Ethologist Vilmos Csányi on the relationship between evolution, communities, and nature
How did human beings become social creatures? Why do we increasingly feel that something is fundamentally wrong with the modern way of life? Why do we experience anxiety within artificial rhythms, cut off from what we are, in fact, “designed for”? In WWF Hungary’s podcast, we talked to ethologist Vilmos Csányi about evolution, community, spirituality, the human–animal relationship, and the future of the planet.
For Vilmos Csányi – ethologist, writer, and Széchenyi Prize–winning biologist – his interest in animals originates in childhood experiences that already foreshadowed his later career. Fish, frogs, ducks, owls, and even a hawk were part of his early surroundings – much as many children feel a deep urge to connect with other living beings. Yet this attraction is not merely emotional; it has a biological basis.
“Essentially, every human being is born with an attraction toward animals,” he says. At the same time, he emphasizes that culture can suppress this attraction – just as it can suppress curiosity, compassion, or even respect for nature. Education, in both positive and negative directions, can be stronger than our instincts, and under its influence even the most ancient inclinations can be repressed.
This idea runs throughout Csányi’s work and also appears in his 2024 book The Creative Imagination – The Evolution of Creativity. During the conversation, he repeatedly returns to the notion that humans are biological beings whose cultural systems often contradict what they are evolutionarily prepared for.
Is human nature in crisis?
During the discussion, the idea arises that modern humans often live according to artificial schedules, in artificial workplaces, performing artificial tasks—simply to have somewhere to live and something to eat. This way of life generates deep tension and raises the question: can we say that human nature is in crisis?
According to Csányi, human nature has in fact been in crisis for a very long time. This tension already emerged when we began to use language and to share our imagination with others. At that point, collective ideas and beliefs about the world took shape – often based not on objective reality, but on random elements. From then on, behaviour was no longer guided solely by feedback from nature, but also by imagined systems that were not always in harmony with the environment. This ultimately became one of the persistent problems of evolution.
Another characteristic of humans is that we simultaneously love living in communities and belonging somewhere, while also being inclined to reject those who stand outside the community. These are two opposing sides of the same trait, and neither can be eliminated. We are forced into a constant balancing act between “good” and “bad,” yet it is precisely this search for balance that makes us human.
Community, however, is not always the same as what we often call it today. A workplace or an online group does not necessarily constitute a real community. To understand what community meant at the dawn of human development, Csányi refers to the principle of ethologist Nikolaas Tinbergen: “We truly understand behaviour only if we do not look solely at its function or how it unfolds in a given moment, but if we are able to uncover its development and its evolutionary history. Thus, community can only be understood if one has at least a basic understanding of human evolutionary history,” he emphasizes.
How did we become who we are?
There is little direct evidence about the early stages of human evolution. Fossil remains preserve bones, but how our ancestors lived, what they ate, and what their social structures were like can only be inferred. “Ethology can offer some help here – not in the sense that it can verify everything with absolute certainty, but it can provide a picture that also explains the behavioural patterns we observe today,” he adds.
What we do know is that we descend from australopithecine species of great apes, and that we diverged from chimpanzees around six million years ago. Chimpanzees remained in the trees, living a territorial lifestyle. Their social relationships primarily serve territory defense. Males sometimes band together to patrol borders and chase away or kill intruders. Females migrate, while males stay, which led to the development of special “baby-showing” rituals so that males would recognize and accept offspring. Beyond this, however, they exhibit relatively few genuine social bonds.
Australopithecines lived in a similar way for roughly four million years. Then, within a relatively short evolutionary period, Homo habilis, who used simple stone tools, appeared, followed by Homo erectus. During this time, brain size doubled.
Homo erectus abandoned a settled way of life, began to migrate, and reached Asia and Europe. Although they had no weapons, they consumed meat, as evidenced by traces of cooked meat and fish. According to recent research, Homo erectus likely specialized in scavenging – collectively taking prey killed by other predators. The key to this was not strength, but cooperation. This behaviour persisted for around two million years, long enough to become genetically fixed.
These were social changes that had not existed before. “In those few hundred thousand years, the brain essentially doubled in size because a new form of social behaviour emerged, which meant tolerating one another’s proximity,” Csányi adds.
