Do Primates have culture?

I look forward to your comments on this article. I think the entire subject of culture outside human society is fascinating. If I were still a student, that is what I'd be studying.

Hmm - anything stopping you? It seems a passion!

Apparently this Baboon group does. Consider this paragraph in the Seattle Times Article:


I wish the article had said just how they learned it. Were they snubbed? Or mobbed by the 'natives'? I didn't find any mention of this.

Groomed and mobbed, I think. Thomas, did you look at the article in PLoS? That's where the observed data was published.

It seems like a good resource on the 'net...


[I've been trained to assume everyone has an agenda and I have no idea what the PLoS's agenda might be. Maybe the research is suspect?]

Dlowan -- <grin> I am interested, but I'm an armchair enthusiast.

Ok - this quote from Michael Crichton's "Congo" was posted in this:

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=796427#796427

thread.


"Amy signed Peter's name, then tapped the underside of her chin again.This was the Ameslan sign politely translated in scholarly reports as "dirty", although it was most often employed by apes when they needed to go to the potty. Primate investigators were under no illusions about what the animals really meant. Amy was saying, Peter shitty.

Nearly all language-skilled primates swore, and they employed a variety of words for swearing. Sometimes the pejorative seemed chosen at random, "nut" or "bird" or "wash." But at least eight primates in different laboratories had independently settled on the clenched-fist sign to signify extreme displeasure. The only reason this remarkable coincidence hadn't been written up was that no investigator was willing to try and explain it. It seemed to prove that apes, like people, found bodily excretions suitable terms to express denigration and anger.

Peter shitty, she signed again...."

Amy is a signing gorilla in this novel.

Does anyone know if signing apes really DO swear?

And use toilet language when they do?

Piffka - I WILL read that article! Life just got mad, and I was reading lots of work-related stuff to research some teaching. Sorry!!!!

I don't know about swearing... these were supposed to be the "Top 20 Favorite Chimp Words" in June '98.

1. chase
2. hug
3. tickle
4. gum
5. good
6. black
7. food
8. drink
9. go
10. flower
11. masks
12. shoe
13. dirty
14. smell
15. hurry
16. come
17. clothes
18. person
19. this/that
20. peekaboo

Washoe uses 'black' as bad... she was terrified by a black dog when young and if she doesn't like something, she's likely to describe it as black, no matter what color it is.

If that is the case then Washoe is very close to using symbols. At minimum I would want two other pieces of evidence. First, that she uses other word in the same way and second that she can transfer that concept to other gorillas.

Yes, it is amazing, isn't it? I suppose you could look at the website, Acquiunk, that was listed above, or read the book by Fouts.

I was noticing that one of the chimpanzees, Louli, I think, had soy sauce on his rice for a few days and then was served rice without it. He asked for the closest thing he could think of...rice juice.

Washoe, btw, is a chimpanzee and unlikely to have anything to do with a gorilla, ever.

Natasha, a 5-year-old black macaque
walks at the Safari Park near Tel Aviv
Tuesday July 20, 2004. The young
monkey began recently walking
exclusively on her hind legs after a
stomach ailment nearly killed her,
zookeepers said.(AP Photo/Eli Dasa)

More on primates:

New Scientist - full story here:

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993218

Lab chimp speaks his own language

10:15 02 January 03



A bonobo has surprised his trainers by appearing to make up his own "words". It is the first report of an ape making sounds that seem to hold their meaning across different situations, and the latest challenge to the orthodox view that animals do not have language.

Kanzi is an adult bonobo kept at Georgia State University in Atlanta. He has grown up in captivity among humans, and is adept at communicating with symbols. He also understands some spoken English, and can respond to phrases such as "go out of the cage" and "do you want a banana?"

Jared Taglialatela, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Lauren Baker, who work with Kanzi, noticed that he was making gentle noises during his interactions with them. "We wanted to know if there was any rhyme or reason to when they were produced," says Taglialatela.

So his team studied 100 hours of videotape showing Kanzi's day-to-day interactions and analysed the sounds he made at various times. They picked situations in which the bonobo's actions were unambiguous: for example, while he was eating a banana, pointing to the symbol for "grapes", or responding to a request to go outside by leaving the cage.

They identified four sounds that Kanzi made in different contexts - banana, grapes, juice and yes. In each of these contexts, Kanzi made the same sound. "We haven't taught him this," says Taglialatela. "He's doing it on his own.".......

And more: (Full story here: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991430 )

Baboons can learn basic skills of human reasoning


Philosophers they are clearly not, but baboons may be capable of abstract thought. With a painstaking education, the monkeys can be taught to make analogies, researchers have found.

The discovery, a first in a non-ape species, may force us to re-evaluate our perception of animal intelligence.

