Chimpanzees don't have the patience, Gorillas don't have the motivation, but Orangutans can problem solve

If you give an orangutan a screwdriver, chances are he will open up his cage and walk away.

Orangutans are the largest living arboreal animals and live in the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra. They are well adapted to living in trees, with long arms, long fingers, opposable thumbs/big toes set lower down their hands/feet so that they can better grasp branches, with fully rotational hip joints that allow them to swing in all directions.
The orangutan is probably the most intelligent of all of the great apes, especially if intelligence is measured by the ability to problem-solve. “A chimpanzee doesn’t have the patience,” Michelle Desilets says, “and a gorilla doesn't seem to have the motivation to problem solve. But the orangutan tends to have the incentive to determine the problem and sit and work at it until it's solved.”

The orangutan is probably the most intelligent of all of the great apes, especially if intelligence is measured by the ability to problem solve. (Credit: Michelle Desilets)
She sums up their differing approaches, noting that “if you give a chimpanzee a screwdriver, he'll break it; if you give a gorilla a screwdriver, he'll toss it over his shoulder; but if you give an orangutan a screwdriver, he'll open up his cage and walk away.” She also provides examples of orangutan innovation, such as their tactic for staying dry. Because orangutans detest rain, they’ll often use leaves to craft umbrellas or construct roofs over their nests.
Desilets has worked on orangutan conservation alongside Lone Dröscher Nielsen, the internationally well-known champion of these apes, for over 15 years.

Laurel Neme: What does the name, orangutan, mean?

Michelle Desilets: The name “orangutan” comes from the Malay language. It’s two words: “or-ang” meaning person or people; and “u-tan” is forest. So, quite literally, person of the forest. The natives believed that orangutans were at one time a form of humans that took to the trees and pretended not to be able to speak in order to avoid being put to work. They could just play in the trees if they pretended they couldn't talk.

There are still some amongst the many different Dyak tribes who have a remnant feeling that there is something about orangutans that makes them human, or at least almost seem it, and that they deserve a certain level of respect.

Laurel Neme: What's special about orangutans?

Michelle Desilets: We know that, evolutionarily speaking, the orangutan is not quite as close to us as the chimpanzee, and probably the gorilla on the evolutionary tree. If we look at the DNA, [chimpanzees are] almost 99% identical to human, whereas orangutans aren't quite that much but it is still quite close. So, orangutans share a lot of the features of human beings. They’re one of the great apes. They have no tail.

Laurel Neme: How intelligent are orangutans compared to other apes?
Michelle Desilets: There are lots of ways of measuring intelligence of species. Scientists have done different tests, but most recently, about a year or two ago, some scientists came together and said "if intelligence is measured in the ability to problem-solve, then the orangutan wins hands down. It just blows the chimpanzee right off the block". Orangutans just have this tenacity. They are motivated to focus on the problem until they solve it. They stick with it.

Laurel Neme: How does that compare to chimpanzees and gorillas?
Michelle Desilets: A chimpanzee doesn’t have the patience, and a gorilla doesn't seem to have the motivation to problem solve, but the orangutan tends to have the incentive to determine the problem and sit and work at it until it's solved.
They say that if you give a chimpanzee a screwdriver, he'll break it; if you give a gorilla a screwdriver, he'll toss it over his shoulder; but if you give an orangutan a screwdriver, he'll open up his cage and walk away. I do believe the orangutan is the most intelligent species [of great ape].

Laurel Neme: What are the main threats to orangutans? It seems there are three main ones: the pet trade; the logging industry destroying their habitat; and the palm oil industry.

Michelle Desilets: That’s right, and they're all inter-connected. Basically, Sumatra and Borneo are like “the new frontiers”. They are not highly populated because they are quite wild and uninhabitable for humans. But neighboring islands, such as Java, are overpopulated. The Indonesian government has transmigration projects that move communities into these areas and use them as the work force to exploit the natural resources that are found on these two islands. So, population growth, and the need for these countries to economically grow and have products they can sell, drives a lot. We can’t deny them that development opportunity. We can hope that it’s developed in the most sustainable way possible.

