tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/chimpanzees-1994/articlesChimpanzees – The Conversation2024-03-20T14:19:34Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2243932024-03-20T14:19:34Z2024-03-20T14:19:34ZChimpanzees stayed in an ‘invisible cage’ after zoo enclosure was enlarged – South African study<p>Captive chimpanzees are one of the most popular species kept in zoos because of their <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/13/3/424">charismatic appeal and similarity to humans</a>. They are the closest living relatives of humans because of the shared genes and behavioural and psychological <a href="https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(04)00328-8">similarities</a>.</p>
<p>Zoos are ethically bound to care for the animals <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315688718-52/defense-zoos-aquariums-ethical-basis-keeping-wild-animals-captivity-michael-hutchins-brandie-smith-ruth-allard">they house</a>. Many provide environments that care for animals’ welfare needs. However, the impact of zoo environment on the behaviour, psychology and welfare of animals is sometimes overlooked or poorly understood.</p>
<p>Historically, zoos have been criticised and labelled as “animal prisons”. But based on my experience and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2752/089279314X14072268687808">research</a>, it’s clear that modern zoos play an important multifaceted role as centres of education, recreation, conservation and research.</p>
<p>Chimpanzees have been the focus of much zoo-based research, including research on their welfare. Most people – researchers, zoo workers and the public alike – assume that providing animals with larger, more “naturalistic” spaces to live in improves their welfare and existing evidence suggests that this is usually the case.</p>
<p>Few studies have focused on the long-term effects of these enclosures, however. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/12/17/2207">recent paper</a> I co-authored with colleagues fills this gap. We observed a stable group of eight chimpanzees at Johannesburg Zoo in South Africa five years after their outdoor housing was given a revamp to a more naturalistic design. The chimpanzees benefited from the new enclosure. But they appeared to use the space in an unusual way. </p>
<p>We found that the chimpanzees preferred to spend time in the space that was their original enclosure and that they formed groups that were remarkably tightly spaced. </p>
<p>We suggest that the chimpanzees’ perception of space had been altered by their experience of the previous, smaller, barren housing and that this limited their space use in the naturalistic enclosure through what appears to be a self-imposed “invisible cage”. </p>
<p>The role that the “invisible cage” might play in other settings is unclear. However, we believe our findings have implications for animal welfare, husbandry and broader conservation of endangered species. </p>
<p>Our paper shows that zoo-based research can teach us about the needs of animals in our care, and how their environment and experiences shape their biology and behaviour. It can even give us a glimpse into their minds and perceptions. </p>
<h2>Enclosures</h2>
<p>The Johannesburg Zoo turns 120 years old in 2024. Located in Saxonwold in Johannesburg, the zoo covers an area of 55 hectares and is the <a href="https://www.jhbcityparksandzoo.com/services-facilities/zoo/about">second-largest zoo in South Africa</a>. It hosts 320 species of animals and is a member of the <a href="https://www.waza.org/">World Association of Zoos and Aquariums</a>. </p>
<p>In 2004, the chimpanzee outdoor enclosure at the Johannesburg Zoo which was built in the 1970s was extensively upgraded. The chimpanzee space was increased from a pair of concrete and wood enclosures, each measuring 10 metres by 10 metres, to a large, naturalistic enclosure encompassing about 2,500 square metres of grass, shrubs, trees, rocks and streams, occupying the same site as the previous housing. Most of the chimpanzees had lived their entire lives in the old enclosures while two had only lived there for a few years.</p>
<p>Upgrades to naturalistic designs have become <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/zoo.20404">the standard for zoos</a>. They are often followed by evaluations to determine how the new space affects the welfare of the animals. Such evaluations typically find that welfare is improved with <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/zoo.20404">naturalistic enclosures</a>. This was true at the Johannesburg Zoo too. Chimpanzees exhibited persistent beneficial changes in behaviour, such as decreased abnormal or repetitive behaviour, suggesting improved welfare in their <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168159113001585">naturalistic enclosure</a>.</p>
<p>Our study started <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/12/17/2207">in 2009</a>, five years after the overhaul of the enclosure. In this study, the chimpanzees appeared to use all of the enclosure to some degree but showed a preference for the area where the previous enclosure had been. </p>
<p>Curiously, the chimpanzees also appeared to exhibit a strong tendency to form tightly spaced groups which matched the exact dimensions of the previous housing. These groups formed regardless of when or where in the enclosure the chimpanzees were, the environmental conditions at the time or which individual chimpanzees were involved. </p>
<p>This unusual pattern had not previously been reported and appeared contrary to what might be expected for a group of animals which had lived in such a large space for five years. This space-use behaviour appeared to reflect a perceived, self-imposed, intangible barrier to the spacing of the chimpanzees, as if an invisible cage surrounded the groups.</p>
<h2>Animal welfare and the use of space</h2>
<p>Space use is difficult to interpret in terms of animal welfare because it is often context-dependent and so is usually ignored when doing evaluations after an enclosure overhaul. When an animal chooses to use a small amount of space it may be because the space is attractive and meets their welfare needs. However, an animal may choose to remain in a small area because the larger space is perceived as unpleasant or even dangerous. </p>
<p>For the chimpanzees, nothing suggested that the spacing pattern indicated distress or compromised welfare. Other aspects of the chimpanzees’ behaviour suggested improved welfare in the naturalistic enclosure. Instead, it appeared that the invisible cage reflected a persistent psychological barrier, learned in the previous housing and then imposed in the naturalistic enclosure years later.</p>
<p>These findings mirror a psychological effect termed <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?url=https://psycnet.apa.org/journals/xge/105/1/3/&hl=en&sa=T&oi=gsb&ct=res&cd=1&d=6387435864426922977&ei=vuvuZb3nKcfTy9YPt6iP6AU&scisig=AFWwaeZ9sUMBtIlV5VGbEbKfQw3U">“learned helplessness”</a> seen in many species, including <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318280261_Learned_Helplessness">humans</a>. In situations where individuals are helpless or lack control, they learn that their actions <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?url=https://psycnet.apa.org/journals/xge/105/1/3/&hl=en&sa=T&oi=gsb&ct=res&cd=1&d=6387435864426922977&ei=vuvuZb3nKcfTy9YPt6iP6AU&scisig=AFWwaeZ9sUMBtIlV5VGbEbKfQw3U">cannot affect the outcome</a>. This perception is carried into later situations where they can affect the outcome, acting as though still helpless.</p>
<p>Further research is needed to understand the welfare implications and broader application of these findings. However, they highlight some important issues around the role of zoos and how zoos affect species conservation.</p>
<h2>The importance of zoos</h2>
<p>Zoos help raise awareness around conservation issues. They also provide a haven for species under threat. Many facilities breed and reintroduce these species into nature. The <a href="https://www.jhbcityparksandzoo.com/services-facilities/zoo/about">Johannesburg Zoo</a> particularly has several <a href="https://www.jhbcityparksandzoo.com/services-facilities/zoo/conservation">conservation programmes</a>, including a breeding programme for the endangered Pickersgill’s reed frog.</p>
<p>As sanctuaries sustaining threatened populations, zoos actively conserve biodiversity on many ways (creating gene banks, breeding animals and conserving biological and behavioural diversity) while providing critical access to rare species for observation and research.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224393/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luke Mangaliso Duncan received funding from the Jane Goodall Institute and the National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa. </span></em></p>Zoo-based research can teach us about the needs of animals in our care.Luke Mangaliso Duncan, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1978502023-02-06T12:20:00Z2023-02-06T12:20:00ZThree surprising reasons human actions threaten endangered primates<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506834/original/file-20230127-25-sl362z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C18%2C2994%2C1976&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A baby chimpanzee enjoys his food. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/little-gourmet-adorable-baby-chimpanzee-enjoying-1986791387">Michaela Pilch/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Monkeys, apes and lemurs are cute, familiar and lovable. But an estimated 60% of all primate species are listed as <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1600946">vulnerable, threatened or endangered</a>, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, a network of environmental organisations. </p>
<p>You’ve probably heard about the main problems, like <a href="https://theconversation.com/deforestation-on-indonesian-island-of-sulawesi-destroys-habitat-of-endemic-primates-147189">deforestation</a> and the loss of habitat. But primates are a diverse group of animals with a wide geographical range, so there are many more subtle ways our actions as humans put these wonderful animals at risk.</p>
<h2>1. Dogs</h2>
<p>Everywhere we go, our best friends are likely to go with us. <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-11736-7">Our review</a> shows that dogs are present in many primate habitats. These predators sometimes kill and injure primates, but they also may simply chase and harass them, disrupting their socialising or foraging. </p>
<p>Being on the lookout for harassing dogs is stressful and causes primates to use more energy. Reducing these potentially lethal encounters depends on conservationists communicating with dog owners, <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-11736-7_5">who often don’t recognise</a> the danger their dogs pose to such wildlife.</p>
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<img alt="A black and white dog stands over a monkey in the street. The monkey has its mouth open." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506836/original/file-20230127-7614-6vw6f7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506836/original/file-20230127-7614-6vw6f7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506836/original/file-20230127-7614-6vw6f7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506836/original/file-20230127-7614-6vw6f7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506836/original/file-20230127-7614-6vw6f7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506836/original/file-20230127-7614-6vw6f7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506836/original/file-20230127-7614-6vw6f7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ma. Czarita A. Aguja/Shutterstock</span></span>
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<p>When diseases jump between animal species, they can cause serious harm to a species that does not have the necessary resistance. Dog diseases such as <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9179186/">canine heartworm </a>and <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2018.2772">parvovirus</a> can be passed from dogs to primates, and could potentially be fatal. There’s also the possibility that pathogens – viruses, bacteria or parasites – could evolve to spread more easily or become more deadly. </p>
<h2>2. Depictions</h2>
<p>If you live outside a country where primates live, you may never see a live primate outside of a zoo. Nevertheless, your media choices can still affect their conservation. </p>
<p><a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0118487">Researchers have discovered</a> that our choices of what we watch on YouTube, Instagram or TikTok can end up fuelling the use of primates as pets or in entertainment. Primates are cute, and we love to watch videos of them. However, many of these pictures and videos show them in artificial contexts, such as primates wearing clothes or interacting with office equipment.</p>
<p>When people view such content, <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0022050">they often say</a> they want a primate as a pet and are less likely to believe that these animals are endangered. </p>
<p>We can help to protect primates by not viewing or sharing videos that show animals in unnatural situations. The <a href="https://human-primate-interactions.org/resources/">responsibility</a> for interacting with primates respectfully is even higher for those who live near primates or those who embark on <a href="https://theconversation.com/five-ways-to-be-a-responsible-wildlife-tourist-118869">wildlife tourism</a>.</p>
<p>People’s activities can affect where primates live, what food they eat, and how they live their lives. Many tourist destinations in these types of locations cater to people’s desire to interact and take pictures with primates by keeping them as pets or encouraging feeding or similar interactions. </p>
<p><a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-11736-7">Our research found</a> that these practices harm the animals, increase the poaching or the trade of primates, and can lead to dangerous situations for both the primates and people. Photographs that show monkeys posing with humans alarm primatologists because we understand the risks of being bitten or of passing on diseases. But the wider public may be unaware of these dangers.</p>
<h2>3. Disease</h2>
<p>The potential for disease transmission between humans and primates is high, partly because of our closely related biology. When diseases move from animals to humans they are known as “zoonoses”. And when they are transferred from animals to human beings, they are known as “anthroponoses”.</p>
<p>The African apes – chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas – seem to be particularly <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/primatologists-work-keep-great-apes-safe-coronavirus">vulnerable to human respiratory infections</a>. Protecting these endangered animals from infectious disease is an important conservation goal.</p>
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<img alt="A silverback gorilla sits within thick, green vegetation" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506845/original/file-20230127-26-x0cl2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506845/original/file-20230127-26-x0cl2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506845/original/file-20230127-26-x0cl2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506845/original/file-20230127-26-x0cl2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506845/original/file-20230127-26-x0cl2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506845/original/file-20230127-26-x0cl2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506845/original/file-20230127-26-x0cl2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">An endangered silverback mountain gorilla.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Denys Kutsevalov/Shutterstock</span></span>
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<p>The risk of disease transmission between humans and nonhuman primates is worsened by close contact. Some primate species have always lived near people. But as human need for space grows and primate habitats become more fragmented, these encounters become more common. </p>
<p>Primate tourism also brings humans closer to wildlife, with people sometimes even holding the animals or sharing food with them. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/putting-primates-on-screen-is-fuelling-the-illegal-pet-trade-91995">pet trade</a> goes further and brings wild primates into our homes, where animals can contract illness from their owners and vice versa. </p>
<p><a href="https://humanprimateinteractions.files.wordpress.com/2022/10/primate-as-pets.pdf">Preventing the primate pet trade</a> and encouraging safe and respectful interactions with wildlife are vital for both human and nonhuman primate health.</p>
<p>These are only a few examples of the ways humans impact wild primates. And animal biologists are increasingly interested in such human-generated issues for wildlife conservation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197850/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tracie McKinney is affiliated with the IUCN SSC Primate Specialist Group's Section for Human-Primate Interactions (SHPI).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Rodrigues is affiliated with the IUCN SSC Primate Specialist Group's Section for Human-Primate Interactions (SHPI).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sian Waters is affiliated with the IUCN SSC Primate Specialist Group's Section for Human-Primate Interactions (SHPI)</span></em></p>Most of us have heard of the dangers of deforestation but there are other more subtle ways that human beings can endanger monkeys, apes and lemurs.Tracie McKinney, Senior Lecturer in Biological Anthropology, University of South WalesMichelle Rodrigues, Assistant Professor, Marquette UniversitySian Waters, Honorary Research Fellow, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1826242022-05-10T18:25:19Z2022-05-10T18:25:19ZPig-human transplants may be a misguided attempt to address the organ shortage<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461887/original/file-20220509-20-agjzud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6000%2C4500&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cross-species transplants require us to examine the relationships between humans and animals.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/pig-human-transplants-may-be-a-misguided-attempt-to-address-the-organ-shortage" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>At the end of 2021, 57-year old David Bennett Sr. was bedridden and on life-support with irreversible heart failure. He was not eligible for a human heart transplant or an implanted mechanical heart pump because of his underlying health condition and, allegedly, “<a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/05/04/1051725/xenotransplant-patient-died-received-heart-infected-with-pig-virus/">a history of disregarding medical advice</a>.”</p>
<p>Certain death was on the horizon and this fatal prognosis made Bennett a candidate for a highly experimental and never-before-attempted surgical procedure involving the transplantation of a heart from a genetically modified pig.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/pig-heart-transplant-was-david-bennett-the-right-person-to-receive-groundbreaking-surgery-174991">Pig heart transplant: was David Bennett the right person to receive groundbreaking surgery?</a>
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<p>The pig-to-human cardiac transplant — or xenotransplant — was <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/01/11/1043374/gene-edited-pigs-heart-transplant/">authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on compassionate grounds on New Year’s Eve 2021</a> and the surgery was performed on Jan. 7, 2022.</p>
<p>Initial reports following the experimental surgery suggested that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00111-9">the genetically modified, human-compatible pig heart was functioning well and infection was not a problem</a>. </p>
<p>Bennett died on March 8 — at the time, “no obvious cause” of death was identified. Now, it has been reported that the pig heart was <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2319108-man-who-received-pig-heart-transplant-has-died-after-pig-virus-found/">infected with a virus called porcine cytomegalovirus and that this virus may have contributed to Bennett’s death</a>. </p>
<p>Though the cause of death remains unclear, infection has been implicated in previous xenotransplantation failures involving baboons as the recipients.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/42bwa85g1DM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The BBC reports on the initial pig-to-human heart transplant surgery.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>More demand than supply</h2>
<p>There is an ongoing chronic <a href="https://hillnotes.ca/2021/04/16/organ-donation-in-canada-2/">shortage of suitable human organs for life-saving transplantation</a>. Indeed, many <a href="https://www.cihi.ca/en/organ-transplants-in-canada-2020-donations-and-need-infographic">Canadian transplant candidates die waiting for an organ donation</a>.</p>
<p>Attempts to increase the limited supply of human organs have included changes to consent rules: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-1253(17)30037-7">moving to an opt-out system</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31870-1">introducing directed living donation and deceased donor-initiated chains</a> and, in some countries, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1097/MOT.0000000000000617">offering financial compensation</a>. </p>
<p>Still, patients die on transplant waiting lists. For this reason, there is ever increasing interest in xenotransplantation — an ethically controversial practice. </p>
<h2>Nonhuman primates and pigs</h2>
<p>In 1984, <a href="https://time.com/4086900/baby-fae-history/">the heart of a young baboon was transplanted into Baby Fae</a>, an infant born with a fatal heart defect called <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/hypoplastic-left-heart-syndrome/symptoms-causes/syc-20350599">hypoplastic left heart syndrome</a>. Baby Fae lived for three weeks, but eventually died of heart failure caused by rejection of the transplanted baboon heart.</p>
<p>Prior to this, there had been three other experimental nonhuman heart transplants, <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08998280.2012.11928783">the earliest in 1964 using a chimpanzee heart</a>.</p>
<p>More recent efforts at xenotransplantation have involved the <a href="https://www.uab.edu/news/campus/item/12566-uab-announces-first-clinical-grade-transplant-of-gene-edited-pig-kidneys-into-brain-dead-human">transplantation of pig kidneys into brain-dead humans</a>. The most dramatic recent example, however, remains Bennett’s first-in-human cardiac xenotransplant using a genetically modified pig heart.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462150/original/file-20220510-17-ol00fx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a baboon behind a cage" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462150/original/file-20220510-17-ol00fx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462150/original/file-20220510-17-ol00fx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462150/original/file-20220510-17-ol00fx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462150/original/file-20220510-17-ol00fx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462150/original/file-20220510-17-ol00fx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462150/original/file-20220510-17-ol00fx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462150/original/file-20220510-17-ol00fx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">One of the earliest xenotransplants involved a baboon heart transplanted into an infant.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
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<p>For some, the use of pig hearts for xenotransplantation may be ethically preferable to the use of nonhuman primate hearts because pigs are already used for medicine: for example, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/10/20/1047560631/in-a-major-scientific-advance-a-pig-kidney-is-successfully-transplanted-into-a-h">pig heart valves, corneas and skin are used in various treatments</a>.</p>
<p>Or it could be that pigs are preferable “organ donors” because they are already used for food. When it comes to food animals — those who are consumed by humans — people can be biased against accurately seeing the subjectivity of the animal. This is referred to as the “<a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ani9121125">meat paradox</a>,” where people perceive food animals as “<a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190206-what-the-meat-paradox-reveals-about-moral-decision-making">objects and thereby avoid the discomfort caused by knowing about the suffering behind consumer goods</a>.”</p>
<p>A third reason to prefer killing pigs for human benefit instead of killing nonhuman primates is that pigs are biologically less similar to humans.</p>
<h2>Prioritizing humans</h2>
<p>Moral worth — <a href="https://impactethics.ca/2014/09/05/which-lives-are-you-pro/">the value assigned to others in ways that affect how we treat them</a> — is not species specific. Rather, it is associated with specific capacities such as the ability to think, make choices, experience pain, communicate and have social relationships.</p>
<p>Because a human zygote lacks such capacities, not many believe that they have the same moral worth as a human two-year old, and there is nothing obviously irrational about this belief. Though a zygote may have the potential to reach a comparable level of development as a two-year old, they are not yet comparable. Their shared human identity is beside the point. </p>
<p>On occasion, humans may choose to prioritize the interests of their companion animals without doing something obviously wrong. For example, it is not irrational to spend money on the care of pets, even if that money could have gone towards helping fellow humans. This choice may reflect a shared social relationship and the emotional bonds that come with it. It may also reflect a sense of duty toward nonhuman animals that are dependent on the care provided by humans. </p>
<p>Having said this, clearly, there are times when it is appropriate to prioritize the interests of humans over other animals; it is just that <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/human-exceptionalism-is-a-danger-to-all-human-and-nonhuman">this perspective shouldn’t be the default position</a>. In any case, it is not clear, nor is it easy to determine, that Bennett’s extraordinary xenotransplant falls into this category.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462152/original/file-20220510-16-xxiv1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="pigs standing at a trough in a shed" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462152/original/file-20220510-16-xxiv1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462152/original/file-20220510-16-xxiv1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462152/original/file-20220510-16-xxiv1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462152/original/file-20220510-16-xxiv1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462152/original/file-20220510-16-xxiv1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462152/original/file-20220510-16-xxiv1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462152/original/file-20220510-16-xxiv1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The killing and consumption of pigs is normalized as they are produced for food.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
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<h2>Animal welfare</h2>
<p>In Canada, support for animal-based research is anchored in a commitment to <a href="https://www.ccac.ca/Documents/2013_National_Survey.pdf">prevent — or at the very least reduce — unnecessary suffering</a>. The problem with this stance is that current animal welfare considerations do not typically support strong constraints on the scientific use of animals. </p>
<p>Notably, there are pressures to limit, but <a href="https://ccac.ca/en/facts-and-legislation/animal-data/annual-animal-data-reports.html">not to eliminate</a>, the use of animals in research likely to have severe welfare impacts. Also, common animal welfare considerations do not prohibit killing the animals, they just constrain how they are killed. </p>
<p>Part of the problem here is that there are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963180119000732">no substantive ethical principles governing animal use in science</a>. The three Rs, which are pervasive in regulated animal use in science, emphasize <em>replacing</em> sentient animals (animals capable of experiencing pain and pleasure) where possible, <em>reducing</em> the number of sentient animals used in studies to a “bare minimum” and <em>refining</em> their experiences of use to minimize suffering. </p>
<p>As such, the three Rs seem to assume something like a principled commitment to non-maleficence — <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/ilar/ilaa014">avoiding unnecessary harm</a>. However, the continued dependency on harmful animal-based research that almost always ends with the killing of the animals belies this claim, given the known <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/may-7-endangered-tiny-porpoise-mars-quakes-thermal-batteries-and-more-1.6443011/meet-the-canadian-researcher-determined-to-take-the-animals-out-of-lab-testing-1.6443917">significant problems of extrapolation of research findings</a>.</p>
