Primatology.net

Leaving stoic stereotypes behind, this silverback shows his playful side with a caregiver.  Having no idea what the TV show is about, I find it best to watch the video without any sound.

Thanks to the Tonia at the Gorilla Keepers Forum for pointing it out!

One of Time Magazine‘s “Hero’s for the Planet 2000“, known for discovering new species (Callicebus bernhardi, Callicebus stephennashi, etc.) and focusing his attentions on protecting the rainforest has been convicted of failing to apply for a permit on behalf of the monkey refuge in his Brazilian home. It seems that without the permit (or license) Brazil sees the orphaned monkeys as stolen.

Dutch Biologist Marc van Roosmalen reported that he had previously filed for permits (1996, 1998, 2000) but received no reply from Ibama (the environmental protection agency). Apparently it is generally accepted that if you don’t receive word after 45 days, the application has been accepted. While officials have acknowledged that van Roosmalen did apply, they deny that the 45-day rule is “not explicit in the legislation.”

I first learned of this from Primate-Science listserv yesterday where the post began with a statement of shock before requesting suggestions on how everyone could help… feel free to post your own thoughts which I will gladly pass along.

(photo courtesy of the Apenheul Foundation via Radio Netherlands Worldwide)

Paraphrased from EurekAlert, new research has just come out from the Chimpanzee Cognition Center at Ohio State University and it is really interesting. It is the first research of its kind to document that raising chimpanzees in a human cultural environment enhances their cognitive abilities, as measured by their ability to understand how to rake. I know it sounds kinda silly, raking chimps but it is a pretty remarkable experiment.

The findings have just been published online in the journal Animal Cognition, under the title, “Raking it in: the impact of enculturation on chimpanzee tool use.”

Three groups of chimpanzees were used to in these pyschological tests. One group has a history of long-term stable, social interaction with humans, labeled the ‘enculturated’ ones. Another group was raised in a sanctuary setting, with only caretaker contact with humans and branded the ‘semi-enculturated’. The last group was raised as laboratory chimps, or ones with limited human contact. The experiments looked at how the chimpanzees used rakes in order to retrieve a fruit yogurt reward. The overall study examined not only whether the chimpanzees understood the properties of the tool, but also whether they understood the reasons why the tool worked.

The researchers gave the animals access to small rakes with either a rigid wooden head or a flimsy fabric head. Both enculturated and semi-enculturated chimpanzees correctly chose the rigid rake which enabled them to obtain the reward, indicating that both of these groups understood the physical properties of the two different rakes.

The researchers then presented the same two groups with two identical ‘hybrid’ rakes. Each rake head had a rigid side made of wood (functional) and another side made of flimsy cloth (non-functional). The reward was placed in front of the rigid side of one rake, and in front of the flimsy side of the second rake. The animals who picked the rake with the food reward on the rigid side demonstrated that they understood the causal principles behind the functionality of the rake.

The enculturated chimpanzees successfully selected the functional rake, while the sanctuary chimpanzees chose randomly between the two hybrid tools. The captive laboratory chimpanzees failed both tests, as demonstrated in previously published work.

The authors conclude that the differences in performance between the three groups are directly attributable to the significant effect of level of enculturation. They add that “enculturated chimpanzees may be better at learning within a highly social, interactive context because they have heightened attention to the actions of others.”

Yesterday I shared with you news about the recently orphaned baby gorilla, Ndakasi. In today’s post I will show you a graphic photo of his dead mother. Her name is Rubiga, and she was shot in the back of the head. A autopsy confirmed this, removing two bullets from the back of her head.

I share Paulin’s sentiments. These photos are horrible.

“But it is the reality of what the Gorillas and the Rangers have been through since Friday. It is important that the world sees. I do not want to offend or upset, but it is what is happening.”

So I’ll be straight up honest with you here, I’m still a bit shell shocked with this comment left this evening that basically defending the bushmeat industry.

I know there are always whack jobs out there, but this person really took the cake; his or her arguments for bushmeat, or ‘survival foods’ as they term it, seemed to mimmick a holocaust denier’s rhetoric. I guess I am ignorant and have been naive to assume that people are in favor of protecting endangered species, especially great apes and other primates, from being consumed by humans.

Bushmeat and poaching is a very real problem that faces those of us interested in the conservation of primates. An example that comes to my mind happened earlier this year, when a silverback male gorilla was shot and killed by rebels mainly for sport. And just yesterday came news of another example, which is just as depressing. It has just been reported in National Geographic’s Photos in the News but original came by way of Paulin and his blog, Gorilla Protection,

“June 11, 2007—A baby mountain gorilla has been left orphaned and fighting for its life after its mother was shot and killed in eastern Congo, African wildlife workers report.

Rangers discovered the two-month-old gorilla clinging to the breast of its slain mother last Friday in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Rebel militias in the area have been accused of slaughtering and eating the critically endangered apes.

The baby, named Ndakasi, is in critical condition, having spent some 18 hours alone after its mother was shot in the arm and then “execution style” in the back of the head, said WildlifeDirect, the African conservation nonprofit. The find comes as a grim counterpoint to the recent rare birth of a mountain gorilla in the park.

The orphaned newborn is now receiving emergency treatment from the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project.

