What does it mean for an animal to be a social one? In a review of a handful of books about cognitive neuropsychology, Ziff and Rosenfeld explain one aspect of how mental processses are inherently connect to the social environment:

Animals and infants conduct this miniature version of natural selection by means of what Changeux terms “cognitive games.” One well-known example concerns cries of alarm in African vervet monkeys. Adult monkeys use a simple but effective vocabulary of sounds that warn against danger: a loud bark for leopards, a two-syllable cough for eagles, and a hissing sound for snakes. Surprisingly, researchers found, baby monkeys hiss at snakes without explicit instruction. Changeux writes, “Snakes seem to arouse a sort of innate universal fear, which probably developed fairly early in the course of the evolution of the higher vertebrates.” When adult monkeys confirm the baby’s judgment with their own hisses, the infant’s genetically produced prerepresentation is rewarded and reinforced.

But baby monkeys require more explicit instruction in protecting themselves against predators, such as eagles, to which they have been less genetically conditioned. At first,

newborn monkeys react to any form that flies in the air, which is to say to the class of birds as a whole. Then, gradually, a selective stabilization of the response to the shape of dangerous species takes place…. If the first cry of alarm is sounded by one of the young, the nearest adult looks up. If it sees a harmless bird, it does not react. But if the young monkey has spotted a martial eagle, the adult reacts by emitting a cry of alarm that confirms the presence of danger…. The adult’s cry of alarm validates a pertinent relationship between shape and sound that is established in the brain of the young monkey.

This process of learning alarm cries through trial and error, reward and suppression, demonstrates the kind of cognitive games that are played out constantly through the brain’s interaction with the environment.

What this means in context is that, while some of the important information about the species environment is encoded in genetic material, some of it is encoded in social information; but more specifically, in the brains of individual animals. If you take the animal away from its social milieu, in important ways, it ceases to be the same animal. Not only is it less able to survive in its normal habitat, but there is likely other social information which would simply disappear in the absence of older generations. This is likely old hat to many biologists who work to understand evolution, but it is a remarkable insight. Evolution happens across animal brains, just as it does in human brain.

What are the ramifications of this insight? In England, a group of scientists is working on storing the genetic information of the world’s endangered species. The hope is that one day, if technology allows, the material can be used to restore the species to the wild should they disappear.

The problem with their plan is that it completely fails to take into account the lessons offered by Changeux about the nature of animal evolutionary success. For many species, that success is highly contingent on a social environment of other animals, not just a compatible physical environment. Without an older generation to impart the wisdom of the ages, indivduals form any species thawed out in the future won’t have the mental environment that currently ensures their survival. No matter how impressive our biotechnology gets, it isn’t going to provide sufficient tools for the rebirth of species destroyed by our current reshaping of the world.