<p>Given the ethical challenges with animal-based research in general and more specifically the ethical challenges with animal-to-human xenotransplantation, there is good reason to look for <a href="https://www.thehastingscenter.org/xenotransplantation-three-areas-of-concern/">other strategies to increase the supply of organs</a> for transplantation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182624/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Fenton is a member of the (Canadian) Society for Humane Science and is currently serving on a subcommittee for the Canadian Council on Animal Care (revising their core ethics document) and a panel on nonhuman primate research for the National Anti-Vivisection Society. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Françoise Baylis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The heart used in the first pig-human transplant was infected with a pig virus. This reveals that using other species as organ donors may not provide a solution for organ shortages.Françoise Baylis, University Research Professor, Philosophy, Dalhousie UniversityAndrew Fenton, Associate Professor, Philosophy, Dalhousie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1767022022-02-09T13:31:25Z2022-02-09T13:31:25ZChimpanzees rub insects on open wounds – new research suggests treating others may not be uniquely human<p>The chimpanzees of the Rekambo community in Gabon, West Africa never fail to surprise. For a start, they are known to <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-43301-8">kill and eat tortoises</a>, which sets them apart from any other community of chimpanzees. Now they have been seen displaying another unique behaviour – one which has never been seen before despite many years of painstaking research.</p>
<p>In their new study published in the journal Current Biology, researchers have described how they saw Rekambo chimpanzees <a href="https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)01732-2">applying insects</a> to their own open wounds, and, even more amazingly, to the wounds of other community members too. </p>
<p>Even by itself, treating wounds with insects is a groundbreaking observation – but until now no other animal, apart from humans, has been seen treating the wounds of others.</p>
<p>Humans have been <a href="https://www.phcogrev.com/sites/default/files/PhcogRev-6-11-1.pdf">using local remedies</a> (such as roots, leaves, bark and other animals) as medicines for at least 5,000 years, a practice that has been passed down over generations within societies all over the world. </p>
<p>There is some <a href="https://ethnobiomed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13002-017-0136-0">use of invertebrates</a> in traditional human medicine too. For example, leeches have been used <a href="https://ethnobiomed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13002-017-0136-0/tables/1">to clean wounds</a>, slugs and snails to treat inflammation, spider webs to dress wounds and termite pincers to inject medicine under the skin.</p>
<p>Is it possible, perhaps, that such cultural use of plants and animals to treat injuries and illness was inherited from a common ape-like ancestor millions of years ago?</p>
<h2>Self-medication in animals</h2>
<p>As in humans, <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.1126/science.1235824">self-medication in wild animals</a> is not uncommon –individuals from a diverse range of species, including chimpanzees, select particular plant foods that contain chemicals known to treat infection by parasites. </p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0004796">caterpillars</a> ingest plant toxins when infected by parasitic flies and <a href="https://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dspace/handle/2433/68214">gorillas</a> consume a wide variety of plants that contain known compounds important in human traditional medicines. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/to-save-wild-chimpanzees-imagine-their-habitat-is-an-electrical-circuit-149761">To save wild chimpanzees, imagine their habitat is an electrical circuit</a>
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<p>Some species, such as wood ants, even <a href="https://serval.unil.ch/resource/serval:BIB_475BB8503A64.P001/REF">anticipate infection</a>, adding antimicrobial resin from nearby trees into their nests, which reduces the colony’s exposure to microbes. </p>
<p>To date however, this widespread behaviour almost always centres on self-medication with plant material. Never before has the use of insects on wounds been observed.</p>
<h2>The groundbreaking chimpanzees</h2>
<p>Over a 15-month period, beginning in November 2019, the team observed 76 open wounds on 22 different chimpanzees. There were 22 events of insect application by ten different chimpanzees. On 19 occasions, various individuals were seen applying an insect to one of their own wounds. </p>
<p>They caught an insect from the air, which they immobilised by squeezing between their lips. Then they placed it on an exposed surface of the wound and moved it around using their fingertips or lips. Finally, they extracted the insect from the wound.</p>
<p>But the use of insects didn’t stop there. In a remarkable act of “allocare” (caring for another individual) a mother was seen applying insects to her offspring’s wound, and a further two adult chimpanzees treated the wounds of another community member. </p>
<h2>Why it’s important</h2>
<p>The researchers do not yet know which insects were used, if they have any associated chemical properties or, most importantly, whether applying them to wounds has any health benefits. But what they do know is that the chimpanzees’ behaviour is extraordinary for a variety of reasons.</p>
<p>First, it’s likely an example of allo-medication behaviour (medicating others) in apes, which has never been seen before. </p>
<p>The authors think this is a possible prosocial behaviour – defined as one that benefits another individual. Humans are characterised by our propensity to volunteer, share and cooperate among others – but whether other species, especially our closely related cousins, also exhibit this type of behaviour remains unclear. </p>
<p>There is <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-15320-w">evidence for prosociality</a> in captive bonobos (our other closest <a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/bonobo">living relative</a>) who have been seen assisting an unfamiliar, non-group member to obtain food during an experimental task.</p>
<p>But up to now, its presence in chimpanzees is <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2014.1699?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%20%200pubmed">contentious</a>. The current study undoubtedly pushes the needle towards their sharing some prosocial tendencies with humans.</p>
<p>Second, self-medication has long been associated with <a href="https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/51/8/651/220603">ingestion of plants</a> with specific medicinal properties. In a recent study, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-16621-w">orangutans were shown</a> to mix saliva with leaves from plants containing anti-inflammatory properties and apply it to various parts of their body – the first recorded case of topical self-medication in animals. </p>
<p>But never before have scientists observed chimpanzees (or any animal) essentially “treat” a wound, nor apply a different animal species to a wound. </p>
<p>In that sense, the observations stand out for what these chimpanzees are doing and how. Commonly known as “anointment”, rubbing a material, object or substance on a bodily surface has been observed in numerous species. </p>
<p>Mammals are especially known to rub themselves against trees and rocks or fruits and arthropods to <a href="https://www.karger.com/Article/Abstract/70649">pick up a particular scent</a>, and birds have been seen to capture and <a href="https://sora.unm.edu/node/119525">rub millipedes on their plumage</a>, probably to <a href="https://phys.org/news/2013-03-deterring-citrus-millipedes.html">deter ticks</a>. </p>
<p>In primates, anointing behaviour is also widespread. It’s not yet clear whether Rekambo chimpanzees are in fact rubbing the insects. But as they are uniquely targeting open wounds, it does suggest that it could well be an act of medication.</p>
<h2>What’s next?</h2>
<p>Identification and analysis of the insect species used by Rekambo chimpanzees will be key to revealing the purpose and effectiveness of this newly reported medication behaviour. Perhaps the insects from Gabon will be revealed to have wound-healing or anti-inflammatory properties, just like the plants used by orangutans. </p>
<p>Finally, although there can be little dispute about the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18176-3">cultural diversity in chimpanzees</a>, the Rekambo chimpanzees continue to stand out for their uniqueness. It begs the question, what else do these chimpanzees have in store for us?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176702/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>How Rekambo chimpanzees demonstrate a number of ground breaking behaviours never seen before in animals.Alexander Piel, Lecturer in Anthropology, University College London, UCLFiona Stewart, Lecturer in Wildlife Conservation, Liverpool John Moores UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1733852021-12-08T15:52:30Z2021-12-08T15:52:30ZWe’ve proved that wild primates suffer from tooth decay – and chimps are among the worst<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436405/original/file-20211208-21-1ieoopr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/big-smile-on-young-chimpanzees-face-409846009">Atiger/shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nearly everyone at some point in their lives is affected by tooth decay. Indeed, half of you reading this article are likely to currently <a href="https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/oral-health">have it</a>. It’s common knowledge that a sugary diet can cause cavities, but <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022034515590377">specific bacteria</a> living in our mouths are part of the process. They consume the sugary foods and release acids into the mouth as a by-product. If this happens frequently, the tissue that makes up a tooth – including enamel and dentine – decrease in mineral concentration. This is called demineralisation, and it ultimately causes cavities. </p>
<p>Apart from humans, some species kept as pets and in captivity (such as in zoos), can <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02382058">regularly display</a> tooth cavities. This is mostly due to being fed a diet containing processed sugars that differs from their natural foods.</p>
<p>But we might expect that wild animals wouldn’t suffer from the same dental issues as they are not eating processed foods. In fact, that isn’t the case. It turns out that tooth decay may be relatively common in some species, including in a wide range of mammals such as bats, primates, bears and some other carnivores.</p>
<h2>Cavities in primates</h2>
<p>Primates in particular have been observed to have cavities, including in a diverse range of <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0203307">prehistoric species</a>. But dental decay is still generally regarded as rare in wild primates living today, and there has been disagreement between specialists on whether deep cavities found within the front of their teeth are actually tooth decay caused by cavity-forming bacteria, or holes caused by factors other than tooth decay such as <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ajpa.1330800210">enamel weakness</a>.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ajp.23349">recent study</a> we wanted to find out for sure whether primates get tooth cavities, and where in the mouth they were found.
To do this, we used a 3D-imaging technique known as micro-CT scans to look at 8,000 teeth from 11 diverse primate species.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/fossil-tooth-fractures-and-microscopic-detail-of-enamel-offer-new-clues-about-human-diet-and-evolution-163653">Fossil tooth fractures and microscopic detail of enamel offer new clues about human diet and evolution</a>
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<p>Nine out of the 11 species had at least some cavities. And several species had high levels of cavities on their front teeth, including chimpanzees, gorillas, Dent’s mona monkeys, blue monkeys and raffles’ banded langurs.</p>
<p>Crucially, we found that tooth decay causing bacteria had indeed been involved in the cavities we commonly observed on the front teeth, because demineralisation was evident deep below the surface of the tooth. Perhaps in hindsight this is not surprising since soft fruits are a staple of the diet in many primates, so they regularly chew foods with high levels of natural sugars.</p>
<p>And because we studied so many teeth, we were then able to assess variation in patterns of cavities – where they were on the teeth and how that differed in relation to diet and behaviour.</p>
<h2>Why front teeth in primates?</h2>
<p>In humans, including <a href="https://sajs.co.za/article/view/8705">our fossil ancestors</a> and relatives going back millions of years, it is the back teeth that are most commonly affected by tooth decay. The reason why, in living primates, the front teeth seem more susceptible to this disease is probably because of differences in their food, and also in the way they eat. </p>
<p>For example, chimpanzees undertake a <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02192634">behaviour called wadging</a>, where they hold chewed fruits in the front of the mouth and then suck out the sugary liquids. These fruits include figs, some of which have high concentrations of sugars. They have even been observed wadging honeycomb. Not surprisingly the front teeth of chimpanzees show extremely high rates of cavities.</p>
<p>Although other monkey and ape species might have different diets and eating behaviours, they all use their front teeth to process fruits and other plant parts that are high in natural sugars. In contrast, some baboons and macaques, which have a much more varied diet, don’t appear to have these tooth cavities.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/monkey-teeth-fossils-hint-several-extinct-species-crossed-the-atlantic-135961">Monkey teeth fossils hint several extinct species crossed the Atlantic</a>
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<p>Interestingly, female chimpanzees had considerably more decayed teeth than males – around 9% compared to only 2% in males. We do not yet know why, but it is likely to be caused by differences in their diet and behaviour, as well as other factors such as pregnancy, acidity of saliva, life history, and bacteria variations between the sexes.</p>
<p>So we humans are not alone in suffering from tooth decay. One other interesting point is that captive primates share our pattern of cavities, with back teeth regularly affected more than the front. This is mostly due to being fed a diet containing processed sugars that differ from their natural foods. </p>
<p>In short, primates’ cavity patterns seem to be a reliable indicator of food-processing behaviours and diet – and therefore, tooth decay has the potential to offer unique ecological insight into both extinct and living primate groups.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/173385/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Towle does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We studied 8,000 primate teeth and finally confirmed that humans are not the only living primate to suffer from cavities. But there are interesting differences.Ian Towle, Postdoctoral researcher & teaching assistant, London South Bank UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1646612021-07-28T15:48:59Z2021-07-28T15:48:59ZNFTs by chimpanzees, like 1950s primate art, raise questions about the nature of creativity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/412975/original/file-20210724-15-wz5fga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=12%2C44%2C4185%2C2663&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Larry, a chimp formerly used in medical research, now resides at the Save the Chimps sanctuary which offers painting as an enrichment activity. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Jo-Anne McArthur/We Animals Media)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>According to the Save the Chimps sanctuary in Fort Pierce, Fla., history was <a href="https://savethechimps.org/faq-about-save-the-chimps-nfts-on-truesy/">made when non-human primates created NFTs (non-fungible tokens)</a>. As with all NFTs, these pieces <a href="https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/nft-non-fungible-token">are unique digital collectibles</a>. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-are-nfts-and-why-are-people-paying-millions-for-them-157035">What are NFTs and why are people paying millions for them?</a>
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<p>The art was created by chimpanzees <a href="https://savethechimps.org/chimps/cheetah/">like Cheetah</a>. Cheetah had lived alone in a steel cage for 13 years and was used in a biomedical study, but now lives at the Save the Chimps sanctuary. The money raised from Cheetah’s and others chimps’ <em>Primal Expressions</em> painting collection <a href="https://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/chimpanzee-made-nfts-go-on-sale-for-charity/">sales will help to support sanctuary operations</a>.</p>
<p>Save the Chimps was founded in 1997 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/science/07noon.html">by primatologist</a> <a href="https://unboundproject.org/dr-carole-noon/">Carole Noon</a>, and its residents come to the sanctuary from a range of situations. Consider the trio who created these NFTs: <a href="https://savethechimps.org/chimps/tootie/">Tootie began</a> life in the entertainment industry, and both Cheetah and <a href="https://savethechimps.org/chimps/clay/">Clay spent</a> years in research laboratories. Today all three are members of the <a href="https://savethechimps.org/familys/special-needs/">chimp family</a> at Save the Chimps. The CEO of the sanctuary says the chimps have <a href="https://www.wptv.com/news/region-st-lucie-county/save-the-chimps-chimpanzees-in-st-lucie-county-make-nft-paintings-sold-to-support-their-sanctuary">responded positively to the inclusion of art supplies as part of their enrichment program</a>.</p>
<p>The launch of these NFTs is the latest chapter in a long and complex history of non-human animals in the art world. As I have explored in my research, this history also includes thinking about how those advocating for the <a href="https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-08009-3.html">well-being of animals have used artwork in their campaigns</a>. My exploration of these questions led me to co-found <a href="https://unboundproject.org">The Unbound Project, dedicated to sharing stories about contemporary and historic women at the forefront of animal advocacy worldwide</a>.</p>
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<h2>1950s chimpanzee artists</h2>
<p>During the 1950s there was much attention paid to chimpanzee artists. Betsy, a resident of <a href="https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1997-08-17-1997229076-story.html">the Baltimore Zoo during the 1950s, quickly rose to fame for her artwork</a>. When the Baltimore Museum of Art purchased an abstract painting by <a href="https://www.moma.org/artists/3213">Willem de Kooning</a>, a keeper at the Baltimore Zoo claimed that Betsy could likely produce something comparable and set about to test the idea. </p>
<p>While Betsy’s art career got off to a rather underwhelming start — she began by eating paint and chewing on a brush — she soon was soon smearing colourful pigments on canvases much to the delight of both the media and art collectors. She appeared on such programs as <em>The Tonight Show</em> <a href="https://www.baltimoremagazine.com/section/artsentertainment/john-waters-brings-back-memories-of-betsy-the-chimp">and has received special mention in a recent book by filmmaker by John Waters</a>.</p>
<p>Around the same time that Betsy was becoming a media darling, a chimpanzee at the London Zoo named <a href="https://hyperallergic.com/532725/congo-the-chimpanzee-the-birth-of-art-at-the-mayor-gallery/">Congo was thrust into the spotlight with the help of Desmond Morris, a respected artist and zoologist</a>. Morris was the presenter of a Granada TV show called <em>Zoo Time</em>, and it was on this program that Congo and his artwork caught the attention of a broad public. Many well-known art collectors — including <a href="https://www.theartnewspaper.com/archive/mayfair-gallery-unveiling-show-titled-ape-artists-of-the-1950s">Picasso and</a> <a href="https://www.zsl.org/blogs/artefact-of-the-month/congo-and-the-biology-of-art">Prince Philip</a> — purchased Congo’s work.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xqAmWTG7D7c?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">ITV news report on sale of Congo’s painting in 2019.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1957, Congo’s art was exhibited at the <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/dozens-paintings-1950s-chimp-artist-congo-go-sale-180973305/">Institute of Contemporary Art in London</a>, and the following year there was a joint exhibit of Betsy and Congo’s work at the Baltimore Zoo. <em>The Times</em> reported on May 9, 1958, that when Congo’s paintings were shipped to the United States for this show, U.S. Customs officials charged duty on the pieces, something that would not have been done if the artist had been human. An appraiser quoted in the brief story admitted they couldn’t tell the difference between Congo’s paintings and similar paintings by human artists, but said: “We have to draw the line somewhere.”</p>
<h2>Abstract expressionism</h2>
<p>The claim that non-human animals could be artists sparked intense debate. Many were heavily invested in the idea that art could only be produced by humans. In February 1959, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1986/03/12/books/janson-s-son-revises-classic-art-text.html">H.W. Janson, an art historian perhaps best known for his introductory level art history textbooks</a>, published an article titled “After Betsy, What?” Here Janson admits that Betsy presented a “real challenge” for him because of how similar her paintings were to <a href="https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/abstract-expressionism/">abstract expressionist art</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413167/original/file-20210726-16-1lcg7gj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Abstract colours on a black paper." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413167/original/file-20210726-16-1lcg7gj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413167/original/file-20210726-16-1lcg7gj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413167/original/file-20210726-16-1lcg7gj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413167/original/file-20210726-16-1lcg7gj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413167/original/file-20210726-16-1lcg7gj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=574&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413167/original/file-20210726-16-1lcg7gj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=574&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413167/original/file-20210726-16-1lcg7gj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=574&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Painting by Congo, c. 1957.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Wikimedia Commons)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While he was forced to ponder whether “apes are more human than we think,” he concluded that zoo staff, who provided Betsy with art supplies and decided when a piece was complete, were the ones who should actually be credited for the works, that Betsy was “merely a source of random patterns.”</p>
<p>But as the sale of the <a href="https://savethechimps.org/faq-about-save-the-chimps-nfts-on-truesy/"><em>Primal Expressions</em> NFTs</a> last week demonstrates, the idea that non-human animals can be part of cutting-edge trends in the art world has not gone away, and conversations on this topic have grown increasingly complex. </p>
<p>Indeed, in the years since Betsy and Congo made headlines, there have been numerous examples of artwork and exhibitions that continue to raise important questions about creative instincts in non-human animals. As was the case at Save the Chimps, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/arts/pockets-is-an-artist-and-a-monkey-and-sales-of-his-paintings-help-keep-his-sanctuary-afloat-1.5474558">painting is often presented as an enrichment activity for primates in sanctuaries</a>. </p>
<h2>Ethics of collaborating with animals</h2>
<p>In other cases there have been important <a href="https://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/why-making-an-elephant-paint-is-cruel-not-cute/">questions raised about the ethics of asking non-human animals to make works</a> conforming to human expectations of what art should be. The Canadian artist <a href="http://www.aganethadyck.ca/">Aganetha Dyck</a> and British collaborative artists <a href="https://www.ollysuzi.com/">Olly and Suzi</a> have added complexity to the conversation as they collaborate with non-human animals in ways that attempt to respect and honour both individual animals and the ecosystems in which they live. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1225470722673455107"}"></div></p>
<p>Further, there is growing recognition that at least some non-human animals could have <a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140723-are-we-the-only-creative-species">creative instincts similar to humans</a>. Janson’s insistence that creativity is the exclusive domain of humans seems to ring a bit hollow these days. The more we learn about the <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/150714-animal-dog-thinking-feelings-brain-science">complex emotional</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-social-lives-of-animals-should-form-part-of-our-conservation-culture-114851">social lives</a> of non-human animals, the more unlikely it seems that only humans are capable of creativity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164661/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keri Cronin receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and is co-founder of the Unbound Project.</span></em></p>Art such as the ‘Primal Expressions’ series created by chimpanzees continues to raise important questions about creative instincts in non-human animals.Keri Cronin, Associate Professor, History of Art & Visual Culture, Brock UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1311892021-03-26T12:24:27Z2021-03-26T12:24:27ZHow humans became the best throwers on the planet<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391246/original/file-20210323-13-1dlrzok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=20%2C20%2C3407%2C2312&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">New York Yankees closer Aroldis Chapman routinely tops 100 mph with his fastball.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/aroldis-chapman-of-the-new-york-yankees-in-action-against-news-photo/1278868402?adppopup=true">Jim McIsaac/Getty Images Sport via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Pitchers’ fastballs are getting better and better.</p>
<p>From 2008 to 2020, the average speeds of all major league baseball pitches combined <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2021/3/15/22331075/pitching-mound-move-distance">rose by between 1.5 mph and 2 mph</a>. In the 2019 season, nearly 90% of the 281 pitchers who threw more than 1,000 pitches <a href="https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/pitch-arsenals?year=2019&min=1000&type=avg_speed&hand=">threw fastballs that averaged over 90 mph</a>. The 100 mph fastball – once a newsworthy event – <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2017/03/30/with-all-the-100-mph-pitchers-how-long-will-the-arms-last/99813546/">is now relatively common</a>.</p>
<p>But MLB pitchers aren’t the only expert throwers; most healthy people can throw faster than our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12267">much stronger chimpanzee relatives</a>, who max out at around 30 mph. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/036354659602400506">A study of boys</a> from the ages of 8 to 14 who were only moderately trained in throwing could still throw two times faster than chimps.</p>
<p>So how and why did humans evolve to become expert throwers? </p>
<p>In two papers in The Quarterly Review of Biology, we explored the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/696721">ecological causes</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/698225">evolutionary consequences</a> of throwing in humans. </p>
<h2>Sticks and stones that break bones</h2>
<p>Humans are the only species that can throw well enough to kill rivals and prey. Because throwing requires the highly coordinated and extraordinarily rapid movements of multiple body parts, there was likely a long history of selection favoring the evolution of expert throwing in our ancestors.</p>