So, [governments are] moving people into these areas, and bringing in large multinational companies, often Chinese, Malaysian and others, into areas such as Kalimantan and other areas first of all to [extract] hard wood – that is, the timber used to make your patio furniture and door frames – which will be sold in the West at a premium. It’s a very strong, beautiful wood that comes out of the forest of Southeast Asia. At the same time, there’s a huge amount of illegal logging that goes on in both of these areas, in Sumatra and Borneo, and that’s costing the Indonesian government quite a lot of money in lost revenue.
This is an excerpt from Laurel Neme’s podcast.
Story Credit Here

Great Videos of Gorillas and Monkeys

Here is a good website for visual information in regards to Gorillas and Monkeys, done by Ape Alliance.
Click Here

Mountain Gorilla Video

This is a video of the Humba family of mountain gorillas - one of the 6 habituated families in Congo’s Gorilla Sector. Humba now has 12 individuals in his family. You may recall he is the brother of Senkwekwe, the Silverback who was murdered in July 2007 (and after whom we named Ndeze and Ndakasi’s new forest home).

Now that tourism is gradually coming back to the area, Humba gets visited a few times a week by outsiders. It is not just the Rangers anymore! But he is a calm Silverback - and his family is also relaxed and peaceful as you can see in this short clip.
You will notice that this video is shot with an HD camera (it is better quality than some of our past footage). The Rangers who patrol the Gorilla Sector have all received training in filming, and how to use HD cameras, so they take cameras out on a daily basis now as part of their routine.

 

To watch video 

Gorilla Facts.

Photograph by Michael Nichols
Male silverback mountain gorillas gain their distinctive silver tinge at about 13 years old, when they reach adulthood.

There are roughly 700 mountain gorillas remaining on Earth, and nearly half live in the forests of the Virunga mountains in central Africa. These gorillas live on the green, volcanic slopes of Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo—areas that have seen much human violence from which the gorillas have not escaped unscathed.
Many conservation initiatives are meant to aid mountain gorillas, and it is believed that their numbers may be steady or slowly increasing. Still they continue to face major threats from habitat loss and poaching.
Mountain gorillas have longer hair and shorter arms than their lowland cousins. They also tend to be a bit larger than other gorillas.
Gorillas can climb trees, but are usually found on the ground in communities of up to 30 individuals. These troops are organized according to fascinating social structures. Troops are led by one dominant, older adult male, often called a silverback because of the swath of silver hair that adorns his otherwise dark fur. Troops also include several other young males, some females, and their offspring.
The leader organizes troop activities like eating, nesting in leaves, and moving about the group's 0.75-to-16-square-mile (2-to-40-square-kilometer) home range.

Those who challenge this alpha male  are apt to be cowed by impressive shows of physical power. He may stand upright, throw things, make aggressive charges, and pound his huge chest while barking out powerful hoots or unleashing a frightening roar. Despite these displays and the animals' obvious physical power, gorillas are generally calm and nonaggressive unless they are disturbed.
In the thick forests of central and west Africa, troops find plentiful food for their vegetarian diet. They eat roots, shoots, fruit, wild celery, and tree bark and pulp.
Female gorillas give birth to one infant after a pregnancy of nearly nine months. Unlike their powerful parents, newborns are tiny—weighing four pounds (two kilograms)—and able only to cling to their mothers' fur. These infants ride on their mothers' backs from the age of four months through the first two or three years of their lives.
Young gorillas, from three to six years old, remind human observers of children. Much of their day is spent in play, climbing trees, chasing one another, and swinging from branches.
In captivity, gorillas have displayed significant intelligence and have even learned simple human sign language.

