A walrus takes flight to deal with global warming. Image: Monterey Bay Aquarium.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium has a fun new video about climate change, called Change for the Ocean, to go with their exhibit Hot Pink Flamingos. Narrated by John Cleese and produced by Free Range Studios, the animated video is cute, funny, and pretty effective at conveying the fact that people can change their ways much faster than sea life can adapt to climate change.

Though their point is that human behavior can change quickly while animal evolution happens more slowly, the video shows some pretty fast animal evolution. Flamingos grow longer legs in a matter of seconds, and walruses instantly and miraculously modify their flippers into wings. If you weren’t listening to John Cleese as he says “Sadly, animals evolve far too slowly,” you might just get the wrong idea about how evolution works.

Evolution is generally a slow process. But, as humans can ride bikes to work instead of driving in cars, animals can make behavioral changes in response to climate change, too. Some animals spend more time in the shade, or move to cooler habitats. Others do more than just relocate themselves. In response to the heat, the Arabian oryx, a species of antelope, becomes less active during the day, when it’s hot, and more active at night, when it’s cooler. Other animals, through changes in their behavior, can actually change their physiological response to high temperatures The intertidal sea star Pisaster ochraceus takes up cold water into a cavity in the middle of the body—and this mass of cold water keeps its body cool during low tide. Scientists at the Bodega Marine Lab found that sea stars take up extra water when conditions are hot, and can thus maintain their body temperature. These kinds of changes are not evolution in action—rather, these animals are modifying their behavior to deal with the heat.

Like the animals, we humans can change our behavior to deal with a warming world. But we have a second option, which the animals don’t have: we can change our behavior—in big ways—to prevent the world from getting quite so warm in the first place.

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Did John's genes make him cheat on Elizabeth?
Photo by Mike Murphy

The gene commonly comes in three different versions — RS1, RS3, and GT25. Men with GT25 and RS1 reported more infidelity and had unhappier marriages on average than men with RS3. Which version a woman had didn't seem to matter.

Scientists don't know why men with the RS3 version are more faithful but it makes sense that this gene would be involved. It has been implicated in pair bonding in other animals with the best and most comprehensive work having been done on little rodents called voles.

There are many different kinds of voles but we’ll focus on prairie and meadow voles. Prairie voles stick with one female. Meadow voles are a bit more like men in country music songs — they tend to love them and leave them.

A bunch of wonderful experiments showed that the voles' different behaviors were because they had different versions of a certain vasopressin receptor gene. People don’t have the exact genetic difference that meadow and prairie voles have. But the exact same gene is involved in this new study.

The vole experiments showed that if the vasopressin receptor works less well in prairie voles, the boy voles develop a wandering eye. And male meadow voles with extra potent vasopressin receptors settle down.

So at least in voles this vasopressin receptor gene is important for pair bonding. We'll need more studies in humans to nail down whether it plays as big a role in human male monogamy. But this study does bring up some interesting ideas.

First off, we aren't voles so having this gene is no excuse for cheating on a partner. It just means that it is harder for these men to remain faithful. Sorry John but even if you have this gene version it doesn’t let you off the hook for cheating on Elizabeth.

Second, if the study proves to be correct, then it suggests that there may be a pharmaceutical way to modify men's behavior. A pharmaceutical company would need to come up with a drug that targets this receptor. Now men who take this drug would be more likely to be faithful. I don’t know about you, but this form of pharmaceutical behavioral modification seems a little scary to me.

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