<p>Most people probably don’t think throwing is important outside of sports because they’ve forgotten its usefulness. Part of that has to do with the fact that people have been using weapons like bows and firearms <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Technology-and-War/Martin-Van-Creveld/9780029331538#">for centuries</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Throwing_Fire.html?id=vyFxldb2GJQC">But before the invention of these weapons</a>, our hunter-gatherer ancestors threw darts, knives, spears, sticks and stones at rivals and prey. Even today, stones remain effective weapons; <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-india/migrant-workers-throw-stones-at-police-in-india-in-protest-against-lockdown-idUSKBN22L0JZ">you’ll see protesters heave stones at police</a> and <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/afghan-rights-group-investigates-video-of-woman-being-stoned-to-death/30414665.html">stoning used as a form of punishment</a> in some places.</p>
<p>Darwin considered the evolution of throwing to be critical to the success of our ancestors. As he wrote in “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Na9LAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=darwin+1871+descent+of+man&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiZuKzpwu3nAhVOip4KHWVTDF0Q6AEwAXoECAUQAg#v=onepage&q=darwin%201871%20descent%20of%20man&f=false">The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex</a>,” it allowed “the progenitors of man” to better “defend themselves with stones or clubs, to attack their prey, or otherwise to obtain food.”</p>
<p>The development of the skill begins with the evolution of bipedal locomotion, or walking on two feet. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27800-6_48-3">This happened about 4 million years ago</a>, and it freed the arms and hands to learn new abilities like making tools, carrying goods and throwing.</p>
<p>The Australopithecines, the relatively small-brained, bipedal ancestors of our genus that lived in Africa <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-802652-6.00010-4">somewhere between 1 million and 4 million years ago</a>, probably threw projectiles as well, since <a href="https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1469-7580.2003.00144.x">their hand bones</a> hint at their ability to grip objects and throw them. </p>
<p>But just because you can throw doesn’t mean you can throw well. Anatomical adaptations like a tall mobile waist that decoupled the hips and thorax allowed for more torso rotation. A laterally oriented shoulder joint that better aligned the main axis of the upper arm with the action of chest muscles allowed for a greater range of motion. Both are necessary for high-speed throwing, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12267">and these first appeared together in <em>Homo erectus</em></a> – the first member of our genus – about 2 million years ago. </p>
<p>The two main theories for why selection favored throwing are fighting and hunting. Most scholars have favored the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/0162-3095(82)90010-3">hunting hypothesis</a>. However, <a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/animal-tool-behavior">monkeys and apes</a> – especially chimpanzees, our closest relatives – frequently throw sticks, stones and vegetation during combat with each other and potential predators. Only rarely do they do so while hunting. Because throwing at other members of the same species is an ancestral trait in primates, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/696721">we argue that our throwing abilities evolved first in the context of combat and only later became a hunting tactic</a>.</p>
<h2>A skill that diverges by sex</h2>
<p>Once the ability to throw quickly and accurately became critical to success in combat and hunting, our male ancestors would have been more likely than females to develop, through natural selection, these skills, since anthropologists have shown that males <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/war-in-human-civilization-9780199236633?cc=us&lang=en&">tended to fight</a> and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3773347">hunt big game</a>.</p>
<p>Over time, men who were better throwers became better warriors and hunters. This further accelerated the evolution of throwing ability in men because success in <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/239/4843/985">war</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-004-1013-9">hunting</a> increases male status within groups and influenced female mate choice.</p>
<p>Interestingly, while all modern humans can throw well relative to other primates, sex differences in throwing are among the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.60.6.581">largest behavioral differences between the sexes</a>. These differences emerge early in life and are not strongly influenced by experience or practice. </p>
<p>Anthropologists and biologists <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.98.2.260">have extensively documented</a> this advantage in throwing velocity, distance and targeting ability, although a recent study <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00212">suggests training may eliminate differences in throwing accuracy</a>.</p>
<p>Sex differences in throwing do not exist just because males are, on average, larger and stronger. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/698225">The relative size, shape and orientation of the shoulders of men</a> increase the range of motion of the arm during the cocking phase, which facilitates better throwing. Some of these differences begin early in life and exist even when taking into account sex differences in body size and the fact that males, from a young age, tend to throw more often than females.</p>
<p>Even among men, large size and strength do not always result in faster throwing. Throwing speed is influenced by a variety of factors including <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/02701367.2006.10599378">the range of motion of the throwing arm</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/02701367.2006.10599377">stride length</a>. That’s why relatively svelte pitchers like <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/l/linceti01.shtml">Tim Lincecum</a> and <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/martipe02.shtml">Pedro Martinez</a> were able to throw faster than most of their taller, stronger and bulkier counterparts.</p>
<p>Their bodies are the paragons of an evolutionary adaptation that has made humans the best throwers on the planet. If rising pitch speeds are any indication, the skill continues to develop. There are even some who argue that pitchers have become too good – and that <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2021/3/15/22331075/pitching-mound-move-distance">it’s high time to move back the mound</a>.</p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131189/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We’re the only species that can throw at speeds that kill.Michael P. Lombardo, Professor of Biology, Grand Valley State University Robert Deaner, Associate Professor of Psychology, Grand Valley State University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1536442021-01-30T21:59:44Z2021-01-30T21:59:44ZApes, robots and men: the life and death of the first space chimp<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381239/original/file-20210129-13-2fzjdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C4%2C3000%2C2276&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chimpanzee_Ham_in_Biopack_Couch_for_MR-2_flight_MSFC-6100114.jpg">NASA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On January 31, 1961, an intrepid chimpanzee called Ham was launched on a rocket from Cape Canaveral in the United States, and returned to Earth alive. In this process, he became the first hominin in space.</p>
<p>In the 1950s, it was unclear whether humans could survive outside Earth – both physically and mentally. The science fiction writer and warfare expert <a href="https://hub.jhu.edu/magazine/2018/fall/cordwainer-smith-paul-linebarger/">Cordwainer Smith</a> wrote about the psychological pain of being in space.</p>
<p>Plants, insects and animals had been taken to high altitudes in balloons and rockets since the 18th century. The Soviet Union sent <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/sad-story-laika-space-dog-and-her-one-way-trip-orbit-1-180968728/">the dog Laika</a> into orbit on Sputnik 2 in 1957. She died, but from overheating rather than the effects of space travel itself.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-animal-astronauts-paved-the-way-for-human-space-flight-52528">How animal astronauts paved the way for human space flight</a>
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<p>While the USSR focused on dogs, the US turned to chimpanzees as they were the most like humans. The stakes became higher when US President John F. Kennedy promised to land humans on the Moon by the end of the 1960s.</p>
<h2>Biography of a non-human astronaut</h2>
<p>Ham was born in 1957 in a rainforest in the Central African nation of Cameroon, then a French territory. He was captured and taken to an astronaut school for chimps at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. </p>
<p>The astrochimps were trained to pull levers, with a banana pellet as a reward and an electric shock to the feet for failure. The chosen chimp would test life support systems and demonstrate that equipment could be operated during spaceflight. Ham showed great aptitude, and was selected the day before the flight.</p>
<p>On January 31, 1961, Ham was launched into space, strapped into a capsule inside the nosecone of a Mercury-Redstone rocket. The rocket travelled at 9,000km/h, and reached an altitude of 251km. The whole flight took 16 minutes from launch to return. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379693/original/file-20210120-13-ore9a0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379693/original/file-20210120-13-ore9a0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=730&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379693/original/file-20210120-13-ore9a0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=730&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379693/original/file-20210120-13-ore9a0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=730&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379693/original/file-20210120-13-ore9a0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379693/original/file-20210120-13-ore9a0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379693/original/file-20210120-13-ore9a0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ham with one of his handlers on the day of the spaceflight.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">NASA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Throughout the journey Ham was obliged to pull a lever. He received two shocks for not doing this correctly, out of 50 pulls. He achieved this with a 16cm rectal thermometer in place to monitor his temperature. </p>
<p>He experienced 6.6 minutes of free fall and 14.7_g_ of acceleration on descent – much greater than predicted. The biomedical data showed Ham experienced stress during acceleration and deceleration. </p>
<p>Jane Goodall, an expert in primate behaviour, said she had <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/animal-magic/2013/dec/16/ham-chimpanzee-hero-or-victim">never seen such terror</a> in a chimp’s expression. However, Ham was calm when weightless.</p>
<p>Ham survived the flight itself, but nearly drowned when the capsule started filling with water after its ocean splashdown. Fortunately, the helicopter recovery team reached him in time. Ham’s treat on emerging from the spacecraft was an apple, which he devoured eagerly.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379702/original/file-20210120-17-ubpa2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379702/original/file-20210120-17-ubpa2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=841&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379702/original/file-20210120-17-ubpa2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=841&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379702/original/file-20210120-17-ubpa2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=841&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379702/original/file-20210120-17-ubpa2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1057&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379702/original/file-20210120-17-ubpa2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1057&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379702/original/file-20210120-17-ubpa2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1057&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ham clasps the hand of a member of the recovery team after exit from the capsule.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">NASA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After his flight, Ham lived for 20 years by himself, in a zoo in Washington DC. People wrote him letters, and some were answered by zoo staff signed with Ham’s fingerprint. In 1980 he was sent to another zoo to live with a group of chimps. He died in 1983 at the age of 26. </p>
<p>A proposal to stuff and display his body was abandoned after an outcry. But he did undergo a postmortem. Ham’s flesh was stripped from his skeleton, cremated, and <a href="https://www.cnet.com/news/pilgrimage-to-the-grave-of-ham-the-astrochimp/">buried at the Space Hall of Fame</a> in Almogordo, New Mexico. The National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington DC retains his bones.</p>
<h2>Cyborg and simian, man and machine</h2>
<p>Ham sits at an interesting intersection of race, gender and species. “Ham” was an acronym for Holloman Aero Medical, but as American philosopher of science Donna Haraway <a href="https://www.lopezlabourdette.com/pdf/Promises_of_Monster_HARAWAY.doc">has pointed out</a>, “Ham’s name inevitably recalls Noah’s youngest and only black son”.</p>
<p>While the chimps were in training at the Holloman Airforce Base, women were actively excluded from spaceflight. Pilot Jerrie Cobb said she would <a href="https://theconversation.com/almost-90-of-astronauts-have-been-men-but-the-future-of-space-may-be-female-125644">take the place of one of the chimps</a> if it meant having a shot at space.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/almost-90-of-astronauts-have-been-men-but-the-future-of-space-may-be-female-125644">Almost 90% of astronauts have been men. But the future of space may be female</a>
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</p>
<hr>
<p>The astronauts of the 1960s Mercury program felt their masculinity threatened by performing the same tasks as chimps. In a scene from the 1983 film <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_Stuff_(book)">The Right Stuff</a>, based on Tom Wolfe’s book for which he did extensive interviews with the astronauts, one says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Well none of us wants to think that they’re going to send a monkey up to do a man’s work … what they’re trying to do to us is send a man up to do a monkey’s work. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the I Dream of Jeannie episode “Fly me to the Moon” (1967), astronauts Tony Nelson and Roger Healey train Sam the chimp for spaceflight. </p>
<p>They are envious that Sam gets to go to the Moon before them. “He can’t make any decisions, we might as well have a robot up there,” says Major Nelson. </p>
<p>This refers to an ongoing battle among both Soviet and US astronauts about how much autonomy they would have as pilots. On both sides of the Iron Curtain, being controlled by machines was felt to diminish masculinity. </p>
<p>Chimps in space also threatened the accepted evolutionary order. In some versions of the famous “March of Progress” illustration of human evolution, the first figure is a knuckle-walking ape and the last is an astronaut. Ham was leapfrogging to the front of the evolutionary queue in a Planet of the Apes-style interspecies competition.</p>
<p>Ham’s spaceflight made him more than animal, but still less than human. </p>
<p>A mere 10 weeks after Ham’s feat, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space when he orbited Earth on April 12. On November 26, Enos the chimp completed an orbit. </p>
<p>We don’t send animals into orbit any more as proxies for human experience. But there is one chimp still in space. The calls of a wild chimp <a href="https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/assets/audio/golden-record/chimpanzee.wav">were recorded</a> on the Voyager Golden Records, now heading out beyond the Solar system.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153644/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alice Gorman receives funding from the Australian Research Council to study human adaptations to space on the International Space Station. She is a member of the Advisory Council of the Space Industry Association of Australia.</span></em></p>The strange journey of Ham the chimpanzee from a rainforest in Cameroon to the edge of space.Alice Gorman, Associate Professor in Archaeology and Space Studies, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1497612020-11-19T15:03:33Z2020-11-19T15:03:33ZTo save wild chimpanzees, imagine their habitat is an electrical circuit<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370131/original/file-20201118-15-10iw40c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C7951%2C5304&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/on-back-common-chimpanzee-there-baby-1165386886">Marcel Derweduwen/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The chimpanzee is our closest living relative, and it could be <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/15933/129038584">facing extinction</a>. There were one million chimpanzees in 1900, but today, <a href="https://www.janegoodall.org.uk/chimpanzees/chimpanzee-central/15-chimpanzees/chimpanzee-central/22-state-of-the-wild-chimpanzee">300,000</a> at most are thought to remain in the wild.</p>
<p>Prime African rainforest habitat is being <a href="https://rainforests.mongabay.com/congo/deforestation.html">broken up</a> by loggers and poachers, and <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/scientists-examine-how-africas-rainforests-will-fare-as-the-climate-changes">dried out by climate change</a>. Habitat loss robs species of food sources and nesting sites, but it also prevents individuals moving between the remaining habitat, leaving populations isolated and in danger of inbreeding. To reverse the fragmenting of habitats, scientists often try to restore and expand <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/04/wildlife-overpasses-underpasses-make-animals-people-safer/">green corridors</a> of <a href="https://www.greencorridor.info/">fast-growing trees</a> between the remaining patches, to encourage animals to <a href="http://assets.cambridge.org/97805218/57062/excerpt/9780521857062_excerpt.pdf">keep moving and stay connected</a>.</p>
<p>Understanding how chimpanzee habitats linked up in the past can help scientists identify the priority areas for chimpanzee conservation today. But chimpanzees have the widest range of any great ape species. How can we spread our efforts efficiently to find these areas across the broad swathe of <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/c/chimpanzee/">rainforest, woodland and savanna</a> they occupy? In western Tanzania alone, chimpanzees range across 20,000 square kilometres. We could try to track their movements by fitting several apes with radio-tracking devices, but this would mean trapping and sedating lots of different animals.</p>
<p>Instead, we tried something a bit more innovative. In <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320720308740">a new study</a>, we used a concept from electrical engineering to spot connections between clumps of chimpanzee habitat that could be reinforced to help the species recover.</p>
<h2>Circuit theory for chimpanzees</h2>
<p>Let’s pretend you’re hovering above western Tanzania. But instead of seeing a vast landscape, imagine you’re looking at a circuit board. Imagine an electrical current is flowing between the different components before you. The chimpanzees are the electrons in that current, and they can pass more easily within bits of intact forest. Engineers describe parts of an electrical circuit where electrons can pass more easily as having a low resistance value. Meanwhile, there are parts of the circuit with a high resistance value which act to slow down the flow of electrons. In our landscape analogy, these are the areas where chimpanzee movement is slowed by barriers, such as roads and large rivers.</p>
<p>This is called a landscape connectivity model. It grades particular habitats visible in satellite images according to how well chimpanzees are likely to be able to traverse them, allowing us to map and predict connectivity between chimpanzee habitats over time. That’s important, as deforestation can <a href="https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/11/eaat2993">rapidly degrade suitable habitat</a>. Satellite images from 1973 to 2019 reveal how some forested areas with low resistance to animal movement have become more resistant as logging has continued.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368276/original/file-20201109-16-3bg0qx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An example grid square map depicting areas of high and low resistance to movement." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368276/original/file-20201109-16-3bg0qx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368276/original/file-20201109-16-3bg0qx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=182&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368276/original/file-20201109-16-3bg0qx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=182&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368276/original/file-20201109-16-3bg0qx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=182&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368276/original/file-20201109-16-3bg0qx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=228&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368276/original/file-20201109-16-3bg0qx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=228&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368276/original/file-20201109-16-3bg0qx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=228&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How species move through their environment is analogous to how electricity passes through a circuit.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1890/07-1861.1">McRae et al. 2008</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our model revealed a series of corridors connecting an 18,000 square kilometre ecosystem. These corridors appear to have become more resistant to chimpanzee journeys over time due to the destruction of 1,677 square kilometres of forest between 1973 and 2018. </p>
<p>The model also helped correct an old misconception. When 50,000 refugees from Burundi arrived in the region in 1973, a vast area of woodland was cut down so they could grow food. We assumed this had punched a hole in habitat that connected the northern and southern populations. But actually, by comparing maps from before and after the refugee settlement was established, we realised that the cleared forest was never likely to have been suitable chimpanzee habitat.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368277/original/file-20201109-13-f9l971.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A coloured map depicting areas of high connectivity between chimpanzee habitats in western Tanzania." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368277/original/file-20201109-13-f9l971.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368277/original/file-20201109-13-f9l971.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368277/original/file-20201109-13-f9l971.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368277/original/file-20201109-13-f9l971.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368277/original/file-20201109-13-f9l971.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368277/original/file-20201109-13-f9l971.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368277/original/file-20201109-13-f9l971.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The model showed suitable habitat corridors between northern and southern chimpanzee populations.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320720308740">Bonnin et al. (2020)</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Most importantly, our results identified priority areas for chimpanzee conservation. This is where conservationists and government institutions should channel investment and focus protection efforts, whether it’s restricting settlement expansion, increasing patrols and surveillance, or boosting community outreach and education.</p>
<p>Wildlife species are becoming increasingly isolated in landscapes that are dominated by humans, and it’s up to conservationists to discover how to reconnect their lonely patches of habitat. Our results show it can be done with just a fraction of the time and resources using landscape connectivity modelling. </p>
<p>The method has already been used to support the conservation of <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10980-016-0456-9">reptiles</a>, <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10980-017-0548-1">birds</a> and some <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10344-018-1241-7">small</a> and <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ddi.12164">large</a> mammals. Now, we’ve confirmed it can work for one of nature’s most behaviourally complex and wide-ranging species, the chimpanzee. As the accessibility and resolution of satellite imagery <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-54651453">improves</a>, we can use this method to help us make the right decisions at the critical moments, safeguarding the extraordinary biodiversity of our planet.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149761/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>To understand the barriers endangered species face when trying to traverse their habitat, it helps to think of their environment like an electrical circuit board.Noemie Bonnin, PhD Candidate in Conservation Biology, Liverpool John Moores UniversityAlexander Piel, Lecturer in Anthropology, University College London, UCLFiona Stewart, Lecturer in Wildlife Conservation, Liverpool John Moores UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1425992020-07-29T13:36:32Z2020-07-29T13:36:32ZChimpanzees once helped African rainforests recover from a major collapse<p>Most people probably think that the rainforest of central and west Africa, the second largest in the world, has been around for millions of years. However recent research suggests that it is mostly <a href="https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1bJrP_KzR0AIh4">just 2,000 or so years old</a>. The forest reached roughly its modern state following five centuries of regeneration after it was massively fragmented when the dry season suddenly became longer some 2,500 years ago. </p>
<p>This process was not linked to humans. The forest recovery was instead made possible by seed dispersers including chimpanzees, which helped spread the slower-growing rainforest tree species. However, dispersers such as chimpanzees are now threatened by deforestation and hunting, often for bushmeat. When combined with climate change, the resilience of the rainforests seems less guaranteed for the future. </p>
<p>I began thinking about natural processes in African forests back in 1993, when I was with my wife-to-be trying to follow wild chimpanzees next to <a href="https://www.janegoodall.org.uk/our-programmes/gombe-stream-research-centre">Jane Goodall’s famous group</a> at Gombe, in Tanzania. We were inspired by one of the directors of research at Gombe, <a href="http://pin.primate.wisc.edu/idp/idp/entry/377">Anthony Collins</a>, who suggested that the chimpanzees might be influencing the composition of the forest for their own nutritional needs, by what fruits they pooed out and where. A kind of “proto gardening”.</p>
<p>And then unexpectedly I had to leave the chimpanzees after I succeeded in getting a small grant to study past vegetation change using fossilised pollen, but in the Andes.</p>
<p>A few years later, I found myself giving lectures at Cambridge on human impacts over the past 10,000 years, and suddenly “returning” not only to the tropical rainforests of Africa, but their history. At the time, scientists thought humans were largely responsible for the collapse of the forests from 3,000 years ago. </p>
<p>The first few scientific papers I read used the abundance of pollen from the oil palm tree, preserved in the dated layers of lake muds, as an indicator of human activity. The oil palm is the same species often planted on a <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/12/palm-oil-destroying-rainforests-household-items/">massive industrial scale</a> in the tropics today, and since it’s always been an important source of nutrition for people in the region, scientists had assumed it indicated the presence of humans. </p>
<p>Shortly after, I began working in a <a href="http://www.isem.univ-montp2.fr/fr/">pollen laboratory</a> in Montpellier in southern France which had a long-term focus on African forest history. There, my simplified view of fossilised oil palm pollen equalling the presence of humans was totally overturned. </p>
