Mutual Aid

The Other Law of the Jungle

Pablo Servigne, Gauthier Chapelle, Andrew Brown

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781509547920, 9781509547913
• eBook ISBN: 9781509547937
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica ambientale ed energetica

In the merciless arena of life, we are all subject to the law of the jungle, to ruthless competition and the survival of the fittest – such is the myth that has given rise to a society that has become toxic for our planet and for our and future generations.

But today the lines are shifting. A growing number of new movements and thinkers are challenging this skewed view of the world and reviving words such as 'altruism', 'cooperation', 'kindness' and 'solidarity'. A close look at the wide spectrum of living beings reveals that, at all times and in all places, animals, plants, microorganisms and human beings have practised different forms of mutual aid. And those which survive difficult conditions best are not necessarily the strongest, but those which help each other the most.

Pablo Servigne and Gauthier Chapelle explore a vast, forgotten continent of mutual aid in order to discover the mechanisms of this 'other law of the jungle'. In so doing, they provide a more rounded view of the world of living things and give us some of the conceptual tools we need to move beyond the vicious circle of competition and self-destruction that is leading our civilization to the verge of collapse.

1
The history of a forgetting

Imagine a beautiful sunny valley where snow-capped peaks stand out against the blue sky, overlooking a mix of multicoloured meadows and dark forests. In these forests in North America, it is common to see two species: the whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) and Rocky Mountain fir (Abies lasiocarpa). But – ecologists ask – how do these two species get along? Do they tread on each other’s toes or, on the contrary, do they need each other?

Across the valley floor, the distribution of pines and firs is random. Researchers have also noticed that when a pine tree dies, the neighbouring fir trees grow more healthily. In other words, the trees seem to hamper each other. You could say they’re in competition. Nothing unusual about that: we all imagine the forest as a place where the trees overshadow each other and where the small shoots have to make their way up to the light, or die.

Science is fully aware of this: for more than a century, ecologists have observed these interactions. These ecologists are steeped in the classical theory which, in the ecology of communities (of plant populations), gives pride of place to competition. However, on rare occasions during the twentieth century, a researcher would occasionally observe something odd: for example, that in some places the grass grew better under poplars. But nobody really paid any attention, because it didn’t fit into the theory.

Let’s return to the cohabitation between pines and firs. It was in the 1990s that the team run by Ragan Callaway, an ecologist at the University of Montana, started to take an interest in these ‘exceptions’. The researchers compared the situation of trees at the bottom of the valley, an environment where life is good, with the situation on the mountainsides, at a certain altitude, where living conditions are much more difficult.¹ What a surprise! At altitude, things were utterly different: not only did the firs grow only around pines, but, when a pine died, the surrounding firs fared less well… These trees compete when living conditions are good, but help each other when they become tougher (in cold or windy weather, poor soil, etc.). Until then, people had seen only half the picture.

Callaway and his colleagues were the first to take these observations seriously in plants and measure them accurately on a large scale. For more than twenty years, they travelled the world and accumulated experimental data, published in major international scientific journals,² which show the extent of mutually beneficial relationships between plants (which they call ‘facilitation’).³ Quite enough to radically change our vision of the world!

Everywhere, all the time, and in every colour

From Darwin onwards and throughout most of the twentieth century, biologists and ecologists believed that the main forces which structured the relationships between species within ecosystems were competition and predation. Their experiments were designed to highlight this, and, of course, this is what they ended up observing. The history of observing the opposite forces (mutually beneficial relationships) has been much slower work. It really only took off in the 1970s. Today, studies number in the thousands, and it would be very daring, even crazy, to synthesize them all. However, here is a small overview.

Among one’s peers

It’s not surprising that ants and bees collaborate in a single colony (the same family). We can also easily observe migratory birds, such as pigeons or arctic terns, flying together (the same species) so as to have a better chance of escaping predators.⁴ Anyone who has ventured to walk across a colony of arctic terns is not likely to forget the ensuing series of furious dives, their sharp beaks lunging forward, punctuated by particularly explicit cries intended to scare away the intruder, most often a marauding cat or fox.

