Gina [the chimpanzee is] a resident of the Seville Zoo in Spain. To enliven Gina's nights, officials apparently decided to install a television, protected behind glass, and gave her a remote control so she could change the channels herself.NY Daily News
... “The surprise was when they found that within a few days, Gina was not only using the remote control perfectly well, but that she also used to choose the porn channel for entertainment ... ” [primatologist Pablo] Herreros wrote. “Although a small study estimated that porn films are only watched for about 12 minutes on average, the truth is that human and non-human primates possess an intense sexual life.”
In the first study that non-invasively measures oxytocin levels in wild animals, researchers have found that in chimpanzees this hormone likely plays a key role in maintaining social relations among both related and non-related animals. The bond goes beyond genetic ties – it could be the very glue that holds societies together.Wisconsin National Primate Research Center
Published Jan. 23, 2013, in Proceedings of the Royal Society, "Urinary oxytocin and social bonding in related and unrelated wild chimpanzees” reported findings resulting from an international collaboration of researchers from the United Kingdom, Uganda, Germany, the United States of America, and Switzerland.
Toni Ziegler, Ph.D., senior scientist and head of Assay Services at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, conducted the team’s hormonal analyses for the past three years after researchers collected urine samples from a troop of chimpanzees in Uganda’s Budongo Forest. Urine was collected from plastic sheets or leaves following episodes of grooming among the animals, and then transferred with sterile pipettes into sample vials before shipping to the WNPRC for measuring and analysis.
Lead authors Catherine Crockford, Roman Wittig and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, interpreted the data. They reported that oxytocin levels spiked after grooming among cooperating partners in contrast to non-cooperating partners or after no grooming, regardless of genetic relatedness or sexual interest. This suggests that, in chimpanzees, oxytocin plays a key role in maintaining social relations beyond genetic ties and in keeping track of social interactions with multiple individuals over time. Furthermore, the researchers found that when a chimp engages in grooming with another chimp, if there is no previously established friendship, oxytocin levels do not increase in either animal.
“We developed the assay methods used in this study for measuring urinary oxytocin in human children and nonhuman primates,” Ziegler said. “This is our first report of its role in social bonding in a totally wild primate. This technique will allow field researchers and human researchers alike the opportunity to learn about the importance of social bonding in primates.”
Certain apes appear to be much smarter than others, with at least one chimpanzee now called "exceptional" when compared to other chimps. The standout chimp, an adult female in her 20s named Natasha, scored off the charts in a battery of tests. The findings, published in the latest Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, suggest that geniuses exist among non-humans, but that no one attribute constitutes intelligence. Instead, a perfect storm of abilities seems to come together to create the Einsteins of the animal kingdom.Read more about Natasha and the study's methodology at Discovery News.
Natasha's keepers at the Ngamba Island chimpanzee sanctuary in Uganda knew she was special even before the latest study. "The caretakers named Natasha as the smartest chimpanzee, precisely the same chimpanzee that our tests had revealed to be exceptional," study authors Esther Herrmann and Josep Call of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology wrote. "All three of the most experienced caretakers included Natasha in their lists (of the most intelligent chimps)," they added.
Natasha has made headlines over the months for her attention-grabbing antics. For instance, she repeatedly escaped her former enclosure, surrounded by an electric fence. She did this by tossing branches at the fence until she didn't see a spark, letting her know that the power was off. She also learned how to tease humans, beckoning them to throw food her way, only to spray the unsuspecting person with water. Herrmann and Call decided to study this chimp, along with numerous others, to see if there really are chimp prodigies among non-human great apes.
Empathy, cooperation, fairness and reciprocity -- caring about the well-being of others seems like a very human trait. But Frans de Waal shares some surprising videos of behavioral tests on primates and other mammals that show how many of these moral traits all of us share.
Dr. Frans B. M. de Waal is a biologist and primatologist known for his work on the behavior and social intelligence of primates. His first book, Chimpanzee Politics (1982), compared the schmoozing and scheming of chimpanzees involved in power struggles with that of human politicians. Ever since, de Waal has drawn parallels between primate and human behavior, from peacemaking and morality to culture. His scientific work has been published in hundreds of technical articles in journals such as Science, Nature, Scientific American, and outlets specialized in animal behavior. His popular books – translated into fifteen languages – have made him one of the world’s most visible primatologists. His latest books are Our Inner Ape (2005, Riverhead) and The Age of Empathy (2009, Harmony).
De Waal is C. H. Candler Professor in the Psychology Department of Emory University and Director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Center, in Atlanta. He has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences (US), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences. In 2007, he was selected by Time as one of The Worlds’ 100 Most Influential People Today, and in 2011 by Discover as among 47 (all time) Great Minds of Science.
 |
| Actress Maureen O'Sullivan and Cheetah. Source |
A 25-year-old chimpanzee named "Panzee" has just demonstrated that speech perception is not a uniquely human trait. Well-educated Panzee understands more than 130 English language words and even recognizes words in sine-wave form, a type of synthetic speech that reduces language to three whistle-like tones. This shows that she isn't just responding to a particular person's voice or emotions, but instead she is processing and perceiving speech as humans do.Link via Monkeys in the News
"The results suggest that the common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans may have had the capability to perceive speech-like sounds before the evolution of speech, and that early humans were taking advantage of this latent ability when speech did eventually emerge," said Lisa Heimbauer who presented a talk today on the chimp at the 162nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in San Diego.
Heimbauer, a doctoral candidate and researcher at Georgia State University's Language Research Center, and colleagues Michael Owren and Michael Beran tested Panzee on her ability to understand words communicated via sine-wave speech, which replicates the estimated frequency and amplitude patterns of natural utterances. A few of the test words were "tickle," "M&M," "lemonade," and "sparkler."