<p>Rainforest history records were being amassed that indicated the near-decimation of rainforests <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/20.500.12413/8672/IDSB_33_1_10.1111-j.1759-5436.2002.tb00003.x.pdf?sequence=1">some 2,500 years ago</a> in the Congo Basin and across a huge expanse stretching from modern-day Senegal to Rwanda. As there was only very limited archaeological evidence of thinly dispersed human populations, humans could not have been responsible for the almost synchronous destruction on such a huge scale.</p>
<p><strong>Africa hosts the world’s second largest rainforest</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348401/original/file-20200720-102864-s7j20.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="map of showing the different ecosystems across Africa" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348401/original/file-20200720-102864-s7j20.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348401/original/file-20200720-102864-s7j20.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348401/original/file-20200720-102864-s7j20.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348401/original/file-20200720-102864-s7j20.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348401/original/file-20200720-102864-s7j20.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348401/original/file-20200720-102864-s7j20.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348401/original/file-20200720-102864-s7j20.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tropical rainforests (dark green) still cover much of central and west Africa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Vzb83 / wiki</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So what did cause these rainforests to collapse? It turns out the answer was not humans, but climate change.</p>
<p>In a paper recently published in the journal <a href="https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1bJrP_KzR0AIh4">Global Planetary Change</a>, my colleagues <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Pierre_Giresse">Pierre Giresse</a>, <a href="https://univ-montpellier.academia.edu/JeanMALEY">Jean Maley</a> and I use the many vegetation records available across central and west Africa to show that approximately 2,500 years ago, the length of the dry season increased. Rainforests became highly fragmented, and savanna vegetation – grasses, scattered shrubs and trees – moved in. </p>
<p>In the centuries that followed, the forests regenerated spontaneously, including with species such as the oil palm. The oil palm demands a lot of light and so thrives in open areas or in the gaps created in forests when the canopy opens up rather than in the dense centre. Thus it often acts as a “pioneer species” allowing the forest to regrow. </p>
<p>But the oil palm’s large seeds are too heavy to be blown in the wind. They therefore need to be dispersed in the poo of animals such as chimpanzees which are able to swallow the large seeds and for whom the bright orange flesh can be an <a href="https://bioone.org/journals/AMBIO-A-Journal-of-the-Human-Environment/volume-35/issue-3/0044-7447(2006)35%255b124:TIOLTR%255d2.0.CO%3B2/The-Importance-of-Local-Tree-Resources-around-Gombe-National-Park/10.1579/0044-7447(2006)35%255b124:TIOLTR%255d2.0.CO%3B2.short">important part of the diet</a>. And this is how chimps and other seed-dispersers played a crucial role in regenerating Africa’s rainforests.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348402/original/file-20200720-18366-bwh3c9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="bright orange oil palm fruit" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348402/original/file-20200720-18366-bwh3c9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348402/original/file-20200720-18366-bwh3c9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348402/original/file-20200720-18366-bwh3c9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348402/original/file-20200720-18366-bwh3c9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348402/original/file-20200720-18366-bwh3c9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348402/original/file-20200720-18366-bwh3c9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348402/original/file-20200720-18366-bwh3c9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Oil palm fruit swallowed and deposited in faeces by chimpanzee at Gombe National Park.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">D Mwacha A Collins / Jane Goodall Institute</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Seed dispersers under threat</h2>
<p>When we began this research, we could not see how relevant it would become during the current pandemic. Now climate change, deforestation and hunting are all heavily impacting those same forests. The bushmeat market is contributing to removing <a href="https://theconversation.com/canary-species-can-sing-songs-that-warn-of-ecosystem-collapse-64138">keystone species</a> such as chimpanzees. Without animals to move seeds around – especially the largest and heaviest seeds – the natural composition and regeneration of forests is threatened. </p>
<p>At the turn of the 20th century there were around 1 million chimpanzees, but today only an estimated <a href="https://www.janegoodall.org.uk/chimpanzees/chimpanzee-central/15-chimpanzees/chimpanzee-central/22-state-of-the-wild-chimpanzee">172,000-300,000 remain in the wild</a>. Chimps and other seed-dispersing species provide a valuable service and must be better protected in order to protect the forests themselves, and prevent further unforeseen impacts.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348403/original/file-20200720-31-8pg4f1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Cusano the chimpanzee clings to a branch" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348403/original/file-20200720-31-8pg4f1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348403/original/file-20200720-31-8pg4f1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348403/original/file-20200720-31-8pg4f1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348403/original/file-20200720-31-8pg4f1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348403/original/file-20200720-31-8pg4f1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348403/original/file-20200720-31-8pg4f1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348403/original/file-20200720-31-8pg4f1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cusano, an alpha male in Gombe, Tanzania, was among those who died in the 1996 respiratory outbreak.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alex Chepstow-Lusty</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For example, the transmission of diseases to humans has also been <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52529830">linked to the bushmeat trade</a>. And transmission is not necessarily one way. In June 1996, three years after my wife and I left the chimps at Mitumba in Gombe National Park, possibly up to half the group died within a few days of a <a href="https://www.academia.edu/15330525/The_importance_of_local_tree_resources_around_Gombe_National_Park_Western_Tanzania_Implications_for_humans_and_chimpanzees._Ambio._35_3_130-135">respiratory disease outbreak</a> that was likely transmitted to them by humans.</p>
<p>Perhaps there is a lot more resilience in these tropical forest ecosystems than we can predict. But without chimpanzees and other animals as dispersers, the emptier forests that may eventually grow back would be a sad replacement. Maybe we need to consider the true value of chimp poo, and those that produce it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/142599/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alex Chepstow-Lusty does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>But with chimps now endangered, we risk losing their forest-rebuilding abilities.Alex Chepstow-Lusty, Associate Researcher, Quaternary Palaeoenvironments Group, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1346922020-04-01T14:57:15Z2020-04-01T14:57:15ZHow zoos must change to keep great apes safe from coronavirus<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/324600/original/file-20200401-66130-4fvkl3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=197%2C125%2C5793%2C3862&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Western lowland gorilla in a zoo enclosure in Prague, Czech Republic.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/prague-czech-republic-september-11-2019-1512203753">Benislav/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Our closest living relatives are the six species of great ape: chimpanzees, bonobos, Western lowland gorillas, Eastern lowland gorillas, Bornean orangutans and Sumatran orangutans. All of them are endangered, or critically endangered, and at risk of becoming <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31034733">extinct in our lifetime</a>. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31034733">threats to their survival in the wild</a> should now be known. Their forest homes are at risk of destruction, they are poached for the illegal trade in wildlife and bush meat, and climate change threatens to disrupt their access to food and water. Perhaps less discussed, but no less lethal, is the risk posed by infections transmitted by humans. These are “zoonotic” diseases – those which can be passed from humans to animals and vice versa.</p>
<p>COVID-19 is <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-origins-genome-analysis-suggests-two-viruses-may-have-combined-134059">one such case</a>, and while much of our worries about zoonotic diseases centre on their risk of transmission from wild animals to humans, zoonotic diseases have decimated great ape populations. Diseases in great apes of probable human origin have been described <a href="https://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/120003238761/">since the 1960s</a>. </p>
<p>Great apes share about 98% of human DNA, and they also share susceptibility to several human pathogens. During the Ebola virus epidemic between 1994 and 2003 in Central Africa, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17010400">wildlife surveys</a> were carried out in two areas of Gabon, before and after the outbreak. Between the two surveys, gorilla and chimpanzee populations in the areas shrank by 90-98%. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/324602/original/file-20200401-66163-68rsjh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/324602/original/file-20200401-66163-68rsjh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/324602/original/file-20200401-66163-68rsjh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/324602/original/file-20200401-66163-68rsjh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/324602/original/file-20200401-66163-68rsjh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/324602/original/file-20200401-66163-68rsjh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/324602/original/file-20200401-66163-68rsjh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Most ape species are highly social, which helps diseases spread rapidly through populations.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/chimpanzee-family-112144970">LeonP/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>With the exception of orangutans, which are semi-solitary, it’s no surprise that infectious diseases such as Ebola can wipe out a large population of highly social Gabonese gorillas and chimpanzees – it is spread through direct contact with blood and body fluids. Like us, great apes mourn the loss of those within their close-knit groups. Chimpanzees <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/srep44091#ref-CR7">have been observed</a> using firm grass to remove debris from the teeth of deceased group members.</p>
<p>Zoos are where most people encounter great apes, and they play <a href="https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/izy.12181">a leading role in their conservation</a>, from captive breeding programmes to research and public awareness campaigns. But there are risks involved. In 2009, a respiratory disease broke out in a group of 30 chimpanzees housed at Chester Zoo. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23505710">The disease</a> had been transmitted from human visitors to the chimpanzees and, sadly, three apes died. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-experts-in-evolution-explain-why-social-distancing-feels-so-unnatural-134271">Coronavirus: experts in evolution explain why social distancing feels so unnatural</a>
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<p>It’s not just the close quarters of zoos where zoonotic disease transmission is possible. A <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6021434/">human coronavirus</a> was observed in a group of wild chimpanzees living in Tai National Park in Côte d'Ivoire between late December 2016 and early January 2017. It’s not known who transmitted the disease, but researchers working at the park believe poachers could have been responsible.</p>
<p>Although COVID-19 has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/24/coronavirus-poses-lethal-threat-to-great-apes-experts-warn">not yet been reported in great apes</a>, given the history of zoonotic diseases – especially their rapid spread and difficult containment – we should assume that transmission is likely and strict measures are needed to prevent it.</p>
<p>All UK zoos and safari parks are now closed, but once the pandemic slows down and they reopen, there will need to be lasting changes that limit contact and educate the public about zoonotic diseases and their threat to great apes.</p>
<h2>Saving apes from a distance</h2>
<p>Some zoos are testing their animal care staff for coronavirus and advising any who <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/coronavirus-at-the-zoo-social-distancing-with-gorillas.html">feel ill to stay at home</a>. Staff have been told to check their temperature regularly, wear face masks, and carry out deep cleaning of zoo enclosures. Some keepers have chosen to live on site and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/30/the-animals-arent-pleased-how-shut-uk-zoos-are-coping-under-coronavirus-lockdown">away from their families</a>. </p>
<p>Many zoos currently allow close encounters between visitors and captive apes, including feeding events, where people are encouraged to throw <a href="https://www.longleat.co.uk/ticket/gorilla-feeding-vip-experience">food into their enclosures</a>. In many zoos worldwide, visitors are invited to play the role of zoo keeper, which involves mucking out, preparing food, feeding animals and helping with training. </p>
<p>These practices that allow visitors close contact with great apes, including behind-the-scenes tours, will have to change. The latest guidance from the <a href="https://portals.iucn.org/library/node/45793">International Union for the Conservation of Nature</a> (IUCN) says the distance normally kept between people and great apes in zoos should increase from seven to ten metres. Anyone who has been ill should stay away from great ape enclosures for at least 14 days after they have recovered. It may be necessary to stop all close-up experiences with apes in the future, and use digital guidebooks and phone apps to educate the public about great apes and their conservation. </p>
<p>The good news is that people are likely to learn just as much about great apes this way, without the need for close encounters. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10645578.2012.660839">One study</a> compared the effects of different presentations to zoo visitors about the impact of palm oil on orangutans and their habitats, and found that 83% of visitors could recall key facts after a live presentation by staff.</p>
<p>COVID-19 could change a great deal about the relationship between humans and their closest living relatives. But we can still enjoy their presence and learn more about them while keeping a safe distance.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/134692/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lesley Elizabeth Craig does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>People can still learn a great deal about these mammals while keeping a safe distance.Lesley Elizabeth Craig, PhD Researcher, University of StirlingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1219322020-01-14T13:48:42Z2020-01-14T13:48:42ZBeing copycats might be key to being human<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309363/original/file-20200109-80144-17dxqav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C131%2C3736%2C2687&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Imitation is the sincerest form of being human?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/father-teaching-son-how-tie-like-747377575">Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Chimpanzees, human beings’ closest animal relatives, <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/8/chimps-humans-96-percent-the-same-gene-study-finds/">share up to 98% of our genes</a>. Their human-like hands and facial expressions can send uncanny shivers of self-recognition down the backs of zoo patrons.</p>
<p>Yet people and chimpanzees lead very different lives. <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/15933/129038584%23population">Fewer than 300,000 wild chimpanzees</a> live in a few forested corners of Africa today, while humans have colonized every corner of the globe, from the Arctic tundra to the Kalahari Desert. At <a href="https://theconversation.com/7-5-billion-and-counting-how-many-humans-can-the-earth-support-98797">more than 7 billion</a>, humans’ population dwarfs that of nearly all other mammals – despite our physical weaknesses.</p>
<p>What could account for our species’ incredible evolutionary successes? </p>
<p>One obvious answer is <a href="https://theconversation.com/your-big-brain-makes-you-human-count-your-neurons-when-you-count-your-blessings-127398">our big brains</a>. It could be that our raw intelligence gave us an unprecedented ability to think outside the box, innovating solutions to gnarly problems as people migrated across the globe. Think of “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3659388/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Martian</a>,” where Matt Damon, trapped alone in a research station on Mars, heroically “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BABM3EUo990">sciences</a>” his way out of certain death.</p>
<p>But a growing number of cognitive scientists and anthropologists are rejecting that explanation. These researchers think that, rather than making our living as innovators, human beings survive and thrive precisely because we don’t think for ourselves. Instead, people cope with challenging climates and ecological contexts by <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2015.08.005">carefully copying others</a> – especially those we respect. Instead of <em>Homo sapiens</em>, or “man the knower,” we’re really <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2003.06.004">Homo imitans</a></em>: “man the imitator.”</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JwwclyVYTkk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Chimps and children watch how to open a puzzle box.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Watching and learning</h2>
<p>In <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-004-0239-6">a famous study</a>, psychologists Victoria Horner and Andrew Whiten showed two groups of test subjects – children and chimpanzees – a mechanical box with a treat inside. In one condition, the box was opaque, while in the other it was transparent. The experimenters demonstrated how to open the box to retrieve a treat, but they also included the irrelevant step of tapping on the box with a stick.</p>
<p>Oddly, human children carefully copied all the steps to open the box, even when they could see that the stick had no practical effect. That is, they copied irrationally: Instead of doing only what was necessary to get their reward, children slavishly imitated every action they’d witnessed.</p>
<p>Of course, that study only included three- and four-year-olds. But additional research has showed that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2009.0069">older children and adults</a> are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1348/000712610X493115">even more likely</a> to mindlessly copy others’ actions, and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691618794921">young infants are less likely</a> to over-imitate – that is, to precisely copy even impractical actions.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309364/original/file-20200109-80159-s32mwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309364/original/file-20200109-80159-s32mwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309364/original/file-20200109-80159-s32mwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309364/original/file-20200109-80159-s32mwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309364/original/file-20200109-80159-s32mwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309364/original/file-20200109-80159-s32mwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309364/original/file-20200109-80159-s32mwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309364/original/file-20200109-80159-s32mwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Chimpanzees skip extraneous steps and just do what works, as when using a stick to extract termites to eat.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Auscape/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</span></span>
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<p>By contrast, chimpanzees in Horner and Whiten’s study only over-imitated in the opaque condition. In the transparent condition – where they saw that the stick was mechanically useless – they ignored that step entirely, merely opening the box with their hands. Other research has since <a href="https://doi.org/10.4000/primatologie.254">supported these findings</a>.</p>
<p>When it comes to copying, chimpanzees are more rational than human children or adults.</p>
<h2>The benefits of following without question</h2>
<p>Where does the seemingly irrational human preference for over-imitation come from? In his book “<a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691178431/the-secret-of-our-success">The Secret of Our Success</a>,” anthropologist Joseph Henrich points out that people around the world rely on technologies that are often <a href="https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-secret-of-our-success/">so complex that no one can learn them rationally</a>. Instead, people must learn them step by step, trusting in the wisdom of more experienced elders and peers.</p>
<p>For example, the best way to master making a bow is by observing successful hunters doing it, with the assumption that everything they do is important. As an inexperienced learner, you can’t yet judge which steps are actually relevant. So when your band’s best hunter waxes his bowstring with two fingers or touches his ear before drawing the string, you copy him. </p>
<p>The human propensity for over-imitation thus makes possible what anthropologists call <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/bjdp.12139">cumulative culture</a>: the long-term development of skills and technologies over generations. No single person might understand all the practical reasons behind each step to making a bow or carving a canoe, much less transforming rare earth minerals into iPhones. But as long as people copy with high fidelity, the technology gets transmitted.</p>
<p>Ritual and religion are also domains in which people carry out actions that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2015.08.002">aren’t connected in a tangible way with practical outcomes</a>. For example, a Catholic priest blesses wafers and wine for Communion by uttering a series of repetitive words and doing odd motions with his hands. One could be forgiven for wondering what on Earth these ritualistic acts have to do with eating bread, just as a chimpanzee can’t see any connection between tapping a stick and opening a box. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309365/original/file-20200109-80153-glrsaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309365/original/file-20200109-80153-glrsaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309365/original/file-20200109-80153-glrsaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309365/original/file-20200109-80153-glrsaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309365/original/file-20200109-80153-glrsaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309365/original/file-20200109-80153-glrsaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309365/original/file-20200109-80153-glrsaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309365/original/file-20200109-80153-glrsaq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Rituals bond groups together.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-Associated-Press-Domestic-News-New-York-/e7637a8aa426406eb02395701dbafee8/2/0">AP Photo</a></span>
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<p>But rituals have a hidden effect: They bond people to one another and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2015.08.002">demonstrate cultural affiliation</a>. For an enlightening negative example, consider a student who refuses to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Her action clearly telegraphs her rejection of authorities’ right to tell her how to behave. And as anthropologist Roy Rappaport <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/anthropology/social-and-cultural-anthropology/ritual-and-religion-making-humanity?format=PB">pointed out</a>, ritual participation is binary: Either you say the pledge or you don’t. This clarity makes it easily apparent who is or isn’t committed to the group.</p>
<h2>Surprise secret ingredient that makes us human</h2>
<p>In a broader sense, then, over-imitation helps enable much of what comprises <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12297">distinctively human culture</a>, which turns out to be much more complicated than mechanical cause and effect.</p>
<p>At heart, human beings are not brave, self-reliant innovators, but careful if savvy conformists. We perform and imitate apparently impractical actions because doing so is the key to learning complex cultural skills, and because rituals create and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12297">sustain the cultural identities and solidarity</a> we <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615607205">depend on for survival</a>. Indeed, copying others is a powerful way to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.76.6.893">establish social rapport</a>. For example, mimicking another’s body language can induce them to like and trust you more.</p>
<p>So the next time you hear someone arguing passionately that everyone should embrace nonconformity and avoid imitating others, you might chuckle a bit. We’re not chimpanzees, after all.</p>
<p>[ <em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121932/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Connor Wood receives funding from the John Templeton Foundation. </span></em></p>A quirk of psychology that affects the way people learn from others may have helped unlock the complicated technologies and rituals that human culture hinges on.Connor Wood, Visiting Researcher in Theology, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1261822020-01-05T18:50:17Z2020-01-05T18:50:17ZBefore you hit ‘share’ on that cute animal photo, consider the harm it can cause<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307049/original/file-20191216-123998-3wo5kz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Chimpanzees forced to interact with humans can develop stress and other health problems.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Limbani the chimpanzee has about 650,000 Instagram followers. In recent months the account has featured viral photos and videos of the captive young ape playing the guitar, bouncing on a trampoline and wearing a giant banana costume.</p>
<p>Fans are also offered real-life encounters with the chimp at a Miami facility, paying US$700 for a ten-minute session.</p>
<p>Experts, including renowned primatologist <a href="https://news.janegoodall.org/2019/04/25/inappropriate-videos-on-social-media-are-hurting-chimpanzees/">Dr Jane Goodall</a>, have raised <a href="http://primatesanctuaries.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Limbani-Chimp-Video-Letter-1.pdf">concerns about Limbani’s care</a>. They question why he is not in the company of other chimpanzees, and say his exposure to humans could cause stress and other health issues.</p>
<p>So before you click on or share wildlife content online, it’s worth considering how you might affect a species’ welfare and conservation in the wild.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/B5lCI3OjY8x","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<h2>Smiling chimps are actually stressed</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08927936.2018.1406197">Chimpanzees</a> are frequently depicted in greeting cards, advertisements, film, television and internet images. They are often clothed, in human-like poses and settings. These performing animals <a href="https://www.janegoodall.org.au/great-apes/#eluid6c5879d2">are usually taken from their mothers</a> as infants, physically disciplined in training, and can spend their retirement in poorly regulated roadside attractions or breeding facilities. </p>
