Understanding Selfish Herds

Throughout chapter ten, Dawkins talks about the selfish-herd model. He states that in this model, there is no place for cooperative interactions. "There is no altruism here, only selfish exploitation by each individual on every other individual. But in real live there are cases where individuals seem to take active steps to preserve fellow members of the groups from the predators." (168) This is very true, every survival machine considers their live before others'. Although, when important members are at risk, this is when the survival machine takes active action in protecting this member. You might be asking yourself what I mean by important. By this I mean that the member might be significant to the herd either by their impressive abilities or because it might be attached to the actual survival machine.

A horse herd portrays the relations between people very easily. I've had the opportunity to be part of a project that involves equine assisted learning with horses. Horses for men have being of great benefit in understanding various psychological aspects. Horses and humans are both really social creatures. They have certain roles in the herd, they are gregarious, which means that they prefer to be in groups than alone. In the other hand, they all have different attitudes and personalities. All of these aspects offer us the opportunity to observe and evaluate the similarities of their behavior with the one of people. There are certain activities performed with large groups of people.

Equine Assisted Learning

Every member in a group has it's role: there is a contributor of ideas, a leader, an opinion-giver, and an energizer. Once, we assisted an activity with the workers of Sony in order to understand the group interaction and situation. The activity consisted of making three horses jump a 30 cm. obstacle without a bridal nor a lead rope. It was quite difficult because the horses were very stubborn. At this moment of difficulty, the different roles of these people were evident. A lady who really feared horses was very nervous and disrupted the whole activity. At this point, the group leader scolded her and the other ones didn't say a word. Here we can interpret the herd model on this group very easily. This woman lacked the qualities to perform the activity actively efficient, which leaded to her exclusion of the group. This happens in animals as well, if one of the members of the herd is not efficient, then it won't matter if a predator eats him because he is not relevant to the herd.

Claus's Loss

There is another really important situation among horse herds. When they are young, they tend to get attached to other horses. This is similar to the attachment children feel for their mothers when they are young. This was the situation between my horse and another one in the herd. When my horse died, he felt very afflicted and we wouldn't interact with other horses nor would he eat. This proved to me that animals actually have a feeling sadness, that when one of their most loved friends or relatives dies, they feel and understand the loss. Up to now, Dawkins hasn't touched the topic about animal feeling, but I guess he would contradict my theory because he thinks survival machines only act with response of their selfish genes. In this case, my horse actually felt the loss of his friend. What I think is that the selfish gene exists, but it is not always present. It is only present in drastic situations, where it is either ones life or the others.'

Another very good example of the selfish-herd model are the insects. "A social insect colony is a huge family, usually all descended from the same mother. The workers, who seldom or never reproduce themselves, are often divided into a number of distinct castes, including small workers, large workers, soldiers, and highly specialized castles like the honey pots." (172) I wish this was our case, but unfortunately we have a different idea of progress. These insects are very altruistic and they cooperate together for the progress of all. In ant societies, there are no leaders. These creatures actually share their learning, which they acquire threw their antenna. As a result, thousands of ants act together with the same idea of surviving together.