' or ‘learned.' Certainly when I hatched from the egg, I didn't know how to dance. Now I do. So somehow dancing skills develop. But I haven't seen good evidence about the learning mechanism. Do boobies need to observe other boobies dancing in order for development to occur? We don't know."

"So now you're saying it's all genetic."

Judy adjusted her wings slightly, picking a parasite from between her flight feathers with her beak. "Well, I don't really know what you mean when you say that a trait is ‘genetic,' or what it means to say a trait isn't genetic, for that matter. Adult boobies dance, juveniles don't. I guess the question is really about how the booby brain changes, and to figure that out, it seems to me we would need to do research..."

"Ok, ok... If you don't think it's learned, I guess you think it's all innate, right?"

"Well, I thought I just got finished saying that we don't know about the developmental mechanism, but I can tell you a little bit about what I think the function is."

"Ah, function. You mean, evolved function, don't you? I suspected you were one of them."

"Yes, I do mean evolved function."

"So you're about to tell me some nice story about the function. Let me get my jammies on before you do, won't you?"

Judy ignored the remark. "Well, booby dances have a few properties that might provide a clue. First, booby dances involve shifting weight from side to side, bringing the feet up. Then there's the head display..."

"Yes, yes, everybooby knows the booby dance. And, like I said, we do it because it's fun. Why, when I met my long term monogamous mate, I just couldn't help myself. I just went right up to her and danced."

There was a brief pause. "Right, well, the booby dance, as you know, requires a certain degree of dexterity to get it just right, and it makes our blue feet and feathers easy to inspect."

"Ah, yes, here is where you get all post-hoc. Those are things we already knew before you developed your ‘theory,' whatever it is."

"You're saying that I shouldn't study the phenomenon I'm trying to explain before I try to explain it? Does that apply to emboobied cognition, too? Did you make any observations before you developed that line of work?"

Bill shrugged. "Let me guess. This is going to be about sex..."

"Anyway, taken together, it looks to us as though dancing is a signal. The fact that it occurs in mating contexts is one piece of evidence. The fact that it is difficult is another, as is the fact that the dance makes it easy to evaluate the quality of a booby's feet, feathers, and dexterity. We think that boobies are signaling their quality, and other boobies are using the dance to evaluate others as possible mates. The function of dancing, then, is signaling quality."

"How beautifully unfalsifiable."

"Well, we've started to gather some data. If this idea is right, it makes some predictions about what boobies will find appealing in a potential mate. One obvious step is to show booby dances to subjects, and see which one they say they would want to mate with. The prediction is that the ones that effectively demonstrate quality - smooth transitions from one foot to another, uniform feet and feather colors, that sort of thing - will be preferred. If properties of the dance don't affect mating preferences, that's bad for the theory."

"Let me guess, you're going to test it using forty subjects self-reporting on a little questionnaire..."

"Well, that is on the agenda. It's a tremendous advantage that boobies can talk. Anyway, yes, the method is a little like your emboobied cognition work..."

"That's completely different, and I think you're being difficult, and you know it. Besides, you haven't said anything to make me lose confidence in the self-esteem idea, just spun a story."

"Well, the self-esteem idea doesn't seem to explain important parts of the phenomenon. If dancing is fun, why does it occur only in mating contexts?"

"Well, so, it's the self-esteem associated with being seen dancing by others."

"Members of the opposite sex."

"Yes, that."

"Which no longer builds self-esteem after the monogamous bond has been, um, consummated."

"Right."

"And why does the dancing have the properties that it does?"

"Culture. Why do you people never get that there are socio-cultural messages that construct the booby self? Booby values, including when and how to dance, come from other boobies. This is why your ‘explanation' can't be right. It ignores learning and culture. Not only that, but I also wanted to add that there is an air of sexism about it. You're saying it's natural - and therefore good - for male boobies to dance, in line with stereotypes. It's very troubling."

"I didn't say anything about what's good, and..."

"I think I've heard enough. Good luck getting that silliness published, by the way. Your education probably hasn't led you to the insight that boobies are tribal, and my tribe, I assure you, will be very happy to discriminate against your tribe. As the people who study discrimination, I can assure you, we're very good at it."

Robert Kurzban. All rights reserved. This entry was also posted at /www.epjournal.net/blog/.