Monkey Monday | Amazon Monkey Rescue

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Can you speak monkey? Well if you hang out with them long enough you’re bound to pick up a few words. After more than thirty years in the Amazon, Dr. Sara Bennett can talk some monkey, which, with a little encouragement on my part, she demonstrated for me one sweltering morning on Mocagua Island in the Colombian Amazon. One wooly monkey in particular also had a lot to say to Sara. I’m sure what he was saying was the same thing most of the monkeys on this island adjacent to Amacayacu National Park probably say to her, “Thank you. Thank you for saving us and for starting the rescue center that takes in orphaned and captive monkeys in this part of the Amazon.

Dr. Sara Bennett got a grant from National Geographic to study trees when she first went to the Amazon, but she soon fell in love with the creatures that live in the trees, and began working with local tribes helping them understand the importance of altering their hunting and fishing practices so they would be more sustainable. On Mocagua Island which is shared by four different tribes she got them to agree to stop the hunting of wooly monkeys which were in danger of being wiped out. It was here that she also helped establish Maikuchiga, a small non-profit that operates a rescue center for orphaned animals.

Most of the rescued animals are monkeys that were in either in captivity or were orphaned after hunters killed their mothers. Sara now uses the rescued monkeys as educational ambassadors. We talk about my visit to the monkeys this week on National Geographic Weekend. This video shows Sara and some of her rescued monkeys jumping in her arms and climbing on her head. It also shows some of the monkeys trying to help me with the filming.

Maybe Dr. Bennett can rescue the little monkey being "trained" to pose for pictures with tourists.

National Geographic via Primates in the News

Monkey Monday | 'We Don't Spank Our Monkey'

YouTube | Arbroath

Monkey Monday | Leveling The Experimental Playing Field

Photo: Owen Booth | Creative Commons

A problem faced by scientists comparing the mental abilities of humans, chimpanzees, apes, and monkeys is that the humans are tested by their own species and understand the requirements of the tests, while the other primates are tested by a different species (humans) and have to work out what they are supposed to do. This uneven playing field can distort the results, and so researchers in the US have designed experiments that remove the advantages humans usually have.

Psychologist Sarah Brosnan of the Language Research Center at Georgia State University tested humans, chimps, and capuchin monkeys with a decision-making "assurance" game that ensured no participants had an advantage over the others. The game was a variation of an often-used game called "Stag Hunt," which has two participants who can choose to hunt either a hare or a stag. A hare can be killed by a single hunter for a small reward, but killing the more highly-rewarded stag needs both participants to choose the stag. The aim of the game is for the participants to work out how to get the greatest reward.

Most studies of this type are designed for humans and then adapted for the other primates, but Dr Brosnan reversed the process, designing the game for the monkeys and chimps and giving the humans no instructions other than telling them they would make decisions based on tokens, and would be paid in quarters or dollars each round. They also had to work out the game non-verbally, and the tokens did not have pictures of hares or stags, but were either blue or red.

... The results mirror the social complexity of the species, with human social life the most complicated, followed by chimps, which hunt in groups and have a complex social life. The capuchins are the least social of the species, and are the most evolutionary distant from humans. Dr Brosnan said the results provide preliminary evidence that human behavior in cooperative games could be part of an evolutionary continuum, and primates share the same foundations.

The results were different for the three species but not as different as the researchers had expected. For example, only five of the 26 student pairs chose Stag-Stag, which was only a slightly higher rate than the chimps. When humans have the rules of the game explained to them and they are allowed to speak, they would normally demonstrate 100% cooperation. Their poor results of only 20% show humans are extremely reliant on language.

PhysOrg

Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS): Responses to the Assurance game in monkeys, apes, and humans using equivalent procedures, Sarah F. Brosnan et al., PNAS, Published online before print February 7, 2011.

Monkey Monday | Capuchin Cooperation And Fairness

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A pair of capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) show very compelling signs of cooperation and a sense of fairness, by working together to solve a problem using tools, and then sharing the reward. They also seem to understand fairness: when unequal rewards are given to one monkey and not another, the monkey receiving the lesser treat.

From the BBC documentary Capuchins: The Monkey Puzzle.