Fast Facts

Type:

Mammal

Diet:

Omnivore

Average life span in the wild:

35 years

Size:

Standing height, 4 to 6 ft (1.2 to 1.8 m)

Weight:

300 to 485 lbs (135 to 220 kg)

Group name:

Troop or band

Protection status:

Endangered

Size relative to a 6-ft (2-m) man:

Mountain Gorilla Range

Source and great information

Gorilla Facts

Image via Wikipedia

The eastern lowland gorilla

is one of the most endangered species in the world.  Their numbers have been calculated to around three thousand, but with civil war and poaching in their habitats that number is probably far less.  The eastern lowland gorillas’ scientific name is Gorilla beringei graueri.  They are found only in the tropical forests of eastern Zaire, Africa, in central Africa.  They range in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has been in civil disarray for years. 
            The eastern lowland gorilla has a very complex social structure.  They live in large family groups. Their numbers have been reported up to 20 individuals, and in very rare cases as many as 30.  Male silverbacks are the family

leaders; a few unrelated females and younger males also maintain the family.  Females will leave to find single males when they are sexually mature around age eight.  Only females related to each other will groom one another, since the bonds between related and unrelated females are loose. 

Males mature much later than their female counter parts.  They become sexually mature around fifteen or twenty years old.  About half will leave their native families to join another family at this time or become solitary.  Fights often break out for  mating rights and these can be deadly.  Females only give birth every four years.  Only the silverbacks in the groups are allowed to mate with the females in the family.  This allows them to keep dominance and stabilize the family. 

Eastern lowland gorillas tend to live an average of thirty-five years in the wild.  They are the largest primates, therefore mostly terrestrial. Not much is known of their habits since they are shy animals and their numbers are dropping in a highly dangerous area of the world.  Their diet consists mainly of leaves. They are not particularly fond of fruits. They forage usually at morning and evening, resting in the middle of the day. 

The eastern lowland gorilla is the most intelligent primate.  They can make twenty-five different vocalizations all with a specific meaning.  Some have been taught sign language and know a few words.  Simple sentences can be formed through this.

There are many differences and similarities between apes and the other primates.  For example, while prosimians have a wide range for a diet, including fruits, leaves and nuts, gorillas tend to stick with leaves.  Also, since apes are too large to climb branches or trees, they stay on the ground. Prosimians and monkeys on the other hand are small enough to allow for brachiating.  

All primates have social structures.  Monkeys and lowland gorillas both have the male transfer system

.  After they are sexually mature the males leave the family and go into solitude or find new groups to join.  Also gibbons and gorillas have mixed families that have males, females and juveniles included in the group. 
            While prosimians and monkeys may have families or groups of  up to six hundred members, the eastern lowland gorillas tend to have small families of only twenty to thirty.  Monkeys and prosimians in the new world rely on their sense of smell, while old world apes have an increased sense of sight, such as in humans. 
            The eastern lowland gorillas are giant, intelligent apes that are in critical danger of becoming extinct.  They share some similarities of other primates while they differ in other aspects.


  Works Cited
“The Eastern Gorillas, Gorilla beringei.” IUCN/SSC Primate Specialist Group. Web. 22 Oct. 2009. .
“Eastern Lowland Gorilla at Animal Corner.” Animal Information at Animal Corner. Web. 22 Oct. 2009. .
“Eastern Lowland Gorilla.” News & Events. Web. 22 Oct. 2009. .

Source

   

The Paignton Zoo Won The Research Project For a Study Into Gorilla Behaviour

BOTH of Torbay's wildlife attractions have received top awards for science and animal exhibits.

The work of Paignton Zoo and Living Coasts in Torquay, all part of the Whitley Wildlife Conservation Trust, was recognised at the 2009 British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums awards, with a Paignton scientist taking a personal accolade.

The zoo won the research project for a study into gorilla behaviour by researcher Kirsten Pullen for a doctorate thesis.

Dr Pullen said: "It is very nice to receive recognition for all the hard work.

"This award is especially important as it comes from the zoo community and was judged by my peers.

"My PhD is a milestone in my career. I aim to do post-doctorate research in this field.

"The work has practical applications for animal husbandry and conservation breeding.

"The award is also recognition for the commitment of both Paignton Zoo and the Whitley Wildlife Conservation Trust to science and research."

