Humans just love seeing animals demonstrate love: cuddly chimps grooming each other, say, or penguin pairs carefully passing their egg in the driving snow. Videos of cows joining dog packs or cats and birds becoming friends dot our social media feeds, shared hundreds of thousands of times.
Those animal relationships are more complicated than we think, says , associate professor of biological sciences at Vanderbilt University, and one can鈥檛 always apply the human idea of love to them. It鈥檚 more likely these behaviors help them survive and reproduce.
Don鈥檛 label Abbot a Valentine鈥檚 Day naysayer, though, because he鈥檚 just the opposite. Even if animals have ulterior motives for teaming up, they teach humans a lot about love.
鈥淭he animal world teaches us again and again that falling in love is advantageous to humans,鈥� Abbot says.聽 鈥淎nd knowing why animals do these things makes something like Valentine鈥檚 Day richer because it makes me feel a part of this larger biological enterprise. Who can鈥檛 look at a couple of animals courting and not feel a kinship for what they鈥檙e doing, which is basically saying, 鈥業 like you. Let鈥檚 see where this leads.鈥欌��
Abbot teaches undergraduate- and graduate-level courses on observing animal behavior, which can serve students heading into any type of career since close observation is key for all of them, he says.
What students learn is that animals express behaviors that may look like love to us, but keeps them and their offspring alive and thriving. For instance, in those penguin pairs, the male keeps the egg and hatched chick safe while the female leaves for weeks on end to feed, exchanging places when the female returns.
鈥淭hat classic image of primates grooming each other is an example of how they strengthen a social bond for protection from predators or parasites,鈥� Abbot said. 鈥淚n some animals, you may even see one issuing a warning call, which seems like it鈥檚 demonstrating love for the group and putting itself in danger, but it also may be saying, 鈥業鈥檓 the toughest or healthiest member here, but there are weaker ones nearby you can get.鈥�
鈥淭here are lots of biological explanations for these kinds of social bonds, but they鈥檙e what we humans recognize as love.鈥�
Last year, Abbot published an edited volume entitled聽Comparative Social Evolution, an update of and companion book to E.O. Wilson鈥檚 famous 1975 tome,聽Sociobiology. The book is available from聽.