HENRY - The human evolution news relay
Entries in the ' non-human ' category
Written May 21, 2008 in books, chimpanzees, language, non-human, ook!, primates, psychology
Back in the 1970s, a chimpanzee named Nim Chimpsky took part in a Columbia University research study called “Project Nim.”
Project Nim was led by Herbert Terrace, a psychologist at Columbia who was attempting to find out if a chimpanzee could learn to communicate using American Sign Language.
“Everyone knows that words are learned one at [...]
Kenneth Chang in the NY Times talks about The Grim Story of Maya Blue:
The vibrant sky color can be seen on pottery, murals and other artifacts produced by the Maya people of Central America centuries ago and the unusual, durable pigment remains vibrant today long after other colors have faded away.
It was also the color of Chaak, the rain god, and of human sacrifice.
( 0 )
In PLoS One - Singing in the Rain Forest: How a Tropical Bird Song Transfers Information:
How information transmission processes between individuals are shaped by natural selection is a key question for the understanding of the evolution of acoustic communication systems. Environmental acoustics predict that signal structure will differ depending on general features of the habitat. [...]
Written February 20, 2008 in birds, neuroscience, new-caledonian-crows, non-human, psychology
Long-term readers will know that I’ve got a number of friends working on the wonderfully intelligent New Caledonian Crow. These birds make and use a number of different tools for extracting grubs from logs. You can see my catalogue of posts on these birds here.
Recently, they’ve got a new paper out showing that the brains [...]
Written November 6, 2007 in humor, it-was-better-in-my-day, misc, neuroscience, non-human, psychology
They’re after our children now: Socialization between toddlers and robots at an early childhood education center:
A state-of-the-art social robot was immersed in a classroom of toddlers for >5 months. The quality of the interaction between children and robots improved steadily for 27 sessions, quickly deteriorated for 15 sessions when the robot was reprogrammed to behave [...]
Do chimps have culture? a phylogenetic study
Over the last few years, the evidence has been accumulating that different populations of chimpanzees have different cultures. Field studies of chimp behaviors (e.g. Whiten et al 1999 (PDF)) have shown a wide range of behavioral variation across Africa.
For example, chimps at one site, Bossou, use stone hammers and anvils to open nuts, whilst at another site, the chimps use both wooden and stone hammers on anvils made of stone and root. More examples, from White et al, show some of the variation in types of behavior and how they differ across research sites:
| sites | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Behavior | Bossou, Guinea | Taı̈ Forest, Ivory Coast | Gombe, Tanzania | Mahale (M-Group), Tanzania | Mahale (K-Group), Tanzania | Kibale Forest, Uganda | Budongo Forest, Uganda |
| Investigatory probe (probe and sniff) | Habitual | Customary | Customary | Habitual | Habitual | Present | Absent |
| Drag branch (drag large branch in display) | Habitual | Customary | Customary | Customary | Customary | Habitual | Habitual |
| Leaf-sponge (leaf mass used as sponge) | Customary | Customary | Customary | Present | Absent | Customary | Customary |
| Branch-clasp (clasp branch above, groom) | Habitual | Customary | Customary | Customary | Customary | Customary | Customary |
| Branch-shake (to attract attention, court) | Customary | Customary | Customary | Customary | Customary | Habitual | Customary |
| Buttress-beat (drum on buttress of tree) | Customary | Customary | Customary | Customary | Customary | Customary | Customary |
| Rain dance (slow display at start of rain) | Absent | Habitual | Customary | Customary | Customary | Customary | Habitual |
It has been suggested that this type of variation is representative of cultural traditions, and hints at a new field of study: cultural panthropology. However, not everyone is convinced that this is evidence of chimpanzee culture. This could just be the outcome of genetic differences between the populations.
To test this, Lycett et al, forthcoming in P.N.A.S., take the Whiten et al data, and analyse it within a phylogenetic framework (parsimony). This gave them a tree showing the cultural relatedness of these groups. If this behavioral variation is due to genetics, then this tree should conform to the groupings found in previous genetic analyses.
This is not the case - the behavioral data does not mirror the genetic data. Lycett et al conclude that:
These findings are inconsistent with the hypothesis that patterns of behavioral differences at the population level are genetically determined. Instead, they are in line with a growing number of studies involving captive groups (…) and wild populations (…) that suggest many chimpanzee behaviors are socially learned and can be considered cultural.
Reference:
Lycett et al: Phylogenetic analyses of behavior support existence of culture among wild chimpanzees
( 0 )
Entries RSS
Post a Comment