<p>For example the chimpanzee, who appeared with Leonardo DiCaprio in <em>The Wolf of Wall Street</em> <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4451790/chance-the-chimp-who-starred-in-wolf-of-wall-street-with-leonardo-dicaprio-tethered-in-a-roadside-zoo-and-yanked-round-by-the-neck/">has reportedly</a> since been kept in a roadside zoo, dragged around by the neck and forced to perform circus tricks.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/yes-you-can-adopt-a-pet-as-a-christmas-gift-so-long-as-you-do-it-correctly-105286">Yes, you can adopt a pet as a Christmas gift – so long as you do it correctly</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Primates are complex social animals, and the trauma they suffer when forced to perform is often clear. <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781351243131/chapters/10.4324/9781351243131-12">Research has shown</a> the “cheeky chimp grins” we associate with happiness are actually a sign of fear or submission.</p>
<p>But it’s not just primates who are suffering. Earlier this year US banking giant JPMorgan Chase s<a href="https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/338072/jpmorgan-chase-pulls-elephant-ads.html">uspended an advertising campaign</a> featuring captive elephants. The move followed an outcry from conservationists, <a href="https://www.thedrum.com/news/2019/07/12/jp-morgan-axes-campaign-filmed-with-captive-elephants">who explained</a> that elephants are often trained “using harsh and cruel methods” to perform unnatural behaviours and interact directly with people. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307058/original/file-20191216-124004-6qmlep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307058/original/file-20191216-124004-6qmlep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307058/original/file-20191216-124004-6qmlep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307058/original/file-20191216-124004-6qmlep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307058/original/file-20191216-124004-6qmlep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307058/original/file-20191216-124004-6qmlep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307058/original/file-20191216-124004-6qmlep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trained captive elephants perform in Sri Lanka.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Endangered in the wild</h2>
<p>Images of wildlife in human-like poses and environments can also skew public perception about their status in the wild.</p>
<p>For example, the International Union for Conservation of Nature <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/15933/129038584">classifies chimpazees as endangered</a>. In the last century their numbers have decreased from some <a href="https://www.worldchimpanzeeday.org/">1-2 million to as few as 350,000.</a> </p>
<p>However research has shown that the prevalence of chimpanzees in media and entertainment can lull viewers into believing wild populations are thriving. This undermines both the need and urgency for in-situ conservation. </p>
<p>A 2008 article published in <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/319/5869/1487">Science</a> reported on the findings of two surveys where participants were asked to identify which of three great apes were endangered. In the first, 66% of respondents thought chimpanzees were endangered (compared with 95% for gorillas, and 91% for orangutans). In the second, 72% believed chimpanzees to be endangered (compared with 94% for gorillas and 92% for orangutans). </p>
<p>Participants in both studies said the prevalence of chimpanzees in television, advertisements and movies meant they must not be in jeopardy in the wild. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lKNHzhoI9Ss?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A PETA video objecting to a chimp appearing in the film Wolf of Wall Street.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Suitability as pets</h2>
<p>Images of animals in close proximity with humans also affects their perceived desirability as exotic pets. Such images include <a href="https://d31j74p4lpxrfp.cloudfront.net/sites/default/files/ca_-_en_files/amazon_selfies_report_-_canada.pdf">“wildlife selfies”</a> shared on social media by tourists, pet collectors and celebrities. </p>
<p>The demand for exotic pets drives the illicit trade in live animals. In Japan, unprecedented demand for otters as pets <a href="https://www.otterspecialistgroup.org/osg-newsite/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/otter-alert-vfinal-web-100-1.pdf">is likely fuelled by an increase</a> in the visibility of pet otters in social and mass media. The pet trade has been identified as <a href="https://d2ouvy59p0dg6k.cloudfront.net/downloads/otter_report_060618_1.pdf">a pressing threat to the survival of otters</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-it-ethical-to-keep-pets-and-other-animals-it-depends-on-where-you-keep-them-126422">Is it ethical to keep pets and other animals? It depends on where you keep them</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Social media provides an easy way for traffickers and buyers to connect. Over six weeks in 2017 in France, Germany, Russia and the UK, the <a href="https://d1jyxxz9imt9yb.cloudfront.net/resource/223/attachment/regular/disrupt-wildlife-cybercrime.pdf">International Fund for Animal Welfare</a> identified more than 11,000 protected wildlife specimens for sale via more than 5,000 advertisements and posts. They included live otters, tortoises, parrots, owls, primates and big cats.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/10/facebook-puts-ads-on-pages-illegally-selling-animal-parts.html">Facebook is also allegedly</a> profiting from advertisements on pages illicitly selling parts and derivatives of threatened animals, including elephant ivory, rhino horn and tiger teeth.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304198/original/file-20191128-176584-1pmlad4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304198/original/file-20191128-176584-1pmlad4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304198/original/file-20191128-176584-1pmlad4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304198/original/file-20191128-176584-1pmlad4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304198/original/file-20191128-176584-1pmlad4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304198/original/file-20191128-176584-1pmlad4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304198/original/file-20191128-176584-1pmlad4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Otter sold via Instagram in Indonesia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Instagram</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Slow progress</h2>
<p>Social media giants have gone some way to recognising the harmful impact of their wildlife content.</p>
<p>Facebook and Instagram are partners of the <a href="https://www.endwildlifetraffickingonline.org/">Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online</a> which aims to reduce wildlife trafficking online by 80% by 2020. Both platforms also banned the sale of animals in 2017 – however it is not well policed, and the advertisements persist. </p>
<p>In 2017, Instagram <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/12/wildlife-watch-instagram-selfie-tourism-animal-welfare-crime/">encouraged users</a> not to harm plants or animals in pursuit of a selfie, and consider the potential animal abuse behind photo opportunities with exotic animals.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/acts-new-animal-sentience-law-recognises-an-animals-psychological-pain-and-pleasure-and-may-lead-to-better-protections-124577">ACT's new animal sentience law recognises an animal's psychological pain and pleasure, and may lead to better protections</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>But there are <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/10/holding-social-media-companies-accountable-for-facilitating-illegal-wildlife-trade-commentary/">persistent claims</a> these measures aren’t proactive or effective enough. </p>
<p>There is cause for cautious optimism. Researchers and social media platforms are collaborating to develop <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-machine-learning-can-help-fight-illegal-wildlife-trade-on-social-media-115021">artificial intelligence to help in wildlife trafficking investigations</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46945302">facial recognition</a> technology is being used to track individual animals.</p>
<p>Social media users are also key in promoting respect and safety for wildlife. To find out more, you can access resources on <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshiels/2016/09/07/deadly-virtual-postcards-lead-poachers-to-rare-endangered-trophy-animals/#592c765e23ad">“responsible tagging”</a>, <a href="https://www.worldanimalprotection.us/wildlife-selfie-code">“wildlife selfie codes”</a>, <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/07/ethical-wildlife-photography/">ethically sourcing footage</a>, and <a href="https://www.wildcru.org/research/wildlife-tourism/">how to research wildlife attractions</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126182/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zara Bending is affiliated with the Jane Goodall Institute Australia as a Board Director. Her illegal wildlife trade research is conducted through the Centre for Environmental Law, Macquarie University.</span></em></p>Shareable online images of chimpanzees, elephants and other animals are threatening their conservation and welfare.Zara Bending, Associate, Centre for Environmental Law, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1236992019-10-02T10:58:04Z2019-10-02T10:58:04ZChimpanzees are being killed by poachers – researchers like us are on the frontline protecting them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294579/original/file-20190927-185375-1gbkngf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1504%2C999&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kila with her infant, Kitu.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Caroline Fryns/GMERC</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On a sunny day in early August 2019, screams broke the calm of a national park in East Africa. Researchers ran to find Kidman – <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/08/death-chimpanzee/595303/">an adult female chimpanzee – and her child</a> being attacked by the dogs of poachers. In their desperate attempt to save them, the researchers fought off the dogs and removed a spear that poachers had lodged in Kidman’s back. She died shortly after the researchers had arrived, her infant a few days later.</p>
<p>Primatologists around the world were in awe of the researchers’ heroic efforts, but we were also shocked that such a vicious attack could happen on the Ngogo apes of Kibale Forest in Uganda – one of the world’s best-known community of chimpanzees in one of Africa’s most famous national parks.</p>
<p>Less than two months later, tragedy struck again. On September 13, less than 1,000km south of Kibale Forest in the Issa Valley of Tanzania, researchers found another two chimpanzees being attacked by dogs. Kitu, a two-year old infant, was mauled by four dogs while her mother, Kila, fought another six. The <a href="http://gmerc.org/">Issa chimpanzees</a> live outside of national park boundaries and only became accustomed to human presence in 2018. </p>
<p>The researchers beat the dogs back, killing one and badly wounding the others. By the time the last dog limped away, Kila was bleeding badly and couldn’t stand. Kitu called despondently from a few trees away, but Kila didn’t look in her direction as she sat struggling to breathe. Eventually she recovered enough to stand and walk through the forest. Our team decided to stay with Kitu, monitoring the infant chimp, and assumed that Kila would return for her in time. They left her late in the day, with no sign of Kila.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294580/original/file-20190927-185390-iomxzt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294580/original/file-20190927-185390-iomxzt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294580/original/file-20190927-185390-iomxzt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294580/original/file-20190927-185390-iomxzt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294580/original/file-20190927-185390-iomxzt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294580/original/file-20190927-185390-iomxzt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294580/original/file-20190927-185390-iomxzt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kila was one of an increasing number of chimpanzees to be killed by poachers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Caroline Fryns/GMERC</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Like humans, infant chimpanzees nurse through the first years of their lives and rely on their mothers for transport and safety to show them what is safe to eat – and who is an ally and who an enemy. While chimpanzees <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0008901&type=printable">often adopt orphans in their community</a>, we knew Kitu was too young to survive long without Kila.</p>
<p>The next morning, the team found Kitu not far from where they had left her, having travelled in the same direction as her mother the previous day. She was on the ground and seemed to have slept there – something chimpanzees <a href="https://www.karger.com/Article/FullText/353172">rarely do when they live around predators</a>. They’ve never been <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ajp.22138">observed doing this at Issa</a>. She could only muster groans, too weak to call. She died a few hours after the researchers found her, less than 24 hours since the dog attack.</p>
<p>Chimpanzees led researchers to a feeding tree four days later, under which lay Kila, dead from her injuries.</p>
<h2>Scientists on the frontline</h2>
<p>Chimpanzees and their cultures are <a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/human-encroachment-threatens-chimpanzee-culture">under threat</a> across Africa. Their forest <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ddi.12005">habitats are being converted to farmland</a> while <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982208000171">human-transmitted diseases</a> proliferate and decimate populations. </p>
<p>Chimpanzees are also hunted for the <a href="http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/1200343/22589048/1367415794373/Afr_Prim_71_Hicks_et_al.pdf?token=H9FmdjsmGvyqrkk%252B53azxvEq1nA%253D">bushmeat trade</a> – likely the single most acute threat to their survival in the wild. At Ngogo and Issa, it’s probable that bushmeat hunters were the culprits. </p>
<p>Combined, these threats have pushed chimpanzees onto the IUCN red list of endangered species. In some parts of Africa, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/western-chimpanzees-have-declined-80-percent-over-past-25-years-180965334/">chimpanzee populations have declined by 80%</a> since 1990.</p>
<p>Scientists are often forced into being advocates for the species they study – those who study primates often more so than others, simply because we share so much in common with our evolutionary cousins. To protect chimpanzees from the many threats to their survival, we often risk our own safety. Researchers at Issa advise <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/oryx/article/effects-of-antipoaching-patrols-on-the-distribution-of-large-mammals-in-tai-national-park-cote-divoire/D3B17F719DF523AC81C14301C3C714B9">armed patrols</a> and support these teams when in the forest.</p>
<p>Though we couldn’t save Kitu and Kila, the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2351989414000845">mere presence of researchers here helps protect chimpanzees</a>. Besides collecting data on them, we monitor the forest for other wildlife, including leopards and antelope. We keep an eye on threats such as illegal logging and sponsor Tanzanian postgraduate students – the next generation of chimpanzee researchers. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294581/original/file-20190927-185383-f2br8d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294581/original/file-20190927-185383-f2br8d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294581/original/file-20190927-185383-f2br8d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294581/original/file-20190927-185383-f2br8d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294581/original/file-20190927-185383-f2br8d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294581/original/file-20190927-185383-f2br8d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294581/original/file-20190927-185383-f2br8d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kitu was only two years old when she died. Protecting future generations of chimpanzees will take a coordinated effort by governments and researchers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Caroline Fryns/GMERC</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In all this, we work closely with the district government, and the Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute (TAWIRI), a government research body that oversees all research in the country. TAWIRI expends tremendous effort to protect Tanzania’s chimpanzees, recently publishing a <a href="http://tawiri.or.tz/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Tanzania-Chimpanzee-Conservation-Action-Plan-2018.pdf">national conservation action plan</a>. </p>
<p>We were too late to save Kila and Kitu, but as great ape scientists and conservationists, we’re determined to protect their community. If you would like to help us, please consider contributing to our cause. Our project - GMERC - has a registered non-profit sister group based in California that can receive your <a href="http://gmerc.org/support">support</a> – every dollar, euro, and pound which will go directly to facilitating anti-poaching patrols. Only with increased protection can we minimise the threat imposed by poaching and protect Issa’s chimpanzees.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123699/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Piel receives funding from the Arcus Foundation, Jane Goodall Institute, and United State Fish and Wildlife Great Ape Fund. With Fiona Stewart, he directs GMERC, a Tanzania-based organisation that oversees research and conservation of Tanzania's chimpanzees. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fiona Stewart receives funding from the Arcus Foundation, Jane Goodall Institute, and United State Fish and Wildlife Great Ape Fund. Together with Alex Piel, she directs GMERC, a Tanzania-based organisation that oversees research and conservation of Tanzania's chimpanzees.</span></em></p>Attacks on chimpanzees are happening at an alarming rate, within and outside national parks.Alexander Piel, Reader in Primate Ecology, Liverpool John Moores UniversityFiona Stewart, Visiting Lecturer in Primatology, Liverpool John Moores UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1233182019-09-12T15:29:28Z2019-09-12T15:29:28Z‘Ancestors’: a new game provides insights into how the first humans evolved<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291975/original/file-20190911-190026-7zjhlh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C44%2C9989%2C5174&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Panache Digital</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As an academic scientist who researches <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2014.0064">human evolution</a>, I was surprised to receive an email one day from <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2493380/">Patrice Désilets</a>, a top computer game designer responsible for the first two Assassin’s Creed games. He was working on a new game based on our early evolution in Africa, he said, and was using my book <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-cradle-of-humanity-9780198704522?cc=gb&lang=en&">The Cradle of Humanity</a> as one of the key reference texts. Would I like to be involved?</p>
<p>Patrice invited my family to Montreal in early 2018 to play and comment on an early beta version. He was greatly amused that my <a href="https://theconversation.com/theyll-give-me-a-detention-but-itll-be-worth-it-a-climate-scientist-interviews-his-climate-striking-daughter-117689">youngest daughter</a> is a true gamer while I always toggle the wrong way (I’m sorry but … up should mean up). But despite my dodgy controlling, I enjoyed a stunning game with a unique subject matter, and one which I believe offers some key insights into human evolution.</p>
<p>The newly released <a href="https://ancestorsgame.com/en/">Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey</a> is an open world survival game where you control a group of “hominins” – our first ancestors – and explore, expand, and lock in new knowledge so your “clan” can evolve. It takes the players from 10m years ago, and the common ancestor of both chimpanzee and hominins, to 2m years ago, when you can play as an early version of <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/345/6192/1236828"><em>Homo erectus</em></a>. The aim of the game is ultimately to evolve to the point when humans began to <a href="https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/homo-erectus-our-ancient-ancestor.html">leave Africa</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292262/original/file-20190912-190031-k69b0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292262/original/file-20190912-190031-k69b0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292262/original/file-20190912-190031-k69b0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292262/original/file-20190912-190031-k69b0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292262/original/file-20190912-190031-k69b0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292262/original/file-20190912-190031-k69b0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292262/original/file-20190912-190031-k69b0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292262/original/file-20190912-190031-k69b0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Your great (x250,000) grandparent?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Panache Digital</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>My own research has shown how <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-a-changing-landscape-and-climate-shaped-early-humans-19862">climate changes in Africa prompted waves of human evolution</a>, so I was delighted to see the landscape in the game is particularly detailed. From the dense forest where our ancestors originated to the drier open plains you can almost smell Africa. The game also shows us how dangerous life would have been because everything wants to kill you – whether it is <a href="https://australianmuseum.net.au/learn/science/human-evolution/how-do-we-know-how-they-died/">leopards</a>, giant snakes, <a href="http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/fossils/taung-child">eagles</a>, crocodiles, hippos, hyenas, or a poisonous plant you try to eat. </p>
<p>Even today, on safari or doing fieldwork, in these parts of Africa you can feel the continual threat of the environment around you. This is because humans are really weak when compared with other animals: we are not particularly fast and we have no natural weapons. Teamwork and technology are what allow us to thrive today, and the game tracks the start of our evolution from prey to the <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/298/298037/the-human-planet/9780241280881.html">world’s apex predator</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291977/original/file-20190911-190021-oe6fng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291977/original/file-20190911-190021-oe6fng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291977/original/file-20190911-190021-oe6fng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291977/original/file-20190911-190021-oe6fng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291977/original/file-20190911-190021-oe6fng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291977/original/file-20190911-190021-oe6fng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291977/original/file-20190911-190021-oe6fng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291977/original/file-20190911-190021-oe6fng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Our ancestors gradually moved from forests to savannah and beyond.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Panache Digital</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is where the novelty of the game comes in. For instance, it has a very cool mechanism of locking new knowledge into your synapses. All your exploring and encounters give you experiences that can be made into new skills – evolutionary changes such as tool making and team work, both essential to deal with nasty predators. But these new skills can only be locked into your clan’s “DNA” if you complete the task with a baby or an infant with you, which mimics the passing of knowledge between generations.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292267/original/file-20190912-190007-p4hy8p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292267/original/file-20190912-190007-p4hy8p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292267/original/file-20190912-190007-p4hy8p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292267/original/file-20190912-190007-p4hy8p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292267/original/file-20190912-190007-p4hy8p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292267/original/file-20190912-190007-p4hy8p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292267/original/file-20190912-190007-p4hy8p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292267/original/file-20190912-190007-p4hy8p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">As your clan evolves, your brain fills up with new information.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Panache Digital</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some early reviewers have complained it is hard to understand how to evolve. There are minimal instructions, the game is not linear, players are driven by their own curiosity, and different players will prioritise different skills and abilities. For example you can “win” the game and leave Africa without ever evolving to walk upright if you decide to prioritise other skills. But again, this is just like real life evolution, which has no direction and is driven by random events and encounters.</p>
<p>However, there are already excellent walkthroughs available online so, to some extent, this gaming issue has been sidestepped by a unique human characteristic – teaching – and an innovation that came much more recently: language. But I really hope most players use these sparingly, as the joy of the game comes from discovering new things for yourself.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292041/original/file-20190911-190044-1ycgmqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292041/original/file-20190911-190044-1ycgmqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292041/original/file-20190911-190044-1ycgmqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292041/original/file-20190911-190044-1ycgmqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292041/original/file-20190911-190044-1ycgmqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292041/original/file-20190911-190044-1ycgmqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292041/original/file-20190911-190044-1ycgmqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292041/original/file-20190911-190044-1ycgmqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">To take on a rhino, you’ll need teamwork and tools.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Panache Digital</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One major reviewer complaint is that if your clan dies you lose everything – unlike many other computer games, there is no reboot. Patrice again put this in because it is exactly like reality. Evolution is full of dead-ends and new species which simply died out, such as the diminutive <em>Homo nadedi</em> in South Africa or <em>Homo floresiensis</em> in Indonesia, or the Neanderthals who only survive in European and Asian DNA due to briefly interbreeding with <em>Homo sapiens</em> as we emerged from Africa.</p>
<p>For me, Ancestors provides a new and novel way of envisaging the past landscapes of Africa which our ancestors had to survive and thrive within. It portrays the danger of that landscape and how key attributes such as tool making and team work helped us cease to be prey and to become a feared predator that regularly took down giant mammoth after leaving Africa. It also provides a unique way of engaging a totally different audience in the excitement and intrigue of human evolution.</p>
