The Topi is an African antelope. It’s hard to even google this animal, because Google keeps changing the word to “topic.”
Topi (that’s the singular and plural) are strange. Their females are fecund only one day a year, which obviously makes that day a little frantic for the males. The males have to corner the females to mate, which is not always easy. Some of the males cheat by lying—there’s no other word for it.
All year long, male Topi warn the herd of approaching predators by making a special, loud grunting sound that is immediately heard by all as “Watch out! A lion (or facsimile) is nearby!” When Topi hear the sound, they freeze and look for the potential attacker.
Researchers have found that some male Topi win the mating sweepstakes by unfairly using the sound that 364 days a year means, no kidding, “We’re in trouble!” It has to be believed, for the safety and survival of the herd, and is. One day a year, however, on mating day, there are male Topi who falsely use the warning grunt to freeze shy females in their tracks, and while the girls are searching the area for something with sharp teeth, they get a big surprise from behind. These deceptive males sneak up on them, and it’s wham, bam, thank you, Miss Topi!
Topi males that use this subterfuge, researchers find, mate three times as often as those who play by the rules. Males who don’t cheat, and who don’t risk the effectiveness of a vital species defense device by playing “The Horny Topi Who Cried ‘Lion,” are less likely to pass along their genetic material.
The Topi are encouraging an unethical culture. It works for a few Topi now, but if each generation has more cheaters, will the Topi warning grunt become ineffective the rest of the year? I doubt that Topi have calendars.
If Topi were human beings, would the fake grunt tactic be unethical? Immoral?
Discuss.
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Spark: Nature (PBS)
Ethics Alarms 
Well, the most obvious answer is yes, shouting “fire!” and raping someone who’s running away from the nonexistent fire is highly unethical.
In the spirit of finding a less obvious answer, let’s say that for humans, who are much less sexually forward and more circumspect than many (but not all) other animal species, this behavior would be analogous to telling a (false) scary story about what once happened nearby (on this very day, a hundred years ago…), and then offering to cuddle in order to comfort someone.
There’s a very blurry line between outright manipulation and persuading someone to do something that it’s not necessarily in their interests to do, but which isn’t necessarily bad for them, either. Personally, I just don’t use pretenses. I find people make better decisions when everyone’s on the same page, and the ability to clearly explain all the relevant points of the truth as I see it, explicitly acknowledging assumptions, has a handy side-effect of ingratiating and endearing people.
Very true. We engage in a more sophisticated game of ruffling our feathers that doesn’t (or shouldn’t) end in actual rape, especially when we’re younger, in the hopes of attracting a mate. I think it’s roughly on par with the Topi’s game, if you factor in intelligence and emotional refinement.
If we stick around long enough for the oxytocin and other neurotransmitters and hormones to wear off, and for our prospective mate to find out that that BMW belongs to the mommy whose basement we live in, well, hopefully we’ve been able to sell ourselves on our other endearing qualities, If they exist at all.
As you said, we learn to be up-front as we get older, but there’s ALWAYS some remnant of that tendency to put on our best face. It’s in the reptilian part of our brains.
Maybe it’s like presidential elections. Every four years as Iowa caucuses approach the electorate freezes and the candidates. . . . .
Never mind.
Since it ends in rape. I’d say the answer is yes.
Now if it ended in something consensual…I’d say it analogizes to someone, somehow being incredibly trusted and relied upon by pretty much everybody telling a girl, “Hey, the world is ending tomorrow, wanna do it?” and she said Yes, and afterwards he’s like “oops, my bad….better get back to looking to see if the world is going to end the next day…keep your ears open for my warning”. But the other guys who are relied upon don’t do that, and women are really that gullible….
I don’t know, if we’re going to analogize this to humans, we’re gonna really need a much more complex scenario in which the women don’t have to be complete morons and the men aren’t somehow the only source of information on impending doom.
“Hey, the world is ending tomorrow, wanna do it?”
Interesting! Along those lines, what if someone (let’s call him Al) says “Hey, the world is ending 10 years from today (01/27/2006).”