From Kathleen Conlee, Senior Director of Animal Research Issues at the Humane Society of the United States:
An Institute of Medicine committee met this month to debate whether U.S. scientists should continue conducting medical research on chimpanzees [“Advances in research may help spare medical chimps,”]. Those with a financial interest or self-interest in the research tried to argue for continued chimpanzee use, but when pressed by the committee they couldn’t defend their claim that chimpanzees are scientifically necessary.
Ethical and economic issues cannot be divorced from science. It is expensive to warehouse chimpanzees in laboratories and unethical to confine these magnificent, long-lived animals in barren cages.
Congress’s Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act, which would end invasive research on chimpanzees and retire government-owned chimpanzees to sanctuaries, would save taxpayers about $30 million annually and provide chimps the peaceful life they deserve. Let’s do right by the chimpanzees, taxpayers and medical research and pass this legislation.
From Alice Ra'anan and Claire Edwards, employees of the American Physiological Society:Read the referenced article here.
The article on using chimpanzees for research noted that the United States is the only developed nation where this approach occurs. However, scientists from countries without chimpanzee research colonies regularly conduct such studies in the United States. In fact, when the Netherlands disbanded its colony, it explicitly cited research in the United States as a safeguard against future need.
Research with chimpanzees is highly regulated. The animals have access to excellent veterinary care and are housed whenever possible in compatible social groups and in an enriched environment.
Many nuances emerged in the discussions with the Institute of Medicine panel. Several experts who said that chimpanzees were no longer a primary research model in their fields nevertheless noted that small-scale chimpanzee studies might still be needed to resolve specific problems, such as providing proof of concept that a new drug or delivery system is likely to work in humans.
While the need may be small, instances remain where no other research model can provide timely answers without undue risk to humans.
Researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, have shown chimpanzees have a significant bias for prosocial behavior. This, the study authors report, is in contrast to previous studies that positioned chimpanzees as reluctant altruists and led to the widely held belief that human altruism evolved in the last six million years only after humans split from apes. The current study findings are available in the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Read the rest of the article here.
According to Yerkes researchers Victoria Horner, PhD, Frans de Waal, PhD, and their colleagues, chimpanzees may not have shown prosocial behaviors in other studies because of design issues, such as the complexity of the apparatus used to deliver rewards and the distance between the animals. “I have always been skeptical of the previous negative findings and their over-interpretation, says Dr. de Waal. “This study confirms the prosocial nature of chimpanzees with a different test, better adapted to the species,” he continues.
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.PhysOrg
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.
From the Oscar-winning team behind Man on Wire comes the story of Nim, the chimpanzee who, in the 1970s, became the focus of a landmark experiment that aimed to prove an ape—if raised and nurtured like a human child—could learn to communicate using sign language. If successful, the consequences of the project would be profound, breaking down the barrier between man and his closest animal relative and fundamentally redefining what it is to be human. Combining the testimony of all the key participants, newly discovered archival film, and dramatic imagery, Project Nim tells the picturesque story of one chimpanzee’s extraordinary journey through human society and the enduring impact he makes on the people he meets along the way.MUBI
Congo (1954–1964) was a chimpanzee who learned how to draw and paint. Zoologist and surrealist painter Desmond Morris first observed his abilities when the chimp was offered a pencil and paper at two years of age. By the age of four, Congo had made 400 drawings and paintings. His style has been described as "lyrical abstract impressionism".Link | Article about Congo in the London Times Online
The human ego has never been quite the same since the day in 1960 that Jane Goodall observed a chimpanzee feasting on termites near Lake Tanganyika. After carefully trimming a blade of grass, the chimpanzee poked it into a passage in the termite mound to extract his meal. No longer could humans claim to be the only tool-making species. The deflating news was summarized by Ms. Goodall’s mentor, Louis Leakey: “Now we must redefine tool, redefine Man, or accept chimpanzees as human.”Read more at The New York Times
So what have we actually done now that we’ve had a half-century to pout? In a 50th anniversary essay in the journal Science, the primatologist William C. McGrew begins by hailing the progression of chimpanzee studies from field notes to “theory-driven, hypothesis-testing ethnology.”
He tactfully waits until the third paragraph ... to deliver the most devastating blow yet to human self-esteem. After noting that chimpanzees’ “tool kits” are now known to include 20 items, Dr. McGrew casually mentions that they’re used for “various functions in daily life, including subsistence, sociality, sex, and self-maintenance.”
... The tool for sex, he explained, is a leaf. Ideally a dead leaf, because that makes the most noise when the chimp clips it with his hand or his mouth. “Males basically have to attract and maintain the attention of females,” Dr. McGrew said. “One way to do this is leaf clipping. It makes a rasping sound. Imagine tearing a piece of paper that’s brittle or dry. The sound is nothing spectacular, but it’s distinctive.”
“The male will pluck a leaf, or a set of leaves, and sit so the female can see him. He spreads his legs so the female sees the erection, and he tears the leaf bit by bit down the midvein of the leaf, dropping the pieces as he detaches them. Sometimes he’ll do half a dozen leaves until she notices ... Presumably she sees the erection and puts two and two together, and if she’s interested, she’ll typically approach and present her back side, and then they’ll mate.”
Founded in 1984, ChimpanZoo is an international research program dedicated to the study of chimpanzees in zoos and other captive settings. Approximately 200 chimpanzees are involved in ChimpanZoo, making it the largest ape research program ever undertaken. Trained by participating zoos and the Jane Goodall Institute, students, caretakers and volunteers record behavioral observations and work with zoo keepers to improve the lives of captive chimpanzees and compare their behavior to that of chimps in the wild.Link