<p>For those of us who research early human evolution, this is an exciting moment, a game that illustrates all our research that anyone can play. I’m now looking forward to Ancestors 2, as once proto-humans have left Africa the real fun begins.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123318/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Maslin is a Founding Director of Rezatec Ltd, Director of The London NERC Doctoral Training Partnership and a member of Cheltenham Science Festival Advisory Committee. He is an unpaid member of the Sopra-Steria CSR Board. He has received grant funding in the past from the NERC, EPSRC, ESRC, Royal Society, DIFD, DECC, FCO, Innovate UK, Carbon Trust, UK Space Agency, European Space Agency, Wellcome Trust, Leverhulme Trust and British Council. He has received research funding in the past from The Lancet, Laithwaites, Seventh Generation, Channel 4, JLT Re, WWF, Hermes, CAFOD and Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. </span></em></p>As a human evolution researcher, I was very excited to work with the creator of the Assassin’s Creed games.Mark Maslin, Professor of Earth System Science, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1226782019-09-05T20:47:32Z2019-09-05T20:47:32ZCan we really know what animals are thinking?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290710/original/file-20190903-175663-lqb3z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=48%2C0%2C5422%2C3603&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Animal thought does not have the structure of human language.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sarah, “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/09/opinion/chimpanzee-sarah.html">the world’s smartest chimp</a>,” <a href="https://chimphaven.org/chimp-blog/sarah-anne/">died in July 2019</a>, just before her 60th birthday. For the majority of her life she served as a research subject, providing scientists with a window into the thoughts of homo sapiens’ nearest living relative. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290746/original/file-20190903-175700-xg3tyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290746/original/file-20190903-175700-xg3tyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290746/original/file-20190903-175700-xg3tyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290746/original/file-20190903-175700-xg3tyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290746/original/file-20190903-175700-xg3tyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290746/original/file-20190903-175700-xg3tyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290746/original/file-20190903-175700-xg3tyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290746/original/file-20190903-175700-xg3tyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Illustration (by T. W. Wood) of a chimpanzee, disappointed and sulky, from Charles Darwin’s <em>The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals</em> (1872).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/hbjgkjnj">Wellcome Collection</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sarah’s death provides an opportunity to reflect on a foundational question: can we <em>really</em> know what non-human animals are thinking? Drawing on my background as a philosopher, I argue that the answer is no. There are principled limitations to our ability to understand animal thought.</p>
<h2>Animal thought</h2>
<p>There is little doubt that animals think. Their behaviour is too sophisticated to suppose otherwise. But it is awfully difficult to say precisely what animals think. Our human language seems unsuited to express their thoughts. </p>
<p>Sarah exemplified this puzzle. In one famous study, she reliably <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00076512">chose the correct item to complete a sequence of actions</a>. When shown a person struggling to reach some bananas, she chose a stick rather than a key. When shown a person stuck in a cage, she chose the key over the stick. </p>
<p>This led the study’s researchers to conclude that Sarah had a “theory of mind,” complete with the concepts intention, belief and knowledge. But other researchers immediately objected. They doubted that our human concepts accurately captured Sarah’s perspective. Although hundreds of additional studies have been conducted in the intervening decades, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12394">disagreement still reigns about how to properly characterize chimpanzees’ mental concepts</a>.</p>
<p>The difficulty characterizing animals’ thoughts does not stem from their inability to use language. After <a href="https://www.abebooks.com/MIND-APE-Premack-David-Ann-James/21359095186/bd">Sarah was taught a rudimentary language</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2012.670922">the puzzle of what she was thinking simply transformed into the puzzle of what her words meant</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NBFBbFcixRY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">BBC Earth: Compiling a chimpanzee dictionary.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Words and meanings</h2>
<p>As it turns out, the problem of assigning meanings to words was <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/philosophy-of-language">the guiding obsession of philosophy in the 20th century</a>. Among others, it occupied W.V.O. Quine, arguably <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/quine/">the most influential philosopher of that century’s second half</a>. </p>
<p>A Harvard professor, Quine is famous for imagining what it would take to translate a foreign language — a project he called <a href="http://doi.org/10.4324/9780415249126-U046-1">radical translation</a>. Ultimately, Quine concluded that there would always be multiple equally good translations. As a result, we could never precisely characterize the meaning of the language’s words. But Quine also noted that radical translation was constrained by the structure of language. </p>
<p>Quine imagined a foreign language completely unrelated to any human language, but here, I’ll use German for illustration. Suppose a speaker of the foreign language utters the sentence: “<em>Schnee ist weiss</em>.” Her friends smile and nod, accepting the sentence as true. Unfortunately, that doesn’t tell you very much about what the sentence means. There are lots of truths and the sentence could refer to any one of them. </p>
<p>But suppose there are other sentences that the foreign speakers accept (“<em>Schnee ist kalt</em>,” “<em>Milch ist weiss</em>,” etc.) and reject (“<em>Schnee ist nicht weiss</em>,” “<em>Schnee ist rot</em>,” etc.), sometimes depending on the circumstances (for example, they accept “<em>Schnee</em>!” only when snow is present). Because you now have more evidence and the same words pop up in different sentences, your hypotheses will be more tightly constrained. You can make an educated guess about what “<em>Schnee ist weiss</em>” means. </p>
<p>This suggests a general lesson: insofar as we can translate the sentences of one language into the sentences of another, that is largely because we can translate the words of one language into the words of another.</p>
<p>But now imagine a language with a structure fundamentally unlike that of any human language. How would we translate it? If translating sentences requires translating words, but its “words” don’t map onto our words, we wouldn’t be able to map its sentences onto our own. We wouldn’t know what its sentences mean.</p>
<h2>Unknown grammars</h2>
<p>The thoughts of animals are like the sentences of an unfamiliar language. They are composed from parts in a way that is completely unlike the way that our language is composed from words. As a result, there are no elements in the thoughts of animals that match our words and so there is no precise way to translate their thoughts into our sentences.</p>
<p>An analogy can make this argument more concrete. </p>
<p>What is the correct translation of the Mona Lisa? If your response is that this is an ill-posed question because the Mona Lisa is a painting and paintings can’t be translated into sentences, well… that’s exactly my point. Paintings are composed of colours on a canvas, not from words. So if Quine is right that any halfway decent translation requires matching words to words, we shouldn’t expect paintings to translate into sentences. </p>
<p>But does the Mona Lisa really resist translation? We might try a coarse description such as, “The painting depicts a woman, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mona-Lisa-painting">Lisa del Giocondo</a>, smirking slyly.” The problem is that there are ever so many ways to smirk slyly, and the Mona Lisa has just one of them. To capture her smile, we’ll need more detail. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290740/original/file-20190903-175663-115ifo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290740/original/file-20190903-175663-115ifo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290740/original/file-20190903-175663-115ifo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290740/original/file-20190903-175663-115ifo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290740/original/file-20190903-175663-115ifo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290740/original/file-20190903-175663-115ifo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290740/original/file-20190903-175663-115ifo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290740/original/file-20190903-175663-115ifo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Breaking down Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa into pixels leads to a reproduction, but not a translation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So, we might try breaking the painting down into thousands of coloured pixels and creating a micro description such as “red at location 1; blue at location 2; ….” But that approach confuses instructions for reproduction with a translation.</p>
<p>By comparison, I could provide instructions for reproducing the content on the front page of today’s <em>New York Times</em>: “First press the T key, then the H key, then the E key, … .” But these instructions would say something very different from the content of the page. They would be about what buttons should be pressed, not about income inequality, Trump’s latest tweets or how to secure your preschooler’s admission into one of Manhattan’s elite kindergartens. Likewise, the Mona Lisa depicts a smiling woman, not a collection of coloured pixels. So the micro description doesn’t yield a translation.</p>
<h2>Nature of thought</h2>
<p>My suggestion, then, is that trying to characterize animal thought is like trying to describe the Mona Lisa. Approximations are possible, but precision is not.</p>
<p>The analogy to the Mona Lisa shouldn’t be taken literally. The idea is not that animals “think in pictures,” but simply that they do not think in human-like sentences. After all, even those animals, such as Sarah, who manage to laboriously learn rudimentary languages never grasp the rich recursive syntax that three-year-old humans effortlessly master. </p>
<p>Despite having considerable evidence that Sarah and other animals think, we are in the awkward position of being unable to say precisely what they think. Their thoughts are structured too differently from our language. </p>
<p>[ <em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/ca/newsletters?utm_source=TCCA&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/122678/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jacob Beck receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Vision: Science to Applications Program, thanks in part to funding from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund.</span></em></p>Can we really know what animals think? A philosopher argues that we can’t, not with any precision.Jacob Beck, Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, York University, CanadaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1222782019-08-22T14:45:30Z2019-08-22T14:45:30ZKeeping monkeys as pets is extraordinarily cruel – a ban is long overdue<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/289079/original/file-20190822-170956-4coidw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4416%2C3305&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Even smaller primates like the squirrel monkey need far more room than any home can provide.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/squirrel-monkey-home-pet-not-wildlife-758676133?src=2E6KvTrmCUXRcEAc1IBQSA-1-2">Ksenia Lev/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Most people will have seen at least one headline over the last couple of years describing animal attacks on humans. This needn’t include the elephant from a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-45671930">Zimbabwe National Park</a> that trampled a tourist or the <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/zookeeper-mend-tiger-attack-kansas-zoo/story?id=62552198">Sumatran tiger</a> that killed a keeper who entered his zoo enclosure in Birmingham. There are numerous examples of attacks by wild pets on their owners, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/world/americas/17iht-chimp.1.20241928.html">often whom they have known for years</a>. </p>
<p>The pet, bottle fed from birth, having grown up in someone’s home like a child, suddenly “snaps” and causes major harm to a human family member, to the shock of both the public and the press. More often than not, <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2003/09/news-monkeys-primates-pets-trade-ethics/">these incidents</a> involve pet primates – monkeys and apes – that have been purchased as one would any dog or cat. The problem is that dogs and cats are domesticated animals but primates are not.</p>
<p>Primates are a diverse group of over 250 species that live across five continents but are most commonly found in the tropics, from Uruguay to Uganda and Venezuela to Vietnam. They are wild, and attempts to domesticate them result in a mentally disturbed animal that no amount of training, beating or adoring will ever reverse.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/289076/original/file-20190822-170910-1krnt6d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/289076/original/file-20190822-170910-1krnt6d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289076/original/file-20190822-170910-1krnt6d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289076/original/file-20190822-170910-1krnt6d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289076/original/file-20190822-170910-1krnt6d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289076/original/file-20190822-170910-1krnt6d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289076/original/file-20190822-170910-1krnt6d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Primates are our closest evolutionary relatives and live mostly in tropical regions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/set-primates-isolated-on-white-background-1036857436?src=KC0VtBu-bBwyWZDJSEknAA-1-4">Iakov Filimonov/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are an estimated 5,000 primate pets currently in UK households and a growing illicit trade in <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/reference/exotic-pet-trade/">wild-caught animals</a>. In response to this growing problem, the Labour Party <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/19/labour-commits-to-total-ban-on-keeping-monkeys-as-pets">has recently announced</a> it would make training or keeping primates in homes illegal.</p>
<p>It’s a wonder that a political party even has to take this stance, although the debate <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10888700802536483">is not a new one</a>. The evidence that keeping pet primates is unsafe for the animals and their owners <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1055937X00800298">is overwhelming</a>.</p>
<h2>A long way from home</h2>
<p>Matching the living conditions of a wild primate is impossible in the UK. Primates need nutrition, light, temperature and humidity that are consistent with the tropics not British households. A mismatch in any of these conditions in a captive primate’s environment can cause <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1002/ajp.10108">health issues</a>, including vitamin and mineral deficiencies, respiratory infections and skin diseases.</p>
<p>Some primates, like the chimpanzee, are used to roaming across areas of up to 100 square kilometres in the wild. Even the very smallest species, like the common marmoset, have evolved to range across thousands of square metres. Confining large animals to small spaces <a href="https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1017/S1367943005002283">impairs their development</a>.</p>
<p>Like humans, primates are social creatures. But most people only want a single monkey for a pet, not an entire troop. So not only do primate pets suffer physically, they’re also socially deprived. We know from <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC285801/pdf/pnas00159-0105.pdf">early experimental work</a> that isolating these animals from their group causes profound social problems. In most cases, <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/68/7/1534.full.pdf">normal social behaviour</a> can’t be recovered in pets that are later released. Human owners of especially young pet monkeys cripple the animals for life by removing them from their natural surroundings.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/289077/original/file-20190822-170931-1te08zt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/289077/original/file-20190822-170931-1te08zt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289077/original/file-20190822-170931-1te08zt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289077/original/file-20190822-170931-1te08zt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289077/original/file-20190822-170931-1te08zt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289077/original/file-20190822-170931-1te08zt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289077/original/file-20190822-170931-1te08zt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Primates are gregarious by nature and need social connection to other primates.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">P. Gagneux/GMERC</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The health and safety of the human owner is also at risk in these situations. Most new infectious diseases that scientists discover are <a href="https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/13/1/06-0480_article">zoonotic</a>, which means they’re transmitted from wildlife to humans. More often than not, we don’t know where the disease originates.</p>
<p>The most common of these is Ebola, the haemorrhagic fever that periodically rears its hideous head and spreads rapidly throughout central Africa and beyond, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/pauline-cafferkey-uk-ebola-nurse-survive-virus-sierra-leone-return-closure-a7679866.html">even recently reaching the UK</a>. You only have to read up on the <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/ebola-outbreak-spreads-remote-militia-controlled-territory-democratic/story?id=65074296">current Ebola outbreak</a> and especially the <a href="https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ebola-virus-disease">early symptoms</a> to want to keep your distance from any wildlife that might harbour it. <a href="https://www.healthline.com/health-news/tarzan-monkeys-spreading-herpes-virus-florida#1">Rhesus monkeys also carry</a> a strain of herpes B virus that can be fatal in humans.</p>
<p>Then there are the unprovoked attacks. It’s tempting to think that loyalty trumps instinct and any primate raised with the love and devotion of a caretaker would reciprocate those sentiments in later life. This may be the case with domestic animals but not wild ones.</p>
<p>Pet owners underestimate the influence of millions of years of evolution. Adolescence, male aggression and female competition are natural and ingrained tendencies of wild animals that no amount of living with humans can erase. Failure to acknowledge or anticipate them is what often leads to these attacks, but such events are really just the animals exhibiting natural behaviour.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/stop-portraying-wild-animals-as-cuddly-companions-and-potential-pets-57996">Stop portraying wild animals as cuddly companions (and potential pets)</a>
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<p>Despite the good intentions of many pet owners, it’s nothing short of cruel to imprison primates in homes that are simply unfit for their living in nearly every regard. The Labour Party should be applauded for taking such a resolute stance.</p>
<p>Some will argue that outlawing the ownership of pet primates will only drive the industry underground, immunising it from the rules that currently govern acceptable conditions. But this logic could apply to any illegal behaviour, from kidnapping to owning guns. Surely, just because these things persist, it doesn’t mean we should legalise and attempt to regulate them.</p>
<p>The world’s remaining wild primates <a href="https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/1/e1600946">face extinction</a> wherever they live naturally. Those who love primates enough to want to own them can support them by any number of more ethical and safe options, from supporting conservation work in the wild to volunteering at zoos and sanctuaries. </p>
<p>Educating people is what will protect these animals and also the humans that care about them. We still have an enormous amount to learn about our closest relatives. But Labour’s policy of outlawing pet primates is an important step towards reducing an otherwise harmful, if well-intended human threat to wild primates.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/122278/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Piel is the director of GMERC, LTD, a Tanzania-based research and conservation group that studies wild primates. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fiona Stewart is a co-director of GMERC, a Tanzania-based research and conservation group that studies wild primates</span></em></p>The way of life primates have evolved to live cannot be replicated in a human home.Alexander Piel, Reader in Primate Ecology, Liverpool John Moores UniversityFiona Stewart, Visiting Lecturer in Primatology, Liverpool John Moores UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1215842019-08-13T12:16:22Z2019-08-13T12:16:22ZChimpanzees’ working memory is remarkably similar to our own<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287209/original/file-20190807-144847-5o9df4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Chimpanzees are one of our closest relatives</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sharon Morris/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Working memory is central to our mental lives. It allows us to keep track of a series of previous events or actions. For instance, we use it to add up the cost of our shopping or to remember the beginning of this sentence at its end. Some scientists <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/147470490800600413">argue</a> that, compared to other animals, it is particularly developed in humans. But how do chimpanzees, one of our closest relatives, compare? </p>
<p>Along with other researchers from the University of St Andrews, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, and the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, I set out to answer this question.</p>
<p>Previous studies <a href="https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(07)02088-X">showed</a> that chimpanzees have excellent short-term and long-term memory abilities. But, so far, little is known about their working memory abilities. </p>
<p>Working memory <a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143750">allows us</a> not only to keep something in mind for a few seconds, but also to manipulate information and update the information we have. It’s an <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/110/Supplement_2/10371">attention demanding</a> process and so if we get distracted, we often forget what we kept in mind just a moment ago. Only information held in working memory can be stored in long-term memory, where it can be held indefinitely. These different stages of human memory act like a filter, helping us to store information without being flooded. </p>
<p>Working memory has been repeatedly invoked as one of the key aspects that separate humans from their closest living relatives. But <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2019.0715">our study</a> provides evidence that chimpanzees possess similar working memory abilities to humans. They’re able to perform at a level comparable to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1166208?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">seven-year-old children</a> in a working memory task that requires them to constantly update their memory. </p>
<p>These findings are contrary to <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/147470490800600413">previous claims</a> which said that chimpanzees’ working memory capacity is fundamentally different to our own. </p>
<h2>Testing the apes</h2>
<p>Standard working memory tasks for people often means they have to continuously update their working memory. So to test the working memory of chimpanzees, we set 13 zoo chimpanzees a task in which they could search for food in a number of small, opaque boxes. The chimpanzees were familiar with this type of task and could choose whether they wanted to participate or not. </p>
<p>The chimpanzees first watched how pieces of food were hidden in all of these boxes. They then started to search for the food items by pointing at the boxes one by one. If a chosen box contained food, the chimpanzees received this food reward and the now empty box was then placed back in between the other boxes. </p>
<p>After each choice, the boxes were covered with a screen for 15 seconds. This prevented the chimpanzees from visually tracking the boxes that still contained food. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287302/original/file-20190808-144873-e35zqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287302/original/file-20190808-144873-e35zqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=326&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287302/original/file-20190808-144873-e35zqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=326&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287302/original/file-20190808-144873-e35zqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=326&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287302/original/file-20190808-144873-e35zqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287302/original/file-20190808-144873-e35zqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287302/original/file-20190808-144873-e35zqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>The chimpanzees would have to remember which box they checked. After each choice they would have to update their memory. Only if they managed to continuously keep in mind which boxes they had already chosen, and which boxes still contained food, would they be able to retrieve all of the food items within the number of choices that they got. </p>
<p>It’s this memory updating requirement that makes this task different from short-term memory tasks.</p>
<p>Depending on the chimpanzees’ ability to avoid revisiting a box they had already chosen, we increased the difficulty of the task by increasing the number of boxes. </p>
<p>During this task, we examined the chimpanzees’ working memory capacity and how they used the box’s location and its features to memorise their previous choices. We tested this by presenting chimpanzees with a version of the task with identical-looking boxes, and a version in which we shuffled different-looking boxes between each search.</p>
<p>The study revealed key similarities between chimpanzee and human working memory. The best-performing chimpanzees remembered at least four items; one young chimpanzee remembered more than seven. They used both the appearance of the boxes as well as their position to remember their previous choices. </p>
<p>Another similarity with people is that we typically perform worse in working memory tests if we have to do <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2001-05320-004">another, distracting task</a>. For example, keeping a new telephone number in mind for a moment is much harder for us when we are in a conversation at the same time. Likewise, if the chimpanzees had to perform a second, similar task in parallel, their performance declined. </p>
<p>But there were also differences between human working memory and the chimpanzees’.</p>
<h2>Differences</h2>
<p>The most obvious difference wasn’t the working memory capacity – that is, the ability to keep track of a series of events – but the search strategies that were used. </p>
<p>To complete a task like this, people usually search in line from one side to the other or they search the boxes always in the same order. Search strategies like these reduce the memory demand because we only need to remember our last choice. </p>
<p>But even the best-performing chimpanzees did not come up with such a simple search strategy. This finding hints to an interesting area for future research: people often use strategies to <a href="https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(16)30098-5">reduce the cognitive challenge</a> of a task, such as tilting one’s head when viewing a rotated picture instead of rotating the picture mentally. Our working memory capacity might not be fundamentally different from chimpanzees’. But the way we are <em>using</em> that working memory might well be different.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121584/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research project has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement no. 639072).</span></em></p>Chimpanzees, like humans, possess working memory abilities. They’re able to perform similar to seven-year-old children.Christoph Völter, Scientist, University of Veterinary Medicine, ViennaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1176302019-05-23T14:44:01Z2019-05-23T14:44:01ZChimpanzees spotted smashing open and eating tortoises for the first time<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276096/original/file-20190523-187153-ton3pk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Erwan Theleste</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>All chimpanzees eat animals at least sometimes, including anything from ants and termites to bushpigs and even baboons. Monkeys, in fact, are typically the most frequent item on the menu, and in <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ajp.20965?referrer_access_token=QowCYzHQHWigwMuhWT8A8k4keas67K9QMdWULTWMo8OpL6jAxh2k48bVOpdvT89-vzIe-KzLDrYHTJxWMSuHW12yHp8KGKR7TGX2WLhb98vjaT3Cr1lwK2olki1XlIxQ-xXdSgHBT0XC3kAFgc8__w%3D%3D">some cases</a> chimpanzees can eat so many monkeys they threaten to wipe out entire populations. One group in Senegal even hunts tiny, mouse-like primates known as bushbabies by using <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rsos.140507">spear-like tools</a> to first probe the holes the bushbabies hide in during the day, before reaching in to grab their prey.</p>