Associating in order to achieve the same goal is also common among lionesses, who need to hold onto the prey they have caught and prevent hyenas from pilfering it,⁵ and it is even seen on Antarctic ice floes when emperor penguins, while nesting, have to fight against a common enemy: the wind. These large birds huddle together to keep warm, and take turns to occupy the most uncomfortable position: on the edge of the group, facing the blizzard. This is undoubtedly a profitable strategy, because it allows them to withstand perceived temperatures that plunge as low as minus 200°C!

In starlings, the mating season is dominated by competition, as in most species. But, after singing in early spring, and until the chicks are freed so they can defend the territory necessary to meet the needs of the whole family, starlings gather in groups of thousands of individuals, which gives them a greater efficiency in foraging and makes predator attacks almost impossible.

Trees are not to be outdone. Many species connect their root networks.⁶ In the tropics, for example, trees of the genus Cecropia are pioneers: they are the first to colonize cleared, arid lands. To accomplish this arduous and thankless task, young shoots connect up in a network through their roots, thus pooling water and nutrients. This makes it possible to reuse the root network of those that die first.

Between distant cousins

The discovery of the bonds of solidarity between different species is also very old. Witness Herodotus’s famous story of the Egyptian plover (a bird) and the crocodile: ‘[T]he trochilus […] enters into his [the crocodile’s] mouth and swallows down the leeches, and he being benefited is pleased and does no harm to the trochilus.’⁷ During the first half of the twentieth century, discoveries of beneficial interactions between species became more common and quite popular, but curiously enough these were not mentioned in academic texts.⁸ It was not until the 1970s that science accepted the universality of mutual aid between two or several species that lie far apart on the genealogical tree of living creatures. For example, in coral reefs, the clownfish is known to have very close relationships with sea anemones, which use their venom to protect it from predators, in return for the food the clownfish brings them (it is itself immune to the venom).

In the frozen waters of the Antarctic Ocean, another species of sea anemone spends its life on the back of a snail (protection in exchange for transport) in what is akin to obligatory mutualism (a ‘symbiosis’), since neither species has ever been observed without its partner.⁹ Through the protection offered to it by the anemone, the snail has even allowed itself the luxury of saving energy by making a particularly fine shell. We see in this example the extent to which close relationships of mutual aid can become fusional, to the point where the organisms involved are transformed. If you dare to let yourself be transformed in contact with the other creature so that you can both stay alive, you have truly learned how to let go.

In warmer seas, some small cleaner fish escort large fish, turtles and marine mammals to rid them of their parasites. Following an elaborate dance, the cleaner fish even risk entering the mouths and gills of their hosts, who could very well be their predators. This caring relationship is so effective in terms of getting rid of parasites that it is genetically engrammed in certain types of host fish: after hatching (in the laboratory), they immediately adopt a welcoming pose on their first contact with cleaner wrasses. However, the symbiosis can sometimes turn into parasitism, as once the stock of parasites is exhausted, the cleaners will sometimes simply feed on the mucus or scales of their host, giving the latter a characteristic shock. This balance between symbiosis and parasitism is also found in the African savannas, between oxpecker birds and their herbivorous hosts (antelopes, buffaloes, zebras, giraffes and rhinos), as sometimes the former are no longer satisfied with ticks but start to peck small pieces of flesh.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Introduction: The age of mutual aid
• 1 The history of a forgetting
• 2 Spontaneous mutual aid
• 3 Group mechanisms
• 4 The spirit of the group
• 5 Beyond the group
• 6 Since the dawn of time
• Conclusion: The new face of mutual aid
• Epilogue: For which world?
• Appendix: On the ‘new sociobiology’
• End User License Agreement