Animals can work - I don't mean hamsters

on-Human Work
PZ Myers 05.23.06, 3:00 PM ET

Ask scientists if animals do work, and they'll answer, "Of course they do."
Work is measured in joules, and we can measure that physiologically. By
that definition, even a sleeping animal is doing work to keep itself alive.

People have a more subjective definition of work, though. We might see a
cow grazing in a field, and despite the fact that grazing is what the cow
has to do to survive, we don't think of that as really working, any more
than we'd consider it work to stand in an orchard, pluck an apple and bite
into it. That's too enjoyable to be work! On the other hand, if you pluck
many apples without eating them, pack them into crates and load them on a
truck for money, that's work. The difference is that the reward for the
labor is deferred and indirect--we have to make a substantial effort for no
immediate gain first; only later do we reap the benefit.

Defined in that sense, there are animals that don't really work. Filter
feeding, for instance, is an extremely successful lifestyle for many
organisms: sit or float, breathing in the medium, and all your essentials
are extracted from your surroundings. The life of a clam is a good life, if
you aren't too ambitious. There are other animals, though, that work smart
and work hard to maintain their lifestyles.

Our nearest relatives, the chimpanzees, will engage in barter. Meat is a
scarce and valuable commodity, and successful hunters will trade bits of
their catch to earn favor with higher-ranked members of the troop, for
grooming, and even for sex--it really is the world's oldest profession.

Chimps actually have a simple kind of barter economy. Lab experiments with
chimps have found that they can also grasp the abstract concept of money:
They can learn to associate plastic tokens with food rewards and carry out
simple tasks to earn this "money," which they then exchange for fruit.

Chimps lack sophistication in money management, though. While they can
figure out that some tokens will buy tastier items, they can't quite
understand that lower-valued tokens are sufficient for less tasty
foods--they'll happily offer the most valuable token for anything that is
offered. Apparently "buy low, sell high" is an adage for humans only.

One of the clearest examples of hardworking manual laborers are the
leafcutter ants of the genera Atta and Acromyrmex. The social insects are
typified by the presence of a sterile working class (we even call them
"workers") that labor to maintain the nest or hive, tend to the young,
collect food and fight off threats (another working class are called
"soldiers"). The leafcutter ants are farmers. They gather leaves, which
they chew and slice into a mulch, and then they plant it with a fungus,
which the nest members then eat. Much careful, tedious preparation and time
is required to produce the reward of a crop. By any human standard, this is
work.

Another example is the work of Uloborid and Araneid spiders, the ones that
build the beautiful orb webs you may notice in the morning dew as you go to
work. It takes roughly an hour for a spider to construct one, and then it
requires regular maintenance to remove wind-blown debris and to repair
holes torn in it by the struggles of the spider's prey. Think of a
fisherman tending and mending his nets, and you've got an image of the orb
spider's work.

Sometimes the reward of all that work is seasonally deferred. Food isn't
always uniformly available across the year, and many animals work hard to
stockpile food when it's available for the lean winter months. Even in
urban America, you'll see the squirrels scurrying frantically through the
summer and fall, building up small hoards of nuts (and layers of body fat)
that will get them through the cold winter. Some birds, like the Steller's
Jay, have a reputation as opportunistic beggars and thieves (we could argue
that thievery is a kind of work, I suppose), but they also plan and store,
stashing rich finds in hidden caches to which they can later return.

Not all animal work is directed toward collecting dinner. There are animals
that work in engineering and architecture. Termites of the genus
Macrotermes build huge mounds, typically almost 5 meters in diameter and 3
or more meters tall, that are common features across the landscape of
southern Africa. These elaborate structures contain ventilation shafts,
residential galleries, underground gardens and nurseries. Construction is
continuous, with workers digging and transporting soil to the surface. As
any homeowner knows, maintenance and repair is also continuous; things wear
out and break, and teams of workers are always rebuilding and patching.

When we think of nest-building, birds always come to mind. It can take days
or even weeks to collect materials and weave together some nests; the nests
of eagles are added to, year after year, and can be up to 4 meters across.
A smaller bird, the swiftlet, has what I consider the most onerous job,
though: Its nests are built entirely from its saliva. I should think that
building a house out of congealed spit counts as a remarkable bit of hard
labor.

What are the nests for? Their purpose is for what I consider the most
inarguable kind of work we find in the animal kingdom: child care. If work
is effort expended for a reward deferred, then raising progeny is not only
an example of great effort, it's also an example of an exceptionally remote
and often completely non-existent reward. Reproduction is an expensive
process that can stretch an animal's energy budget to the breaking point.

Consider nesting birds, flying to and fro to fetch worms and bugs for
incessantly peeping chicks, or the mouse and rabbit pups in their burrows,
demanding milk from their mothers. Animals everywhere work amazingly hard
each spring to raise the next generation. In most cases, that next
generation is not going to contribute to their parents' well being, and, in
extreme cases, might even eat them. The only reward for this task is the
abstract one: Animals that don't do it will find their genes less well
represented in the population in the future.

As an illustration, look to the Scarabeus beetle. Its idea of a nest egg is
to collect a lump of dung, shape it into a ball, roll it many meters away
and dig a hole and bury it with one of its eggs. It's working hard to make
an investment in its children's futures. (They will feed on the dung ball
as they grow to adulthood.)

When you're working late at the office or in the field, trying to sock away
a few dollars for your kids' college funds, just remember--it could be
worse.
http://www.forbes.com/2006/05/20/pz-myers-work_cx_pzm_06work_0523myers_print.html