<p>So chimpanzees are rightly known as resourceful eaters. But until now scientists had never observed them <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/284183115_Why_don't_chimpanzees_eat_monitor_lizards">eating reptiles</a>.</p>
<p>That has all changed, thanks to a group of wild chimpanzees in Loango National Park along the Atlantic coast of Gabon in Central Africa. These chimps have recently become used to the presence of humans, which means scientists can now see them act exactly as they would in nature. And, writing in the journal Scientific Reports, a group of researchers say they have already observed behaviour <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-43301-8">not previously seen in chimpanzees</a>. </p>
<p>These chimpanzees regularly catch, kill and consume tortoises that have been grabbed from the forest floor. For people like us, who also research chimpanzee behaviour, the discovery is particularly exciting because the animals obtain the tortoise meat by pounding the shell repeatedly onto a tree trunk until it cracks. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/C1tpllWtBVk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Thought pistachio nuts were hard to open? Try eating tortoise.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This sort of “percussive foraging” – the pounding of certain food items until a breaking point – has been seen in chimpanzees elsewhere, but never to obtain meat. For instance chimps in Senegal have been observed <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265207049_Percussive_technology_chimpanzee_baobab_smashing_and_the_evolutionary_modeling_of_hominin_knapping">pounding baobab shells</a> to extract the softer fruit-covered seeds inside. From Sierra Leone to the Ivory Coast, <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2014.0351">Western chimpanzees</a> use stone and wooden hammers to crack open encased nuts from protective outer shells. </p>
<p>Broadly, this sort of pounding has been suggested as the first step towards more complex tool use that allowed early human ancestors to flourish. The question of why other chimpanzee communities do not do this too, despite the clear benefits of obtaining otherwise protected nuts, seeds – and now meat – remains unanswered. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sIoAdrCS1Ts?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The reward is a tasty tortoise, helpfully served in a bowl-shaped shell.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This newly discovered percussive behaviour in chimpanzees leaves a significant damage pattern on the tortoise shell and potentially damages the anvil on which it was cracked. The evidence left behind is therefore of interest to us <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature08188">primate archaeologists</a> who use archaeological techniques to understand the physical remains of non-human primates. Our work in this emerging discipline relies on material artefacts – shattered tortoise shells, for instance – to reconstruct contemporary primate behaviour in the same way we do for early hominins. </p>
<p>We have long assumed that reconstructing hominin meat-eating behaviour was dependent on our finding fossilised stone tools and <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02438066">cut marks</a> left on processed animal bones. To this select list we can now add tortoise shell. Previously, scientists had looked at <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047248414000566">fractured turtle remains</a> and argued the animals may have been an important part of early human diets, but the Loango chimpanzees provide us a glimpse of the role this meat may have played for our early ancestors. </p>
<p>The new findings also reveal something even more remarkable. Among their observations, the researchers describe another novel behaviour, the storage of one of the tortoise shells in the fork of a tree that is later retrieved and consumed by the same male chimpanzee. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276120/original/file-20190523-187182-1qavvqo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276120/original/file-20190523-187182-1qavvqo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276120/original/file-20190523-187182-1qavvqo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276120/original/file-20190523-187182-1qavvqo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276120/original/file-20190523-187182-1qavvqo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276120/original/file-20190523-187182-1qavvqo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276120/original/file-20190523-187182-1qavvqo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276120/original/file-20190523-187182-1qavvqo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chimpanzee eating part of a small antelope.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Camille Giuliano/Anne-Sophie Crunchant/GMERC</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Such “<a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rstb.2008.0301">future-oriented cognition</a>” has long been considered uniquely human, but experimental evidence suggests other species, including apes and <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6347/202">some birds</a>, may possess it as well. If chimpanzees can indeed anticipate a future state (I will be hungry) as being different than their current one (I am not hungry), then a more nuanced interpretation of their cognition is required. Indeed, a careful study of the species may uncover many more examples of this future planning.</p>
<p>It is now clear that with every new wild chimpanzee community that becomes used to humans, scientists observe new and unexpected behaviour – some of which challenges our understanding of evolution and what it means to be human. Furthermore, the difference in behaviour from group to group highlights the extraordinary cultural diversity among our closest living relatives. </p>
<p>The opportunity for comparisons with our own evolution has become a run against time as the human infestation of the planet threatens wild primate populations worldwide. We know that the presence of humans directly destroys not only the habitat and lives of primates but also leads to the loss of <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aau4532">behavioural diversity</a>. Conserving the last remaining populations of wild apes has become urgent, otherwise our fellow primates will disappear forever. With their extinction will disappear a <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-chimpanzee-cultural-collapse-is-underway-and-its-driven-by-humans-113133">part of their own heritage</a> and a window back to our own evolution.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117630/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The discovery sheds light on how early humans evolved larger brains and the ability to eat meat.Lydia Luncz, Research Fellow, Primate Models for Behavioural Evolution Lab, University of OxfordAlexander Piel, Lecturer in Animal Behaviour, Liverpool John Moores UniversityFiona Stewart, Visiting Lecturer in Primatology, Liverpool John Moores UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1150692019-04-17T14:01:42Z2019-04-17T14:01:42ZHuman viruses threaten the future of Uganda’s chimpanzees<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268323/original/file-20190409-2898-578ops.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Humans can easily transmit viruses to chimpanzees and other primates. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Robin Nieuwenkamp/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Respiratory viruses of human origin infect wild apes across Africa, sometimes lethally. In Uganda, outbreaks of viruses of human origin have been discovered in two different chimpanzee groups. Moina Spooner from The Conversation Africa spoke to Jacob Negrey about the outbreaks and why they happened.</em></p>
<p><strong>What viruses of human origins are we talking about?</strong></p>
<p>Chimpanzees can be found throughout sub-Saharan Africa, from Senegal in the west to Tanzania and Uganda in the east. There are between 172,700 and 299,700 free-ranging <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/15933/129038584">chimpanzees left in the world</a>, about <a href="https://portals.iucn.org/library/sites/library/files/documents/2010-023.pdf">5,000</a> of which are in Uganda.</p>
<p>My colleagues and I <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/22221751.2018.1563456">recently analysed</a> two outbreaks of respiratory disease in two different chimpanzee groups, both located in Uganda’s Kibale National Park.</p>
<p>Large segments of both chimpanzee groups showed signs of disease: 44% of 205 individuals in the first group, which is known as <em>Ngogo</em>, and 69% of 55 individuals in the second, <em>Kanyawara</em>.</p>
<p>Initially, we feared that the same virus caused both outbreaks, which would mean a single virus had been rapidly transmitted throughout the forest. But our team leader, Dr Tony Goldberg of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, tested samples, and we learned that the outbreaks were caused by two different viruses commonly found in humans.</p>
<p>In both cases, we identified viruses of the respiratory tract. In the Ngogo chimpanzees, we found <em>metapneumovirus</em>, <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ajp.20565">which is known</a> to have infected chimpanzees in other parts of sub-Saharan Africa. </p>
<p>At Kanyawara, we found <em>parainfluenza virus 3</em>, which has never before been observed in wild chimpanzees. Various strains of these viruses can be found in humans all over the world, although their full diversity <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(17)30238-4/fulltext">remains poorly understood</a>.</p>
<p>Chimpanzees infected with metapneumovirus and parainfluenza virus 3 showed the same signs of sickness that humans do: Coughing, sneezing, runny nose, lethargy, and weight loss. In humans, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3564111/">these viruses</a> most severely affect infants, children, and the elderly. However, these viruses mostly cause very mild sickness.</p>
<p>In the last 20 years, we have learned a great deal about diseases afflicting wild chimpanzees. For instance, we now know that diseases posing considerable public health concerns for humans, such as <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/179/Supplement_1/S120/880079">Ebola</a> and <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsbl.2012.1160">malaria</a>, are also present in chimpanzees. </p>
<p>We have also learned that humans can easily transmit viruses to <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3376799/">chimpanzees</a> and <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ajp.20294">other primates</a>. Our research underscores <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982208000171">growing evidence</a> that human-to-ape disease transmission is among the greatest threats to the survival of great apes.</p>
<p><strong>Are these viruses deadly? What’s the impact of this?</strong></p>
<p>The severity of disease varies from virus to virus. While parainfluenza virus doesn’t appear life-threatening, metapneumovirus can be fatal for wild chimpanzees. </p>
<p>At Ngogo, 25 individuals died during an outbreak that lasted for 40 days. When we examined the body of a dead adult female chimpanzee, we found evidence of a sudden and severe infection. Indeed, severe disease from metapneumovirus infection seems much more common in chimpanzees than in humans. This severity may result, in part, because wild chimpanzees have not been previously exposed to these viruses. Because these strains of metapneumovirus and parainfluenza virus 3 originate with humans, wild chimpanzee immune systems are not prepared to fight them.</p>
<p>Crucially, chimpanzees <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/15933/129038584">are endangered</a>, and their numbers in the wild continue to shrink. The International Union for Conservation of Nature predicts a 50% population decline <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/15933/129038584">between 1975 and 2050</a>. </p>
<p>Furthermore, chimpanzees are slow to reproduce, so outbreaks of lethal disease <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0029030">can greatly</a> reduce population sizes. That has pressing consequences for chimpanzee conservation. </p>
<p>Outbreaks have other devastating consequences for chimpanzee societies. The outbreak in the Ngogo community left several young chimpanzees orphaned, which is emotionally traumatic and may have <a href="http://meeting.physanth.org/program/2018/session13/reddy-2018-social-relationships-between-orphaned-chimpanzee-siblings-at-ngogo-kibale-national-park-uganda.html">important developmental consequences</a>. </p>
<p><strong>Are outbreaks of such viruses common in Uganda’s chimpanzees?</strong></p>
<p>Unfortunately, it seems that transmission of human viruses to chimpanzees and other apes, including gorillas, <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10393-017-1306-1">is increasingly</a> common. Last year, my collaborators reported on an outbreak of another common cold virus in Uganda’s <a href="https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/24/2/17-0778_article">Kanyawara chimpanzees</a>. Of the 56 chimpanzees in the community, five died during the outbreak.</p>
<p>If we look at other countries where chimpanzees live, like Côte d'Ivoire, similar cases of human-to-chimpanzee viral transmission <a href="https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(08)00017-1?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0960982208000171%3Fshowall%3Dtrue">have been</a> documented.</p>
<p>We cannot conclusively evaluate how frequently such viral outbreaks occur, because many wild chimpanzee groups are not monitored. We also cannot be certain how the viruses identified in our study were transmitted to chimpanzees – whether directly from humans, or indirectly through another species. However, we know that viral transmission between humans and chimpanzees can happen very easily—perhaps most easily through droplets released when coughing or sneezing.</p>
<p>For this reason, <a href="https://www.ugandawildlife.org/wildlife-a-conservation-2/researchers-corner/research-a-monitoring">government agencies</a>, <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsif.2014.0349">researchers</a>, and <a href="https://www.un-grasp.org/what-we-do/priorities/disease-monitoring/">conservationists</a> are doing a lot to limit disease transmission between humans and other primates. </p>
<p>There are a number of health protocols employed across sub-Saharan Africa to prevent human viruses from entering chimpanzee habitat; <a href="http://www.primate-sg.org/best_practice_disease">these include</a> using hand sanitiser, wearing face-masks, implementing quarantine periods, and maintaining strict distances between humans and chimpanzees. These rules are upheld at <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ajp.22619">research sites</a> but are also important for chimpanzee groups visited <a href="https://bioone.org/journals/primate-conservation/volume-24/issue-1/052.024.0106/Chimpanzee-Tourism-in-Relation-to-the-Viewing-Regulations-at-the/10.1896/052.024.0106.full">by tourists</a> People come from all around the world to view chimpanzees in the wild, and they bring viruses with them, whether they know it or not. </p>
<p>The more we understand about the viruses that endanger apes, and the more conscientious we are about ways disease can be transmitted, the better prepared we will be to protect wild ape populations in the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115069/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jacob Negrey's research was funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, National Science Foundation USA (Grant Number BCS-1613393), National Geographic Society (Grant Number 9824-15), Nacey Maggioncalda Foundation, and Boston University. Further funding for this research was provided by the National Institute on Aging (Grant Number 5R01AG049395), Leakey Foundation, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies at the University of Michigan, University of New Mexico, and University of Wisconsin–Madison.</span></em></p>Human-to-ape disease transmission is thought to be a severe threat to the survival of great apes.Jacob Negrey, PhD Candidate, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1131332019-03-07T19:02:16Z2019-03-07T19:02:16ZA chimpanzee cultural collapse is underway, and it’s driven by humans<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262665/original/file-20190307-82681-a3pssn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C7%2C4677%2C3111&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ari Wid / shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Language, music, and art often vary between adjacent groups of people, and help us identify not only ourselves but also others. And in recent years rich debates have emerged and spawned research into culture in non-human animals.</p>
<p>Scientists first observed chimpanzees using tools more than half a century ago. As this complex behaviour appeared to differ across different populations, researchers concluded that tool use in apes was socially learned and therefore a cultural behaviour.</p>
<p>This was the beginning of exploring what behaviours in other species might be considered cultural as well. Killer whale pods and dolphins exhibit <a href="https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0065345408603770">different dialects</a> and use tools differently, for instance. Scientists have mostly focused on primates, however. Capuchin monkeys of Central and South America exhibit 13 variants of <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2010.0317">social customs</a>, to take one example, while different orangutan populations vary their <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0036180">calls</a>and the use of <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/299/5603/102">tools, nests or other objects</a>. But no species has garnered more discussion on the presence, importance, and evolution of culture than <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/chimpanzee-material-culture/709C1AEFCE436DB916D5CCACE8763298">chimpanzees</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262694/original/file-20190307-82695-u74c4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262694/original/file-20190307-82695-u74c4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262694/original/file-20190307-82695-u74c4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262694/original/file-20190307-82695-u74c4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262694/original/file-20190307-82695-u74c4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262694/original/file-20190307-82695-u74c4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262694/original/file-20190307-82695-u74c4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262694/original/file-20190307-82695-u74c4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chimpanzees differ in their grooming habits and the use of tools.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Przemyslaw Skibinski / shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Examples of chimpanzee culture range from social customs, such as the way they grasp their hands during grooming, to how males sexually display, to the type of tools used for cracking nuts or ant-dipping. An <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/21415">early study</a> argued that there are as many as 39 different behaviours that are candidates for cultural variation. This set off an eager <a href="http://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/retrieve/pii/S016953470600190X?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS016953470600190X%3Fshowall%3Dtrue">debate</a> about whether animals have culture or not and how we would be able to detect it. </p>
<p>As in humans, cultural behaviours in chimpanzees are likely critical for individuals to demonstrate community membership. If a young chimpanzee in the Tai forest in the Ivory Coast wants to signal to a peer that they would like to play around, then they build a small, rudimentary ground nest and <a href="https://www.eva.mpg.de/documents/Wiley-Blackwell/Luncz_Extent_AmJPhysAnthr_2015_2083537.pdf">sit in it</a>. In most other chimpanzee groups, ground nests are mainly used for resting.</p>
<h2>Living with humans</h2>
<p>But chimpanzees now face the daunting task of surviving in a habitat increasingly infested and assaulted by humans. And as their populations decline, so does their behavioural variation. In short, humans are causing chimpanzee cultural collapse. </p>
<p>Two of us (Alexander and Fiona) were involved in a new study which integrated data from 144 chimpanzee communities across Africa, and found the more that humans had disturbed an area, the less behavioural variants are exhibited by nearby chimpanzees. The results are published in the journal <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aau4532">Science</a>.</p>
<p>The actual mechanism behind this is not entirely known. The most obvious explanation is that increased human disturbance means there are fewer chimpanzees overall. Even those that remain have to be more inconspicuous in order to survive in areas where their food and nesting sites are threatened by logging operations, their water sources are polluted by miners, and they risk being hunted for bushmeat by poachers brought into their forests by newly-built roads. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262704/original/file-20190307-82681-17nrwyz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262704/original/file-20190307-82681-17nrwyz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262704/original/file-20190307-82681-17nrwyz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262704/original/file-20190307-82681-17nrwyz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262704/original/file-20190307-82681-17nrwyz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262704/original/file-20190307-82681-17nrwyz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262704/original/file-20190307-82681-17nrwyz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262704/original/file-20190307-82681-17nrwyz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chimpanzee habitat is being fragmented by roads.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">CherylRamalho / shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>All this forces the chimpanzees to forage in smaller groups and use less long distance communication like <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/306008468_Passive_acoustic_monitoring_reveals_group_ranging_and_territory_use_A_case_study_of_wild_chimpanzees_Pan_troglodytes">pan hoots</a> and drumming on tree trunks. This likely leads to a decrease in the spread of cultural behaviours, as associating in smaller group sizes lowers the chance of learning socially from one another. </p>
<p>Chimpanzees have also been observed to adapt to human disturbance by inventing new coping mechanisms such as <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/srep05956">eating human crops</a>. But despite these rare adaptations, overall human activity is vastly erasing the rich behavioural diversity that now characterises chimpanzees.</p>
<h2>Chimpanzee monoculture</h2>
<p>But, if the species is gradually merging into a single cultural entity that stretches all the way from Senegal to Tanzania – why does this matter? After all, monocultural species are not inherently problematic. There is no direct relationship between cultural diversity and species distribution, for example. Flies, rats and crocodiles are all disseminated across a vast area, and yet have not yet been described as cultural. Losing chimpanzee behavioural diversity doesn’t itself threaten the species survival. </p>
<p>Losing diversity could be representative of larger issues, however, not least that the species is on the decline, which is the worst scenario. For example, we don’t yet know how adaptive these behaviours are. A loss of behavioural diversity could represent compromises in how animals respond to selection pressures like changes in food availability and how they adapt to <a href="https://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12862-014-0275-z">climate change</a>.</p>
<p>The risk is that we humans are irreversibly endangering a unique chance to discover the full extent of cultural diversity in our closest living relatives. When scientists discover a new group of wild chimpanzees it often exhibits unique behaviours that have never been observed previously, and it is hard to know what would be eradicated before we know about it. </p>
<p>If things continue as they are, the opportunity to study common evolutionary roots with our own species might soon be forever lost. Making protection of cultural diversity a conservation priority, which extend to numerous other species, would help to ensure the survival of our extraordinary primate heritage.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113133/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lydia Luncz receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Piel and Fiona Stewart do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Our closest relatives show distinct cultural behaviour in different populations. But those differences are being erased.Alexander Piel, Lecturer in Animal Behaviour, Liverpool John Moores UniversityFiona Stewart, Visiting Lecturer in Primatology, Liverpool John Moores UniversityLydia Luncz, Research Fellow, Primate Models for Behavioural Evolution Lab, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1049782018-10-19T09:55:14Z2018-10-19T09:55:14ZChimps like to copy human visitors to the zoo – Ig Nobel Prize<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241295/original/file-20181018-67164-7tlmjz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/chimpanzee-expression-disappointment-748038304?src=A7ugV1VBQsJnJ09BiKMlFg-1-67">Roop Dey/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>How good is your best chimpanzee impression? Go to the zoo and you probably wouldn’t be surprised to see people copying chimps in order to grab their attention. But our latest research, which recently won the <a href="https://www.improbable.com/ig/winners/">Ig Nobel Prize</a> for Anthropology, suggests you are just as likely to see chimpanzees imitating the human visitors. </p>
<p>Established in 1991, the Ig Nobel prizes are granted each autumn to ten unusual scientific discoveries that “first make you laugh, and then make you think.” Our findings unravel a form of imitation as communication that has not been previously reported in non-human apes. We typically think that humans evolved imitation as a way of learning. But our study suggests it can serve several functions, including for other animals.</p>
<p>The research, published in <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10329-017-0624-9">the journal Primates</a>, found that the chimpanzees at Furuvik Zoo in Sweden were just as likely to imitate human visitors as the other way round. We watched a group of five chimpanzees at the zoo and about 10,000 human visitors that stopped by the chimpanzee enclosure. In total, we recorded 1,579 times when a chimpanzee did something directed at a human, and 2,211 human actions aimed at a chimp. About 10% of the actions of each species were imitations. </p>
<p>The actions copied by the humans and chimps were also surprisingly similar, with both favouring hand claps, knocking on the enclosure window, or kissing. This is where things get interesting. Since both species imitated actions they were already highly familiar with, this imitation can’t have been a method of learning but rather appeared to be a way of communicating. </p>
