This again, is a something that applies us humans as well. It seems culture is prevalent in chimps and bonobos from the many studies of Primatologists. There seems to be more of a social pattern present than that of behaviors embedded in DNA. The learned behaviors and the passing of time has made these primates more adaptable to cultures that we now know they do indeed
Introduction As our closest living ancestors, bonobos (Pan Americus) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) have often been used as an ancestral model to study social and cultural hominoid behavior. Chimpanzees and Bonobos' DNA differs only 1% from humans yet their social behavior is very primitive and different compared to humans. Molecular studies indicate that humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos are very closely related in a lineage that split into hominid and Pan lines approximately 6-7 million years ago, possibly following a divergence from the gorilla lineage about 1– 2 million years earlier (Caccone and Powell, 1989). Chimpanzees are great apes, under the Homo lineage, that have been known for their male dominant, meat eating and generally violent culture. Meanwhile bonobos, also great apes, are on a completely different behavior spectrum, they are a female dominant, more peaceful, and heavily sexually oriented society.
A chimpanzee was trained to make same-different judgments about pairs of stimuli. For pictures of objects, the animal was correct on 23 out of 24 trials. Did the chimp perform significantly better than chance? 3. From Sprinthall (1990).
Can Chimps talk? Many researchers feel that chimps may be very similar to humans that they may be able to understand and communicate with us by using a sign that we understand. In order to find out whether chimps are capable of understanding either human language or sign language, they picked some chimps to do some experiments. 1) Washoe, one of the chimps used in the experiment, was about 10 months old when she arrived in the University of Nevada. At that time, Washoe was able to use 133 signs such as “open, come, good, hurry, hide, okay” and etc.
However researchers were also interested in whether close relatives, such as apes, also have a theory of mind. The idea that chimpanzees hold a theory of mind branches from evolutionary ideas and whether chimpanzees also hold this specialized cognitive ability. This essay will discuss both sides of this argument with relevant research and looking at two main theorists – Povinelli and Tomasello. Numerous tasks have been used to examine this area, such as gaze following and false belief tasks. Alternatively the idea of altruistic helping has also been used.
Early attempts to teach chimps to talk were useless, a chimp’s vocal apparatus is unsuited to making speech sounds, however the Gardners felt that chimps can use a non-spoken language like ASL, this language is used by the deaf in America. The Gardners were the first to attempt to teach a chimp ASL. Bryan (1963) reports that the vocal apparatus of the chimpanzee is very different to that of man. Even though chimpanzees are capable of making many different sounds, vocalization tends to occur in situations of high stress or excitement; when undisturbed, chimpanzees are normally silent. Gardner & Gardner therefore concluded that a vocal language was not appropriate for this species.
Ranging in size from 30 g (1.1 oz) to 9 kg (20 lb), lemurs share many common, basal primate traits, such as divergent digits on their hands and feet and nails instead of claws (in most species). However, their brain-to-body size ratio is smaller than that of anthropoid primates, and among many other traits they share with other strepsirrhine primates, they have a "wet nose" (rhinarium). Lemurs are generally the
While studying the chimps she was able to find groundbreaking information that connected chimps to human behavior. She explained her observation of chimps using twigs as tools to get termites out of trees. This was evolutionary because the humans were the only living creatures thought to use tools. This brought great interest and support to her study. (Learning from Chimps, 162, 169, 173) Because of that simple find she was able to have her research funded and work filmed.
“The amazing success of man as a species is the result of the evolutionary development of this brain which has led, among other things, to tool-using tool making, the ability to solve problems by the my striking ways in which the chimpanzees biologically resembles man lies in the structure of the brain.” Jane Goodall (239). Jane grew up in England, loving the outdoors and all of its creatures. The relationship between with her mother was strong growing up. She believed in Jane in all that she did or wanted to do giving her more confidence. Her goal was the travel to Africa, which eventually happened.
Monkeys are generally considered to be intelligent. Unlike apes, monkeys usually have tails. Tailless monkeys may be called "apes", incorrectly according to modern usage; thus the tailless Barbary macaque is called the "Barbary ape". As I walked around the zoo I realized that I was very interested in the African Apes exhibit. They are really fascinating to me, I like how they are from the same origin as humans but yet they still have their differences.