Dr Pullen was a zoo keeper and rose to a senior level at Bristol Zoo before joining Paignton Zoo and moving into research.

Paignton also received a commendation in the education section for its junior zoo vet experience and new enclosure category for the £1.5million Crocodile Swamp, while Living Coasts was commended for Mangrove: Roots of the Sea.

The zoo received a commendation in the PR category for its video coverage of the birth of four rare Sumatran tiger cubs in February.

Living Coasts took a marketing commendation for its marketing through the use of an innovative penguin game.

Director of marketing Pippa Craddock said: "We are very proud of our success this year.

"The wins are tribute to our dedication to conservation and the importance of the visitor experience, and to our staff who make our zoos such special places."

Dr Miranda Stevenson, association director, said: "This award demonstrates how much time and effort our leading zoos are investing to help change public behaviour and ensure the future of planet Earth."

The ceremony was held at Knowsley Hall in Merseyside.

Source

Gorilla, Koko Has Extensive Vocabulary

The primary program of The Gorilla Foundation/Koko.org involves teaching American Sign Language to two lowland gorillas, Koko and Michael (who recently passed away). The Gorilla Language Project, or Project Koko, is the longest continuous inter-species communications project of its kind in the world, and it serves as a unique and irreplaceable irreplaceable resource for the international conservation community.



Koko has a working vocabulary of over 1000 signs. Koko understands approximately 2,000 words of spoken English. Koko initiates the majority of conversations with her human companions and typically constructs statements averaging three to six words.Koko has a tested IQ of between 70 and 95 on a human scale, where 100 is considered "normal." Michael, the male silverback gorilla who grew up with Koko, had a working vocabulary of over 600 signs.

http://www.koko.org/world/

Source

Gorilla Mums Keep Family In Check

Female western lowland gorillas deliberately clap their hands

The hand-clap allows the gorillas to maintain group cohesiveness:

Primatologist Ammie Kalan

Female gorillas clap their hands to get the attention of male silverbacks and infants.

The discovery in the forests of central Africa is only the second time the behaviour has been recorded in wild western lowland gorillas.

It suggests that the great apes use hand-clapping to communicate over long distances and keep the family group together.

The discovery is published in the journal Primates.

"What struck me most was how it was conducted in such a controlled and deliberate manner while in a bipedal position; much like a human would hand clap," says Ammie Kalan of Oxford Brookes University, in Oxford, UK.

"A female was able to exert control over her infant's behaviour by hand-clapping. Which did remind me of a human mother."

Kalan and colleague Hugo Rainey of the Wildlife Conservation Society observed the gorillas at the Lac Tele Community Reserve Project in the Republic of Congo.

Alerting silverbacks

Captive male and female gorillas occasionally clap their hands, either to display enthusiasm or to attract the attention of human keepers.

More than 25 years ago, Diane Fossey observed hand-clapping in a single wild mountain gorilla, a different species. But this female acquired and lost the behaviour again within four years.

Silverbacks protect females and younger apes (NPL).

Twenty years ago, primatologist J Michael Fay saw western lowland gorillas in the Central African Republic hand-clapping, which he believed to be an alarm response to human observers.

Kalan and Rainey recorded hand-clapping among four separate groups of western lowland gorilla living in the Likouala swamp within the Lac Tele Community Reserve.

In all, they observed five adult females clapping their hands. Four were mothers with infants present. Each time the female clapped her hands twice in rapid succession in front of her body.

On two occasions, the females clearly clapped their hands to alert a male silverback to the presence of the human observers.

In response, one silverback tried to intimidate the observers, while on the second occasion a silverback hiding 10m away behind a tree produced a loud roar, then drummed on the buttress roots and beat his chest.

Group cohesion

Another time, after Kalan's and Rainey's research team startled three females in a tree, they heard them hand-clap five times in succession, with at least one minute between each.

"We believe they were attempting to contact the silverback even after we were no longer posing a threat," says Kalan.

They also saw a mother suddenly clap her hands at her infant, who stopped playing, while other adults stopped foraging. They all then followed the mother's gaze, who was looking at the researchers. The whole group moved away shortly after.