The “wanna do it” portion becomes being browbeaten into submitting to a staggering increase in global governmental regulation, taxation, and pre Magna Carta level power AND a sweeping redistribution of wealth (everyone’s but Al’s & cronies, that is) FROM poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.
Despite an ad campaign that would’ve made Herr Goebbels blush, the decade saw none of the scariness occur while ironically seeing many of the predictions overturned.
10 years come and go without a hitch, the “oops, my bad…” takes the form of a nutcase Preacher (whom we’ll also call Al) whose doomsday ‘use by or else’ date has passed.
He just shrugs and claims up is down, hither is yon, back is forth, and reissues.
Regardless of chromosomal makeup, are humans really that gullible?
Good scenario.
“are humans really that gullible?”
We did elect President Obama.
Twice…
I’d say that it was just an American problem, but there’s that Nobel prize thingy…
And we elected Al too, supposedly.
Now: For the tribe on North Sentinel island. Considered to be the most remote and hostilely isolationist “last tribe” on the planet. Described as paleolithic, their interactions with modern man have always ended with a volley of arrows to keep the moderns away.
What if by some chance, it was discovered their blood had developed the antibodies that would cure or be an antidote for almost all of our fatal illnesses?
Molecular biology is good enough that if we were in a position to discover this, we’d also be in a position to exploit it without further interaction with the islanders.
Isn’t this the way the media works? And advertising? And people who call 9-1-1 or who use THIS all the time for no particular reason. On the other hand, for the Topi, it could be a kind of practice fire drill.
I think the study sampling is incomplete. The observations have to include the percentage of females who respond – or not – the second year. If they continue to do so, then the behavior is ethical: as much as the males having a more melodic mating call or a greater number of antlers or featherier plumage or a louder chest-thump. The scientists would also have to tag the females to see whether the ones who responded to the call at mating time ran faster than the ones who didn’t. And last, it would be necessary to track the progress of the male offspring to see if they didn’t play “fair” either, thus preserving the hereditary intelligence of certain Topi as protectors of the herd.
As for humans, we learn “scaring” for fun and profit: it is first a concommitant of childplay (do more boys than girls do it? is it equally satisfying?); then later for horror movies … and doing business … and international politics.
Conclusion: The Topi Experiment is not complete. Most humans still believe weather reports and earthquake predictions and messages transmitted by aluminum foil that aliens will come to tickle our ani. Is that smart? Or is it that the X chromosome carries the genetic material for naivety?
I don’t know of many fire drills that end in rape though…
You didn’t go to public school in old brick buildings facing a noisy elevated highway on one side and a rumbling freight railway line on the other wiith an old crumbling brick wall behind the recess/play area that backed onto narrow dark alleyways which the fire drills spilled into. Follow the map . . . . Hoboken, NJ before gentrification.
And since when is it settled that this was a case of Topi-rape? Seems to me the females were trembling in place due to fear of lions, not potential mates.
All these years I managed to repress that memory. You just HAD to bring it up, didn’t you? You bastard!
“But I don’t hear any fire alarm? Where’s all the other kids? But my clothes aren’t on fire!”
“Isn’t this the way the media works? And advertising?”
To an extent.
Admit it. They’re yanking at your pants even now … you can’t look away from the screen ….
You left marriage vows out of your conclusion.
You’re right. But the others have stronger followings.
Perhaps the women Topis know the drill and joke about the macho topis who use the fire drill scam and know it’s just part of the deal. Would make a good Larson cartoon. I try to never underestimate the distaff side. It’s invariably a mistake.
Bill Cosby: “Man, I wish I’d thought of that”.
Sounds like the mating habits of Yale Frat boys.
So essentially the Topi special loud grunting sound is used by a male as an immobilizing distraction or “drug” to rape a female, different delivery system than the date rape drug but same effect. It’s an easily identifiable cause and effect. Based on human standards of morality, the cause and effect of this practice is clearly unethical and immoral; anything that is used to manipulate humans in such a manner would be unethical and immoral.