Beyond tolerating proximity, individuals also had to trust one another. What we now call friendship had to develop.
Friendship, care and pair bonds
This change affected not only survival but reproduction as well. In the case of Homo erectus, the number of births increased significantly – while chimpanzees give birth every six to eight years, Homo erectus could have children as often as once a year. This was only possible because women helped one another with childcare and carrying. Meanwhile, males had to leave the group to obtain food, which required stable pair bonds. According to Csányi, human pair bonding is not a romantic invention in evolutionary terms, but a functional solution to a communal problem. “Changes in personal relationships occurred at this time, and they had to occur, otherwise the close group contact necessary for scavenging behaviour could not have developed,” he adds.
This was also when complementary cooperation emerged: one person has an idea, others accept it, take on different tasks, and together these lead to success. This, however, required something that did not develop in the animal world: the sharing of imagination.
The imagination that built civilization
Animals have imagination – but they cannot transmit it to one another. In humans, this changed: first through gestures, sounds, and pointing, and later through language.
Once humans became capable of sharing their ideas, cultures, traditions, and rituals emerged – along with beliefs. These could be useful, harmful, or neutral. What worked endured; what caused harm disappeared.
From these beliefs, spirituality also grew. Its essence lies in imagining oneself as part of a greater, caring system.
“Whatever this greater thing may be – it can be nature: I see myself as part of nature; nature takes care of me, and it is my duty to protect it. Preserving rivers, forests, and wildlife could also be a concept – a vision in which I imagine myself as belonging to this natural world as well,” he emphasizes.
But this system could also be the community, later invisible forces, spirits, gods, a religious conception, or even an abstract artistic idea. Spirituality helped communities survive, disciplined individuals, and encouraged collective action.
The ethologist stresses that spirituality is not necessarily religious faith. Rather, it is a deeply human need to belong to something greater than oneself.
Humans and animals, humans and dogs
The conversation also touches on the relationship between humans and dogs, which occupies a special place in our history. According to Csányi, dogs are not the way they are because we shaped them, but because they were able to cooperate with us. This likely stemmed from social similarities between humans and wolves, which led to the domestication of dogs. Basic emotions exist in all mammals, but in humans and dogs they extend to the entire group – this is essentially the emergence of “friendship.”
Csányi speaks of one of the biggest misconceptions of modern science: the former belief that animals do not think or feel. This view – from Descartes to behaviourism – dominated science for centuries and had severe consequences. Even in the recent past, experiments were conducted on dogs without pain relief, on the grounds that “they don’t feel it anyway.”
“When we worked with dogs, many of our articles were rejected with comments like, ‘You imagine that dogs think and feel – this is unscientific, we cannot publish your article.’ Meanwhile, Pepperberg was having meaningful, rigorous conversations with her parrot, and Jane Goodall’s chimpanzee studies made it completely clear that these beings are not machines, but intelligent creatures,” Csányi points out.
The turning point only came in 2012 with the Cambridge Declaration, which stated that there is no fundamental structural difference between human and animal nervous systems. The continuity proposed by Darwin finally became scientific consensus.
According to Csányi, today we know that animals think and feel. Scientific resistance maintained the opposite view for a long time due to religious and ideological reasons.
Who is responsible for the survival of life on Earth?
Toward the end of the conversation, the focus returns to where it began: nature. Regarding the future of the planet, Csányi emphasizes that individual action alone is insufficient. Responsibility lies primarily with political leaders and economic decision-makers. As an example, he mentions Kim Stanley Robinson’s book The Ministry for the Future, which explores how the climate crisis might be addressed within the framework of capitalism.
“What matters is that politics – meaning the leaders of nations and of corporations – should understand a few fundamental biological relationships and take the measures necessary to ensure that the planet endures,” he outlines.
Change, in his view, does not happen overnight, but over generations. The question is whether improvement will come quickly enough to prevent catastrophes.
At the very end of the conversation, the tone becomes more personal again: if he wanted to relax in nature, Vilmos Csányi would choose the Bükk Mountains. In his younger years, he spent many summers in forested, mountainous regions – places where he truly learned what it means to live within nature.
