A new study from the University of Warwick and the University of Birmingham has found that great apes like gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans spin around to alter their mental states. The findings suggest that this behavior could provide clues as to how humans evolved the desire to seek altered mental states and actively manipulate their mood and perception of reality.
The Study
The study analyzed forty online videos in which great apes spin around and found that the animals deliberately make themselves dizzy. The primates spun around 5.5 times on average per spinning episode at an average speed of 1.5 revolutions per second. On average, the animals did this three times.
Comparison to Humans
The researchers compared the spinning speeds of the great apes to humans and found that the animals can spin as fast as professional human dancers and circus artists while holding onto a rope. The apes move and spin much like dervish dancers, who whirl round and round at ceremonies to achieve a spiritual trance.
Implications
Dr. Adriano Lameira, an associate professor of psychology who co-led the study, said that every culture has found a way of evading reality through dedicated and special rituals, practices, or ceremonies. He believes that this human trait of seeking altered states is so universal, historically and culturally, that it raises the intriguing possibility that this is something that has been potentially inherited from our evolutionary ancestors.
He also said that if all great apes seek dizziness, then our ancestors are also highly likely to have done so. The apes were doing this purposefully, almost as if they were dancing – a known mechanism in humans that universally facilitates mood regulation, social bonding and heightens the senses and is based on rotation movements. The parallel between what the apes were doing and what humans do was beyond coincidental.
The research suggests that spinning and dizziness have played a significant role in the evolution of human cognition capacities and emotional needs