I wonder what the local males that observe this practice do to the women in their villages. 😉
But that analogy fails…because there isn’t a legitimate use of the date rape drugs in the hands of men, whereas there IS a legitimate use of the warning grunt in the hands of the males at other times.
True that maybe the analogy was rather thin but still the effect of immobilizing the female is the “same” regardless of whether one is a conditioned response or not; cause and effect, different initiating cause with the same immobilizing the female effect and both end in rape.
Personally I think we’re both right on this one, if that’s possible.
I think this question is more complicated than it lets on.
Several species of flatworm are hermaphroditic, two adults of those species meet up, they have to decide which will carry the other’s progeny. Carrying young is a significant biological cost, and so obviously neither really wants to do it. So they decide who’s the mom as any reasonable beings in this situation would: The sword fight with their penises.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penis_fencing
Eventually, someone loses, one or both worms are stabbed, and life goes on. But driving that up to a human level, we would judge that every pregnancy by stabbing would be rape. The problem is, without that rape, the species would die.
If the question is on an individual level, is it ethical to rape, the answer is obviously no. It’s a violation and unacceptable in every sense of the term. But on a macro level, if the survival of the species was in question, do the same ethics apply?
On to the Topi. Nature and evolution is rarely as perfect as we tend to think it is… Ask anyone who’s had an appendix burst. Sometimes evolution produces something that is actually a detriment to continuation, being fertile once a year and being shy during that period was probably evolved so as to ensure that only the best and brightest of males would have their genetics carried forward. The downside to that is that as the Topi became rarer, it became more important for the species that annual mating happens, but less likely for it to happen. Pandas have a similar problem.
So to scale that up to humanity: There are only 100,000 humans left on Earth, all females are within a year of becoming infertile (Topi live 15 years, take 3 years to reach maturity, and are fecund once a year, for a day), and they all have a headache. What do you do?
Take them to the number 6 dance.
But see, if we have to create a wild scenario in which to make the argument that, gee, I guess in this case, rape is A-OK, then we are acknowledging that the scenario can’t really be analogized to our situation in an ethical way.
That is to say, since the end result is rape, the conduct is unethical.
Not “AOK”, but maybe acceptable from a utilitarian standpoint. It’s kind of like the “would you kill a single innocent child to save a thousand” scenario. No one thinks killing the kid is OK, and I certainly don’t think rape is OK, but it might be the best choice, if the alternative is extinction.
Regardless, I think the scenario accurately reflects the situation scaled to humanity. If the comparison becomes too ridiculous, that might be the pitfall of comparing animals to humans.
“the situation scaled to humanity.”
Agreed. I think “rape” in this case might be anthropomorphic. It looks to me like a good survival-of-the-species fuck. Anyone who’s lived on a farm or ranch would know that. Come to think of it: anyone who owns a breeding pet.
Oh come on! One day to breed and propagate the species? RAPE is a human term. Let the topi do what they need to do. Does the female topi NOT care for her young? Nonsense. This is adaptation, pure and simple.
That is the perfect response. Thanks.
That’s a great and 100% valid response when it comes to the Animal Kingdom, but the question that was asked is in human terms; “If Topi were human beings, would the fake grunt tactic be unethical? Immoral?”
I should have indicated that my comment was directed at Elizabeth I.
I think she’s given you the green light.
Is that “the green light” in Topi speak?
Human, too. Bill Cosby said so.
It won’t be ethical until the day that female topis are given supportive opportunities to learn to grunt at lions and then to eventually evolve to fake grunt for sexual advantage and ultimately to mount apprehensive males. Ethical parity cannot be declared until zoologists are able to certify that exactly one-half of all topi sexual encounters consist of female-on-topi action.
It’s not fair. The male topis standing the front line against the lions get to eat 100 plants and the females that stay back and do clerical work only get to eat 77 plants.
And of course the female topis who choose to be stay at home moms.
hmmm. I wonder if Jack’s just trying to distract us. And if so, from what? Wait! What’s that I hear in the distance? softly, softly, catchee Topi . . . .