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!

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.

From time to time I like to put up a funny primate related piece of media to break the monotony that sometimes is ‘hardcore’ science. Considering, we just had a row of such material, here’s a video that you may enjoy. I for one got a good chuckle out of it.

Though sometimes the animals behind these videos go thru excruciating training regiments (which are sometimes very abusive), I can’t help but love the Japanese for making the most amusing and creative game/comedy shows ever… especially when they involve chimpanzees and bulldogs.

Hat tip to Betsy!

If you are as easily amused as I am, then you should get a good chuckle out of watching this video of Vervet monkeys crashing some bars in St. Kitts. I feel kinda guilty laughing at the drunk monkeys.

If you also feel a bit guilty about this video, you can balance out your karma by reading what I had to say about a new paper on human evolution featuring a chimpanzee-human comparison of polymorphisms and other fun genome features over at Anthropology.net.

Funny how this video came up on one of my favorite blogs, because I’ve been meaning to talk about how tarsiers fit into the primate phylogeny.

But, I won’t get into that yet because this video of a little tarsier chowing down on some cricket is thoroughly entertaining:

Alright, I’m assuming that if I need a break from our recent discussions on chimps using spears, stress & primate physiology, ethics, and new species then so do you. So, to break the monotony here’s a set of entertaining and heart-warming videos of one of Little Rock Zoo‘s gorilla families.

In the first video you will see Sekani, the mother, and Fossey, the big bad softy of a silverback dad, enjoying a play bout while 3 month old Mosi goes along for the ride. The second video, you will be seeing Fossey bonding with his little one. The videos show how gentile and docile gorillas can be to one another.

Please thank Daphne Brock Pfeiffer, one of the gorilla keepers for uploading this to YouTube and sharing this all with us. There is also a photo album of the trio up over here, I especially like this tender moment between father and child here.

Don’t expect this break to last very long, I’ll be posting about a new publication with reanlayzes the human divergence from other great apes, as well as a paper on primate brain evolution.

Two more things about the chimps using spears to hunt other primates.

Firstly, it looks like Christopher Mims is just as unsurprised as I have been about the news of the chimps using spears to hunt. He outlines why, in the form of what we already know about chimpanzees. I skimmed over these reasons, so here’s his list, albeit a bit truncated (you should check out his list for examples):

1. They use objects in their environment as tools.
2. Chimpanzees modify objects in order to make them more effective tools.
3. Tool use varies from one population of chimps to another–in other words, chimps exhibit variations in culture.
4. Chimps learn by observation and practice how to make and use tools–in part, they learn by imitation.

Amidst all this press and blogosphere hype it is good to have a voice of reason to outline that this is not particularly breakthrough research. All the other work both Christopher and I mentioned supports the fact that chimps are capable of this behavior, if not more.

The only truly extraordinary aspect of this finding is if chimps are really making spears, with a sidenote that females are hunting with spears more than males.
Which is the second thing I wanted to address in this post. The paper mentions the Savanna chimps exhibited spear making over 20 times, however they include only 1 image of a spear. You’d think they’d have several examples of spears, no? Also, the video I linked up didn’t quite capture the hunt. This is a bit curious.

I’ve uploaded the various clips the authors provided in the supplemental materials to the paper over on YouTube. You can judge for yourself what you see or don’t see. Here it is:

I’m opening this post to a discussion of using primates in research as seen in the following video.

Feel free to throw in your two cents… but let’s lay down some rules. In order to participate, first watch the video and then I’ll subjugate you to kindly read my previous posts on this subject matter. But for now, the video:

The posts you should read, or at least skim over, are these four posts on the ethics of using primates in research.

In this video we see how a monkey, looks like a macaque to me, is being used to conduct neurotech research. This type of research is a bit different from biomedical ones, but its applications are outstanding and the potential is nearly irrefutable.

There are many ‘pros’ to this video. As the commentators indicate, most of the these ‘pros’ reside on the fact that tests like these prove that humans without functioning limbs… be it due to paralysis or other forms of loss of function… can now use robotic arms to conduct daily tasks.

This research is very important, in my humble opinion. But it comes at a cost, and these costs are heavy moral ‘cons.’

See how the monkey is trapped in a box? Well it has to be, because I’m fairly sure sure it wouldn’t sit a second doing what the researchers wanted if it weren’t restrained. Also, there was some invasive surgery done. Electrodes are placed inside the monkey’s brain that interface between neurons and the computer and robotic arms… something that is more permanent than putting a monkey in a box for 30 minutes or so.

Knowing those basic pro’s and con’s, how do you feel about research like this? Should it be done in this manner? Do you see anything wrong with it? Do you feel this research is justifiable, given the potential benefits from it?

In case you were curious about seeing a video of chimpanzees engaged in nut cracking behavior and using stone tools, I’ve compiled a longer video clip from the small ones that Christophe Boesch put up on his Chimpanzee Stone Age press release page.

All credit goes to Christophe Boesh and crew, who recorded and shared the clips. I just edited the clips together and put them on Youtube.

I wanna welcome the new year with some good news regarding chimpanzee conservation coming from Republic of Congo. Specifically the Goualogou River meets up with the Ndoki River to form a natural boundary called the Goualogou triangle. Within this triangle is a population of chimpanzees that have never before been contacted by human beings.

This is good news considering how the Ebola virus is decimating populations of great apes, as well as deforestation. The link to the video down below shows how several conservationists are learning all they can about these “naive” chimps. It is pretty interesting, not only are there chimps who have never seen humans but also gorillas… which is promising to me.

Dave Morgan and Crickette Sanz, of the World Wildlife Fund have been working on studying the chimps since 1999. Richard Molungo has helped survey the area for the WWF. In combination, the work of these people and Mike Fay and Paul Elkin, also of the WWF, have helped conserve the land from a timber company, CIB.

The following video, from “Wild Chronicles” of PBS shows some highlights from this excellent news: “Naive” Chimps Live Undisturbed by Humans.