"It's a form of gestural communication that has largely been overlooked by gorilla researchers," says Kalan.

"It's used as a form of long distance communication with the silverback, even when humans are not posing an immediate threat, as well as to get the attention of group members. The hand clap allows the gorillas to maintain group cohesiveness."

Kalan and Rainey's research also supports the idea that gorillas might develop different ways to communicate depending on the varying culture of each group.

Source

New Online Website, Gorilla Tracking, The Uganda Wildlife Authorities

The Uganda Wildlife Authority is set to launch online gorilla-tracking, to promote tourism around the primates globally, previously only done on a small-scale by private tour operators.

A Silverback gorilla with her baby at the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in Uganda . Picture: Morgan Mbabazi

Through the friendagorilla.org website to be launched this month, gorilla lovers worldwide will have a chance to befriend any of Uganda’s gorillas from the seven habituated groups at a cost of one dollar or its equivalent.

The website will also have other sections like Geo-Track, where one can track gorillas using actual Global Positioning System co-ordinates that the authority’s gorilla trackers will be provided with regularly. In addition, the site will have a section for virtual tracking.

Gorilla lovers will be able to track the gorillas online in real time. Fees for the electronic tracking are yet to be determined. Currently, the authority charges $500 per permit per day to track a single family.

We shall have cameras placed strategically in the forest and when you log on, you can see a gorilla moving in the forest from your screen,” said Thomas Slater Jr, art director at QG Saatchi &Saatchi, the company working on the project.

To befriend the primates, subscribers will pay the one dollar by way of short messages using their mobile phones, Master or Visa card. Online trackers will able to add gorillas as friends on Internet social sites such as Facebook, Myspace and Twitter.

If it succeeds, the project will make $700,000 annually. The money will be used to hire more trackers to bring the number to 45 from 25; buy communication equipment for the trackers and a special power generator that is less noisy.

“The money raised will also go towards conservation efforts through community projects and help bring the gorillas to the living rooms of many more people,” said Eunice Mahoro, tourism director at UWA.

The online gorilla tracking project is one of the major marketing efforts undertaken by the government, considering that gorillas are the country’s biggest tourism attraction. Last year the industry earned the country $600 million, of which $225 million was from gorilla tourism.

Corporates have also been given a chance to support the project by sponsoring web pages for a whole year.

The new marketing strategy coincides with the UN declaration of 2009 is the Year of the Gorilla.

The aim is to raise awareness on the need to conserve gorillas, which are considered endangered because of human activities like habitat destruction through logging, burning and clearing of land for agriculture, hunting and trapping by poachers, diseases and armed conflicts.

There are about 720 gorillas left worldwide, half of which are in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. The rest are found in the Virunga habitat shared between Rwanda, Uganda and DR Congo, with Uganda’s Mgahinga Gorilla national park protecting the northern pvolcanic slopes.

The designers of the online strategy are optimistic that the new marketing tool will attract more gorilla tourists from the United States and Europe where millions of people have access to the Internet and use social sites.

Source

New Website will be Launching

Female Gorillas Use Sex as a Tactic

September 2009 by

Ewen Callaway

Female gorillas use sex as a tactic to thwart their rivals, new research suggests. Pregnant apes court their silverback male to stop other females conceiving.

"It seems to us that mating is another tactic that females use to compete with each other – in this case to gain favour with another male," says Diane Doran-Sheehy, a primatologist at Stony Brook University in New York.

Her team chronicled the sex lives of five female western lowland gorillas and one silverback almost every day for more than three years. "We wondered if, basically, [pregnant] females can mimic [ovulating] females and dupe the male into mating with them and distract him from what those other girls are doing," Doran-Sheehy says.

This kind of competitive behaviour may even help explain how humans evolved into a mostly monogamous species, she says.

Pleased to meet you

However, Homo sapiens and Gorilla gorilla aren't the only apes who engage in recreational sex. Bonobos treat coitus like a handshake, while female chimpanzees mate during pregnancy and outside fertile periods, or oestrus, to gain support from males and to protect against infanticide. "All of the males think they could be the father of your offspring," Doran-Sheehy says.