Known as Rubiga, the dead female belonged to one of the largest remaining mountain gorilla groups, which has 34 members, WildlifeDirect said. “

Defenders may say these acts of killings are necessary to sustain nutrition and food to people without resources to buy meat. But this is not sustainable hunting and should not be advocated whatsoever. Species like gorillas are severely endangered and hunting them to extinction will not provide stable nutritional income for people. I can’t believe I have to explain that, but it seems like some don’t get it. Furthermore. hunting them displaces and disbands gorilla families causing a ripple effect. Gorillas need not be hunted, that’s the bottom line.

Being ‘green’ or ecologically conscious is making big waves in current popular culture, especially in the United States. Many initiatives, such as clean fuels and renewable energy, seem like excellent alternatives to our energy sources we predominantly use right now. This is generally a good thing.

But not all of these initiatives are ecological so great when implemented.

Just last week, I toldya how the palm oil industry is displacing and effectively killing orangutans to the brink of extinction.

Well, it seems like Green Peace, a ecological activist movement, has also gotten word on this issue and is mobilizing a strong and effective campaign to raise awareness and hopefully prevent further deforestation and deaths. I was contacted by Andrew, on behalf of Green Peace to help spread the word.

The following video is something you need to watch and you should blog about, digg, email, etc.:

In his email to me, Andrew wrote:

“I am one of many people trying to get some exposure for this campaign and spread the word about the issues surrounding bio-fuels that people, even your perhaps more informed site visitors, might not know. This is a video I think they and everyone else should at east watch and be aware of the message it contains. Green economics, politics and practices are becoming increasingly complex and tied into business. What people are doing that they think IS green and helping animals might really be making things much worse. Its important for people to know they don’t have to preach, take sides or chain themselves to the nearest shrub! Just be informed and help make others.”

I couldn’t say it any better, Andrew. Biofuels may help the battle against climate change, but they are currently doing more harm than good. If rain forests are cut down to make way to grow ‘green fuels’, it will not only destroy homes for animals like the Orang-utans, this will also be catastrophic for the climate releasing more greenhouse gases from destroying forests than will be saved by using biofuels. (more)

For visitors of this site that are from the UK, you can help the effort by sending a email to your transport minister, Stephen Ladyman, telling him that we need for rigorous controls on biofuels. Otherwise the green dream really will become a nightmare.

So please spread the word, at least by digging or stumbling the video!

The amount of evidence that is out there in support of chimpanzee culture is rather overwhelming if you ask me. Most primatologists will agree that these socially, intellectually, and emotionally complex great apes have unique behaviors and learning systems that begin to mimic our own cultures and social structures.

In a new Current Biology research paper, the people from the Scottish Primate Research Group along with Frans de Waal, have reported their observations where they,

“taught individual chimpanzees one of two ways to solve complex foraging tasks, and observed how the different techniques spread across two sets of three groups. The chimps had to manipulate a combination of buttons, levers or discs to extract treats from cubes….

….[then the chimps] in the two groups learned quickly how to work the devices when watching a peer who had been trained in one of the two possible sets of solutions.

Within a few days, most chimps mastered the techniques that had been “seeded” this way in their group…

…The cubes were then moved into the view of a second set of chimp groups, so they could observe their respective neighbors solving the tasks. The new groups learned the same techniques as demonstrated in the adjacent enclosure, and then passed their set of tricks on to a third group in another round of experiments….

…Next [they] want to unravel exactly how chimp culture spreads: “We need to see how status and prestige of different animals affect who learns from whom.”

An analysis of Whiten’s group’s studies already shows that the order in which individuals in each group picked up new traditions was similar for foraging tasks, but not for unrelated tasks, giving first insights into the dynamics of cultural transmission.”

Their paper is titled, “Transmission of Multiple Traditions within and between Chimpanzee Groups,” and their abstract ends with the following conclusion: parsimony suggests culture was shared with [chimpanzee and human's] common ancestor. Pretty bold statement, which has some flaws, because chimpanzee’s cultural behaviors could have evolved independently of humans just as likely as they could have evolved dependently of humans — if that makes sense.

There’s new research coming out from Nature that shows us rhesus macaques are really tuned into statistics and probabilities, they may even have neurons specialized to calculate probabilities. But don’t get your hopes up too high… these monkeys will not be your bookies or be crunchin’ gout some gnarly ANOVA tests with p-value significance.

What you can expect, and this is all paraphrased from a New Scientist news article on this research, is what authors Tianming Yang and Michael Shadlen from Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the University of Washington have reported. They tested the reasoning capabilities of two rhesus macaques,

“By showing them a series of abstract shapes on a video screen, the monkey saw a sequence of 4 of 10 possible shapes then, had to choose which target to look at. The probability that the red target would give the reward was the sum of the probabilities for each of the four shapes; otherwise, the green target yielded the drink… both macaques learned to match their choices closely to the actual probabilities revealed by the shapes they saw, choosing the correct target more than 75% of the time.

This is the first time monkeys have been shown to make such subtle probabilistic inferences.”

Yang and Shadlen observed neurons responding to the first shape,

by firing at a rate proportional to the probability suggested by that shape. As each successive shape was shown, the firing rate changed to match the probability determined by all the shapes seen so far.

“We’re seeing neurons that are making computations,” says Shadlen. In particular, the neurons appeared to be computing the log likelihood ratio of red versus green rewards – exactly the sort of computation a statistician might do.

Like I said above, the results are published in Nature, “Probabilistic reasoning by neurons.” Hat tip to Afarensis for pointing this study out in his blog.