<p>By digging into the data a bit further, we found that interactions that included imitation were longer than those that didn’t. This suggests that imitation was a good way to initiate and maintain social contact between the two species. On several occasions, imitation turned into a game of back-and-forth copying that the chimps seemed to enjoy, making playful facial expressions. This not only shows that the chimpanzees quickly became <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/primatologie/254">aware of being imitated</a> by the visitors, but also that they really enjoyed and were interested in the interaction.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241296/original/file-20181018-67170-18958s9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241296/original/file-20181018-67170-18958s9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241296/original/file-20181018-67170-18958s9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241296/original/file-20181018-67170-18958s9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241296/original/file-20181018-67170-18958s9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241296/original/file-20181018-67170-18958s9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241296/original/file-20181018-67170-18958s9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chimps in the study imitated visitors’ kissing and clapping actions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/chimpanzee-pan-troglodytes-pucker-up-546398377?src=Bz5vCVYbuTW2wiP18VxKXQ-1-1">Natures Moments/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Scientists have long agreed that imitation is a key <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-93776-2_17">mechanism for social learning</a> that lets humans quickly acquire skills and solutions to problems by copying others. Because it enables knowledge and new inventions to spread and pass down generations, imitation is considered fundamental to our species’ complex culture and advanced technology.</p>
<p>Decades of research shows that, in spite of their proverbial aping abilities, nonhuman apes are rather <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0041548">poor at imitating</a> the actions of others. In experiments where they have to learn a new procedure for solving a problem by watching it being demonstrated, apes systematically <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/primatologie/263">perform worse than human children</a>. This might be because they lack <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/primatologie/263">the “social side” of imitation</a>, meaning they don’t seem motivated to engage with others by sharing goals and experiences.</p>
<p>In contrast, human children show this social motivation by often gazing at the researcher’s face or smiling during such tasks. They also over-imitate, slavishly copying all the actions performed by a demonstrator, regardless of how relevant they are for solving the task. Apes, on the other hand, appear mostly motivated to acquire the food reward that comes with solving a problem, and so don’t show these “social-communicative” behaviours.</p>
<h2>Social imitation</h2>
<p>But the social side of imitation extends beyond learning tasks. We also see it when we <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352154615000455?via%253Dihub">empathise with others</a>. We smile when they smile, we look sad when they are sad, or yawn when they yawn – and we do this pervasively, yet without awareness or intent. Research shows that our species shares this unintentional kind of social imitation with our closest genetic relatives (<a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0076266">chimpanzees</a>, <a href="http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/4/1/27">bonobos</a>, and <a href="http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/4/1/27">orangutans</a>), and even with non-primate species, such as <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0105963">wolves</a> or <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/asj.12681">sheep</a>. </p>
<p>Another – intentional – kind of social imitation is found in toddlers’ interactions with each other and with adults. Before they master language, toddlers often <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037/0012-1649.26.3.370">playfully imitate familiar actions</a> as a way to engage and communicate with others. This is similar to the imitation games we saw at the zoo between chimpanzees and human visitors.</p>
<p>Our study shows that chimpanzees and humans were equally likely to use imitation as a way to interact with each other. Given that we know chimps aren’t as good as humans at learning through imitation, this challenges traditional theories and suggests imitation may have evolved primarily for social reasons rather than as a means of learning. The images evoked by our study of chimps and humans imitating each other at the zoo might make people smile. But the scientific implications reach all the way back to the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees, and the role imitation may have played for that mysterious species.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104978/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The study featured in the article has been funded by the Swedish Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tomas Persson receives funding from The Swedish Research Council, Riksbankens Jubileumsfond and Lund University. </span></em></p>An Ig Nobel Prize-winning study suggests we need to rethink why imitation evolved.Gabriela-Alina Sauciuc, Researcher in Cognitive Science, Lund UniversityTomas Persson, Researcher in Cognitive Science, Lund UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1048052018-10-12T14:41:43Z2018-10-12T14:41:43ZNot all people are equally vulnerable to hepatitis C – new study<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240412/original/file-20181012-119144-roo41w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pygmies in the Dzanga-Sangha Forest Reserve, Central African Republic.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/451013683?src=-mbe-8gY9fmnem3XMgS-sg-1-79&size=medium_jpg">Sergey Uryadnikov/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The hepatitis C virus (HCV) infects around 1% of the human population and is a devastating pathogen. In most people, it silently infects the liver for decades, often causing life-threatening inflammation, scarring and even cancer. How the virus achieves this feat has long puzzled scientists.</p>
<p>In our latest study, published in <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1007307">PLOS Pathogens</a>, we found that a molecule that defends against HCV and other pathogens is weaker in humans than in our closest relative, the chimpanzee. This weakened molecule might have made it easier for some viruses, such as HCV, to infect humans and cause disease. </p>
<p>We are not defenceless against HCV. Our liver responds to infection by producing antiviral molecules called interferons. You can think of these molecules as the antiviral alarm system. Interferons are made rapidly once an invader has been spotted inside a cell. They are then released by the infected cell where they float across the nearby cells, warning them that a virus is near and forcing them to defend themselves by making hundreds more antiviral molecules.</p>
<p>In particular, we produce what is known as “lambda” – interferons against HCV that work well in liver cells. Strangely, one interferon lambda, called IFNL4, is associated with a reduced chance of clearing HCV, making it easier for the virus to silently infect the liver for decades. How an antiviral molecule appears to help a virus to sustain infection over such a long time, and how this may have evolved, remains a mystery.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240410/original/file-20181012-119141-eqvj42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240410/original/file-20181012-119141-eqvj42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240410/original/file-20181012-119141-eqvj42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240410/original/file-20181012-119141-eqvj42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240410/original/file-20181012-119141-eqvj42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240410/original/file-20181012-119141-eqvj42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240410/original/file-20181012-119141-eqvj42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hepatitis C virus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/1074829304?src=RrPNZemextoyawJtcArIpQ-1-8&size=medium_jpg">Tatiana Shepeleva/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Rare find</h2>
<p>The long evolution of humans in Africa and later global spread has resulted in genetically diverse populations of humans, each adapted to suit local environments and diseases.</p>
<p>In our recent study, we searched through all the known genetic diversity of the IFNL4 gene, including that of chimpanzees, to identify whether people who carried versions had different abilities to block viral replication. We hoped this would shine a light on the paradoxical role of IFNL4 during HCV infection. </p>
<p>What we found surprised us. A very rare version of IFNL4, which is only found in pygmies (hunter-gatherers from central Africa), was far better able to inhibit HCV infection in the lab. Even more surprisingly, this version had similar properties to the chimpanzee IFNL4. Nearly all humans, except this group of hunter-gatherers, produce a weaker version of IFNL4.</p>
<h2>Protective response</h2>
<p>This more antiviral version of IFNL4, found in chimpanzees and a small pocket of Central African hunter-gatherers, was better able to turn on hundreds of antiviral molecules when it was added to cells in the lab. This heightened antiviral response was similar to what was found when we compared the genes produced in the liver in response to HCV in people and in chimpanzees. That is, chimpanzees appeared to mount a greater antiviral response to HCV than humans, turning on anti-HCV molecules and enhancing the immune response.</p>
<p>Chimpanzees are the only animal – other than humans – that can be infected by HCV, which is the reason they were used to study the virus and find effective antiviral drugs and vaccines. However, testing in chimpanzees is now banned.</p>
<p>Correlating with this stronger antiviral response is the fact that HCV infection in chimpanzees is less pronounced than in humans. Chimpanzees don’t develop serious hepatitis C. The virus appears to replicate more slowly, and it might be more difficult for HCV to gain a foothold in chimpanzees. Also, despite searching, scientists have been unable to find natural HCV infection in chimpanzees in the wild. </p>
<p>Our finding that very early in human evolution we evolved an antiviral molecule with a reduced ability to block viral infections, might help explain the insidious nature of HCV – and possibly other viral infections – in humans.</p>
<p>One remaining mystery is what drove early humans to reduce the antiviral activity of IFNL4 and why do a handful of people retain it? We may not have the answers for a while, but studying the immune responses in our chimpanzee cousins in the wild, or in people who still carry the more antiviral version of IFNL4, may unlock some of the mysteries behind the role of IFNL4 in virus infection.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104805/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span><a href="mailto:john.mclauchlan@glasgow.ac.uk">john.mclauchlan@glasgow.ac.uk</a> receives funding from the UK Medical Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Connor G G Bamford does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Somewhere along our evolutionary path, we lost the ability to defend against hepatitis C. But not all humans lost this ability.Connor G G Bamford, Virologist, University of GlasgowJohn McLauchlan, Professor of Viral Hepatitis, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1012302018-08-24T10:41:32Z2018-08-24T10:41:32ZWhat the grieving mother orca tells us about how animals experience death<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232943/original/file-20180821-149496-3ecos6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">How do animals think and feel?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/133755719@N08/26885658553/in/photolist-GXN2B8-beeDbR-oJF3M8-bQxxLc-MLoaB-28y1Hwh-anPXdG-27YT5mR-tMKKp-LSBrv-5PaDa7-nE7oH1-qwVFvU-8jzuhS-H3aSZ-nC8buR-5iiL8X-3G51xE-3YnvU-6bEJuE-25tdLLg-qgxwL5-8jzA4J-24nTjdw-234kxqa-wrZzpy-25KjiW5-CmjSY-J7wctt-Z2dNTz-7eD7EJ-4ZFANm-vFJGQj-25tdVBT-21YMwJQ-234mXoD-21HJkf4-2421C63-VUkJ7A-NBEM9h-CfZb9Y-TVeS23-CF6gAH-GjECAA-GjECws-H98oSz-zEFXea-NexjzR-DpzkzZ-25SPZ8b">Patrick aka Herjolf</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For many weeks, news of a <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/08/tahlequah-ends-tour-of-grief-mother-orca-finally-drops-dead-calf-after-carrying-corpse-for-17-days.html">mother orca</a> carrying her dead infant through the icy waters of the Salish Sea captured the attention of many around the world. Keeping the infant afloat as best she could, the orca, named Tahlequah, also known as J35 by scientists, persisted for 17 days, before finally dropping the dead calf. </p>
<p>This has been one of the most protracted displays of <a href="http://time.com/5363954/j35-killer-whale-calf/">marine mammal grieving</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/38RUQdvAZUY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The grieving orca.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Among scientists, however, there remains a prejudice against the idea that animals feel “real” grief or respond in complex ways to death. Following reports of the “grieving,” zoologist <a href="https://www.juleshoward.co.uk/">Jules Howard</a>, for example, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/14/grieving-orca-mother-emotions-animals-mistake">wrote,</a> “If you believe J35 was displaying evidence of mourning or grief, you are making a case that rests on faith, not on scientific endeavor.” </p>
<p>As a <a href="http://www.jessicapierce.net">bioethicist</a>, I’ve been studying the <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo11097201.html">interplay between science and ethics</a> for more than two decades. A growing body of scientific evidence supports the idea that nonhuman animals are aware of death, can experience grief and will sometimes mourn for or ritualize their dead. </p>
<h2>You can’t see when you don’t look</h2>
<p>Animal grief skeptics are correct about one thing: Scientists don’t know all that much about death-related behaviors such as grief in nonhuman animals. Only a few scholars have explored how the multitude of creatures with whom humans share the planet think and feel <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo12233936.html">about death</a>, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Life_Everlasting.html?id=2mlfXwAACAAJ">either their own or others’</a>.</p>
<p>But, I argue, that they don’t know because they haven’t looked.</p>
<p>Scientists haven’t yet turned serious attention to the study of what might be called “<a href="https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(15)01371-8.pdf">comparative thanatology</a>” – the study of death and the practices associated with it. This is perhaps because most humans failed to even entertain the possibility that animals might care about the death of those they love. </p>
<p>Awareness of mortality has remained, for many scientists and philosophers alike, a bastion of human-perceived uniqueness.</p>
<h2>Animal grief</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232944/original/file-20180821-149469-1odf5ci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232944/original/file-20180821-149469-1odf5ci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232944/original/file-20180821-149469-1odf5ci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232944/original/file-20180821-149469-1odf5ci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232944/original/file-20180821-149469-1odf5ci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232944/original/file-20180821-149469-1odf5ci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232944/original/file-20180821-149469-1odf5ci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Elephants are known to have strong bonds and mourn for their dead.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elephants_Chester_Zoo.jpg">Nigel Swales</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nevertheless, a growing collection of anecdotal reports of grieving and other death-related behaviors in a wide range of species is helping researchers frame questions about death awareness in animals and figure out how best to study these behaviors. </p>
<p>Elephants, for example, are known to take a great interest in the bones of their deceased and to <a href="https://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/news/safari-live/180503-elephants-grieve-death-animals-vin-spd">mourn for dead relatives</a>. One of these vivid ritual explorations of bones was caught on <a href="https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/08/elephants-mourning-video-animal-grief/">video</a> in 2016 by a doctoral student studying elephants in Africa. Members of three different elephant families came to visit the body of a deceased matriarch, smelling and touching and repeatedly passing by the corpse. </p>
<p>Chimpanzees have also been repeatedly observed engaging in death-related behaviors. <a href="https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(10)00145-4.pdf">In one case</a>, a small group of captive chimpanzees was carefully observed after one of their members, an elderly female named Pansy, died. The chimpanzees checked Pansy’s body for signs of life and cleaned bits of straw from her fur. They refused to go to the place where Pansy had died for several days afterwards.</p>
<p>In another instance, scientists documented a chimpanzee <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2124821-chimp-filmed-cleaning-a-corpses-teeth-in-a-mortuary-like-ritual/">using a tool</a> to clean a corpse. In 2017, a team of primate researchers in Zambia filmed a mother using a piece of dried grass to clean debris from the teeth of her deceased son. The implication, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/srep44091">according to the scientists involved</a>, is that chimpanzees continue to feel social bonds, even after death, and feel some sensitivity toward dead bodies.</p>
<p>Magpies have been observed <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/wildlife/6392594/Magpies-feel-grief-and-hold-funerals.html">burying their dead</a> under twigs of grass. Ethologist <a href="http://marcbekoff.com/">Marc Bekoff</a>, who observed this behavior, described it as a “magpie funeral.” </p>
<p>In one of the most fascinating recent examples, an 8-year-old boy caught <a href="https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/12/animals-grieving-peccaries-death-mourning/">video footage</a> of peccaries, a species of wild pig-like animal found in parts of the U.S., responding to a dead herd-mate. The peccaries visited the dead body repeatedly, nuzzling it and biting at it, as well as sleeping next to it. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Q7LK2kKv2IE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Do animals mourn their dead?</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Crows have been seen forming what scientists call <a href="https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/151003-animals-science-crows-birds-culture-brains/">“cacophonous aggregations”</a> – mobbing and squawking in a big group – in response to <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100426131426.htm">another dead crow</a>.</p>
<p>These are just a few of the many examples. </p>
<p>Some scientists insist that behaviors such of these shouldn’t be labeled with human terms such as “grief” and “mourning” because it isn’t rigorous science. Science can observe a given behavior, but it is very difficult to know what feeling has motivated that behavior. A <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22158823">2011 study published in Science</a> that found evidence of empathy in rats and mice was met with a similar kind of <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/2/8/10925098/animals-have-empathy">skepticism</a>.</p>
<h2>It’s about how animals grieve</h2>
<p>I agree that a large degree of caution is appropriate when it comes to ascribing emotions and behaviors such as grief to animals. But not because there is any doubt that animals feel or grieve, or that a mother’s anguish over the loss of her child is any less painful. </p>
<p>The case of Tahlequah shows that humans have a great deal to learn about other animals. The question is not “Do animals grieve?” but “How do animals grieve?”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101230/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jessica Pierce does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A growing body of evidence points to how animals are aware of death, can experience grief and will sometimes mourn for or ritualize their dead.Jessica Pierce, Professor of Bioethics, University of Colorado DenverLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/932012018-07-26T08:36:37Z2018-07-26T08:36:37ZChimpanzee ‘nests’ shed light on the origins of humanity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213137/original/file-20180404-189824-1jtgx06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Edward McLester / LJMU</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Home is where the heart is, they say. But a chimpanzee’s home may be where we can find the origins of the entire human species. </p>
<p>The style of home that people live in reflects much about where they live. Inuit homes are built to withstand bitter winters, for instance, whereas <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360132314004144">ancient Chinese dwellings</a> allow drafts in when the weather is hot. Our <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10968644">recent research</a> suggests that chimpanzees also adjust their sleeping spaces in response to their environment, especially fluctuating temperatures – as did our ancestors.</p>
<p>Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives, and observing them in the wild helps us reconstruct how our ancestors adapted to a changing environment millions of years ago. After all, anatomical and behavioural evidence from fossils of early hominins like <em>Australopithecus</em> and <em>Ardipithecus</em> suggests that they more closely resemble modern chimpanzees than modern humans. In fact, <em>Australopithecus</em>, which lived from about 3.5m years ago to about 2m years ago, walked upright but still had a body well adapted for life in the trees.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224653/original/file-20180625-19375-1l8tacj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224653/original/file-20180625-19375-1l8tacj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224653/original/file-20180625-19375-1l8tacj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224653/original/file-20180625-19375-1l8tacj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224653/original/file-20180625-19375-1l8tacj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224653/original/file-20180625-19375-1l8tacj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224653/original/file-20180625-19375-1l8tacj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224653/original/file-20180625-19375-1l8tacj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Our ancestor <em>Australopithecus</em> was closer to modern chimps than modern humans.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/timevanson/7283201084/">Tim Evanson/Smithsonian Museum of Natural History</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To help add context to the fossil remains of our ancestors, anthropologists have often drawn on insights from chimpanzee behaviour, which usually stem from directly observing the animals. But, like humans, chimps also leave an archaeological record, <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/za/academic/subjects/life-sciences/biological-anthropology-and-primatology/cultured-chimpanzee-reflections-cultural-primatology?format=PB&isbn=9780521535434">material remains</a> of their recent activity. For instance, scientists have used <a href="http://theconversation.com/how-chimp-dna-techniques-turned-us-into-jungle-detectives-90154">forensic techniques</a> to extract DNA from chimpanzee termite fishing tools, which reveal who fished, where, and with whom – important details that cannot be gleaned from fossils. </p>
<p>But the most common example of chimpanzee tool use is bed construction. Some form of construction goes on right across the animal kingdom, from <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-90-481-3977-4_13">termite mounds</a> that extend above and deep underground, to <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347285701613">bowerbirds</a> whose elaborate nests reflect the quality of their male builder. Great apes, however, are the only primates that build nightly beds, also called nests or sleeping platforms. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213139/original/file-20180404-189830-gdppkn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213139/original/file-20180404-189830-gdppkn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213139/original/file-20180404-189830-gdppkn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213139/original/file-20180404-189830-gdppkn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213139/original/file-20180404-189830-gdppkn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213139/original/file-20180404-189830-gdppkn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213139/original/file-20180404-189830-gdppkn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213139/original/file-20180404-189830-gdppkn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chimps build something like this every night.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Fiona Stewart/LJMU</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We still do not ultimately know why they do this, as apes do not raise their young in nests nor use them to attract mates as other species do. But we do know that nest building is complex, requiring a sequential combination of bending and breaking branches into a secure, <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajp.22138/abstract">safe</a>, <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/ajp.20432">comfortable</a> platform in trees. </p>
<p><a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajp.20265/full">Captive chimpanzees</a> build higher-quality nests more efficiently if they have had exposure to experienced nest-builders early in life, indicating that this isn’t purely instinctive – learning plays an important role. </p>
<h2>Learning survival skills</h2>
<p>In our research, we investigated variation in chimpanzee bed architecture across two dry habitats (Fongoli, Senegal, and Issa, Tanzania) in response to local weather conditions.</p>
<p>We found different building techniques were employed in response to local, overnight weather conditions. In cooler conditions the chimpanzees built thicker nests, in wet weather they added more broken branches for support and when it was windy they built their nests deeper and with larger supports.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213142/original/file-20180404-189798-bfrfue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213142/original/file-20180404-189798-bfrfue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213142/original/file-20180404-189798-bfrfue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213142/original/file-20180404-189798-bfrfue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213142/original/file-20180404-189798-bfrfue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213142/original/file-20180404-189798-bfrfue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213142/original/file-20180404-189798-bfrfue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213142/original/file-20180404-189798-bfrfue.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fiona Stewart measures a chimpanzee nest.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alexander Piel/LJMU</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>How does this link to our ancestors? Given we know that all great apes build nests, and that many early hominins retained adaptations for tree-living such as feet that could grasp onto branches or food, it is likely that they also built varied nests. This would have helped them adapt to a <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-a-changing-landscape-and-climate-shaped-early-humans-19862">changing landscape and an unpredictable climate</a> during key periods of evolution. The ability to build cosy and also functional beds when required would have been a key buffer against colder temperatures on the drying savanna.</p>
<p>In evolutionary terms, there’s a very long leap from architecturally-flexible nightly bed construction to an eventual investment in more permanent structures or “<a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/24955711">home bases</a>”, which appeared around 2m years ago. But these later bases are what today provide insight into more transformative hominin behaviours like the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/42928622?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">use of fire</a> or <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/660919">social organisation</a>, and these dramatic changes would not have been possible without the ability to construct reliable shelter. To gain a critical insight into our own evolution we must look at the “nests” built by early hominin species – and modern chimpanzees.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93201/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Early hominins are thought to have made a new shelter every night, which taught them how to adapt to changing conditions.Alexander Piel, Lecturer in Animal Behaviour, Liverpool John Moores UniversityFiona Stewart, Visiting Lecturer in Primatology, Liverpool John Moores UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.