Yet paternity isn't an issue for silverback gorillas, which usually enjoy exclusive access to a harem of females. "It doesn't have all that much to do with the males," Doran-Sheehan says. "It's what's going on with the females in the group."

Her team recorded most copulations and all births among a human-habituated group of gorillas at the Mondika research centre in the Republic of Congo for 1147 days between September 2003 and January 2007.

All five females gave birth to one infant during the study and all engaged in sex after pregnancy, the researchers found. However, females seemed to time such post-conceptive romps with the fleeting fertility of another female.

Strategic sex

For instance, after one female, MK, became pregnant she mated with the silverback during three consecutive oestrus cycles of another gorilla, EB, who left the group afterwards. With only lactating – and therefore sexually inactive – females remaining, MK ceased offering herself to the silverback. Another female named UG mated throughout her pregnancy, almost always when another female was trying to become pregnant.

The silverback seemed none the wiser. Unlike male mountain gorillas, which prefer to mate with fertile females, Doran-Sheehy's silverback went for higher-ranking females, fertile or not.

Such prestige could be one reason why pregnant females fake oestrus: group sizes are limited, and females must curry favour with a male to stick around.

By delaying the pregnancy of others, females could also gain a reproductive advantage over competitors, says Tara Stoinski, a primatologist at Zoo Atlanta in Georgia, who found that pregnant female gorillas in captivity also time their sexual advances to coincide with those of other females. "I agree with Diane's assertion that females are competing with each other."

Source

Video, Silverbacks, Charging

The Rangers have filmed another so-called “interaction” between the silverbacks Humba and Kabirizi. In the video you can see the two gorilla families mixed together (almost 50 mountain gorillas in total) watching the silverbacks strutting their stuff and charging at each other.

The most heated moment comes when Humba spots a young male from the other group on the wrong side of the line- as Humba heads towards him Kabirizi comes charging in to the rescue backed by his blackback side-kicks.

Source and Video

Gorillas May Not be Vegetarians

Reputations in the mist

Mar 26th 2009
From The Economist print edition

GORILLAS are gentle giants, chimpanzees aggressive killers and bonobos sex-crazed vegetarians. That, at least, is the PR which has been created around the three species of ape most closely related to man. They are simple stories—and simple stories sell books, TV programmes and even, whisper it softly, newspaper articles.

In nature, of course, things are a little more complicated. Chimpanzees are undoubtedly successful hunters, but the “wars” seen between neighbouring bands seem to have been brought on by human encroachment on their habitat rather than original sin. Bonobos, too, have been shown in the past year to hunt animals for food, and are losing their promiscuous aura as more data come in. Only gorillas have retained their reputations intact. Until now.

Part of the reason for the stories was that apes are hard to watch in the wild, and few people are prepared to put in the time needed to do so. Early observations were assumed to be representative, but were based on small samples. One way to extend those observations is to study animals in zoos.

And that is what Steve Ross, a primatologist at Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, has done. He has looked, in particular, at the interactions between zoo-held apes and local birds and small mammals. Some of his findings cast further doubt on the stereotypes.

Mr Ross and his colleagues, who have just published their results in the American Journal of Primatology, asked 71 zoos around the United States about interactions between the local wildlife and any bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas or orangutans in their collections. The chimps did live up to their reputations. Four-fifths of the zoos that had them reported that they had killed at least one local animal during the past five years. Two-fifths of zoos with orangutans had likewise seen those animals hunt successfully over that period—which might surprise the layman, but such hunting has been seen in the wild. The most aggressive apes of all were the bonobos. In every zoo that kept them, these allegedly vegetarian creatures had killed visiting wildlife in the past five years.

But it was the gorillas that surprised the researchers most. In the wild, they seem to eat only plants and insects. Yet 30% of the zoos in the survey reported that their gorillas had killed some local wildlife, and in at least one case had eaten a bird.