Researchers in the US and France trained two adult guinea baboons to recognise grids of pictures showing images such as a light bulb, an arrow or the sun. First, the monkeys, a male and a female, were shown a four-by-four grid of either 16 different pictures, or 16 identical images. Then the team presented the baboons with two new grids laden with new images. Again, one had 16 different pictures, and one had 16 replicas.

The challenge for the baboons was to recognize the new grid that was most like the one that they were originally shown. The monkeys used a special joystick to select the computerised grids, and were rewarded with a banana pellet for making the correct choice.

Choosing the right grid required the baboons to make an analogous link between two similar, but different sets of pictures. The ability to form an analogy is believed to be at the foundation of human reasoning and abstract thought........

I don't know if someone has already said this... i dont' feel like reading the last 20 pages... BUT... As I remember the definition of culture being the traditions, ideas and such of a specifit area or people... It seems to me this is easily transferred to other animals...especially the like of other primates. All primates are social animals and live in clans or groups. They have definite relationships with one another and they have a specific way of life. Many have their own techniquies for finding food and whatnot. It's *my* opinion that this is a type of culture, albeit, not as sophisticated as our.

I agree.

The last 20 pages are pretty interesting, though, if you ever have time!

Yeh, this last fills out what I surmise on my own.... re conjecture.

Plus, you know I'd listen to anyone named Taglialatela...

lol!

<smiling too~>

Interesting new stuff, Deb. Of course, they aren't philosophers... and I seriously doubt that Homo erectus was 50,000 years ago. It is mind-boggling that this Kanzi is trying to vocalize since that has been considered beyond the other great apes. The anology work is probably more meaty since it is in an experiment rather than an anecdotal/ observation framework... though I prefer natural observations, myself. Experiments have innate limitations.


You might be interested... my daughter is currently taking Psychology 101 from Roger Fouts. She says that he is much nicer than expected and calls on her a lot since she is one of the few in the class of 50 who is actively reading his book.

From Wired Com:


Humans, Chimps Think Different


By Kristen Philipkoski

02:00 AM Nov. 02, 2004 PT

We hear it over and over: The human and chimpanzee genomes are nearly identical. Why we look and behave so differently has been a mystery of science.

A study in the November issue of Nature Reviews Genetics offers a glimpse into the evolution of the human brain, and why we are the only benefactors of attributes like higher cognitive ability, but also unique in suffering from neurodegenerative diseases.

A group of researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles and Emory in Atlanta has compiled the first extensive analysis of human and primate genomic data. The result is a big-picture look at why human brains are so evolved. The answer lies not in which or how many genes we have, but in how and when those genes turn on and off.

"If the gene sequences themselves are very similar, then one hypothesis is that it's differences in the gene levels and regulations (that account for the differences) -- when and where they're expressed and how much," said Dr. Dan Geschwind, an associate professor of neurology and director of the neurogenetics program at the UCLA school of medicine.

Genomics technologies have made it possible to explore evolution at a granular level down to individual genes and even changes within those genes. Using microarrays, like the Affymetrix GeneChip technology, researchers can compare entire genomes of humans, various primates and other animals, placing them in consecutive evolutionary order.

They can also use microarrays, which are like computer chips that contain genetic information, to examine what genes are expressed or not expressed in a given organ, the brain, for example.

An increasingly popular microarray technology is one invented by Joseph DeRisi and Pat Brown at Stanford, for which DeRisi recently won a MacArthur prize.

The authors suggest that the DeRisi technology may actually be better than the Affymetrix technology (which is about 10 times more expensive) for studying large numbers of genes.

Geschwind and his colleagues found that while the studies they compiled may have shown disparate conclusions individually, taken together the research came to some similar conclusions.

For example, the scientists were excited to find that the gene regulation was different from chimps almost exclusively in the brain, and not in other organs like the liver or heart. That proves that the genetic differences are specific to the brain, and likely are associated with our higher cognitive function, Geschwind said.

"And that's allowed us and other people to show that there's been a lot of selective pressure and accelerated evolution in the brain," he added.

The researchers also found that the genes were more often turned on, or "upregulated" in the human brain as opposed to the chimp brain. Although they don't know why this is, the scientists believe this finding might be a key to new insights.

They do have one theory Geschwind said: "It may be that the human brain is a like a V-8 or a V-12 and the chimp brain is a V-4."

http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,65576,00.html?tw=rss.TOP

Back in the dark ages when I studied tidbits of molecular biology, of which I have forgotten most, there was something called the operon gene - which I think acted like a switch.

http://www.biology-online.org/3/2_gene_action.htm

I have no idea if this is still considered true, or if there are more operon genes for different metabolic cycles. But if so, maybe the human brain has more genes acting as pathway switches. Or more triggers or repressors to the switches.

(babbling here..)

Interesting babbles!