This seemingly uncharacteristic aggression may be the result of captivity. Aberrant behaviour, often brought on by boredom, is not unusual in zoo animals. In fact, bonobo promiscuity seems to be an example of this. Wild bonobos (those few that have been watched carefully, at any rate) do not seem overly promiscuous. It is also possible, though, that gorillas hunt in the wild, but that no zoologist has yet observed them do so. If that is the case, then another carefully constructed zoological reputation will bite the dust.

Source

Ape Expert, Frans de Waal

We recently solicited your questions for primatologist Frans de Waal. Of all his accomplishments, one of the greatest has been his ability to so well communicate his scholarly findings to a wide audience. Here is one compelling piece of advice he offered on that subject: “Keep the reader interested, whatever it takes, so long as you don’t violate the truth.”

His answers below, which openly discuss (inter alia) how polygamist sects mimic the mating systems of animals, why bonobos eat after sex, and his opinion of “God-questioning rants,” definitely stay true to his philosophy. He also shows a keen understanding of economics when discussing how monkeys, just like some people, exhibit “inequity aversion” — a sure sign of irrationality if profit-maximizing is the goal.

Thanks to Frans for his fascinating answers, and to all of you for your very good questions.

Q: Do primate species other than bonobo monkeys use sex as a form of communication/bonding/intimacy vs. purely procreational purposes?

A: Bonobos offer the best example of non-reproductive sex. They use sex at the drop of a hat for reasons that, most of the time, seem social — such as during a reconciliation after a fight, or when they anticipate food competition. They use sex to diffuse tension: after the sex they share the food. Bonobos are our closest animal relatives together with chimpanzees.*

How much bonobos differ from chimpanzees was highlighted by a recent experiment in which apes were presented with a platform that they could pull close by working together. When food was placed on the platform, the bonobos clearly outperformed the chimpanzees in getting a hold of it.

The presence of food normally induces rivalry, but the bonobos engaged in sexual contact, played together, and happily shared the food side by side. The chimpanzees, in contrast, were unable to overcome their competition.

Outside bonobos, there are many other animals that engage in sex even if reproduction is impossible, such as when the female is pregnant, or between members of the same sex. Also here, the sex serves a bonding function, or to signal dominance. So, the idea that sex is intended for reproduction and should therefore be used exclusively for reproduction (an argument used by the Catholic church against condom use) is incorrect for many animals, as it is for our own species.

* Bonobos and chimps are not monkeys, but apes. Apes are large primates with large brains, no tails, flat chests, and shoulders. Monkeys are smaller, have tails, and often a more protruding face (snout). Humans are obviously more like apes than like monkeys.

Q: Does religiously motivated rejection of evolution (e.g. creationism) ever get in your way when working?

A: I don’t experience this kind of resistance in science, in which evolutionary theory is obviously the dominant paradigm. Creationists sometimes try to create the impression that lots of scientists have their doubts about the theory, but I have yet to meet such scientists. I’d be surprised if more than 0.1 percent of active research biologists have such doubts.

When I came to this country, over twenty-five years ago, I was amazed that creationism was still taken seriously, and assumed that it would blow over. It never did, of course. I can’t help but look at it as a left-over of a medieval mind-set unresponsive to overwhelming counter-evidence.

At the same time, I must say that I don’t think the recent wave of God-questioning rants have helped much. They have polarized the issue, whereas in my mind it is eminently possible to look at religion as a collective value system and at science as telling us how the physical world operates. Even though I am not religious myself, I think the conflict between science and religion is unnecessary and overblown.

Q: Is yours the lab that did the grape vs. cucumber study? The monkeys got either a grape or a cucumber for doing a task …

A: Yes, together with Sarah Brosnan, we did a study in which capuchin monkeys received either a grape or a piece of cucumber for a simple task.

If both monkeys got the same reward, there never was a problem. Grapes are by far preferred (as real primates, like us, they go for sugar content), but even if both received cucumber, they’d perform the task many times in a row.

However, if they received different rewards, the one who got the short end of the stick would begin to waver in its responses, and very soon start a rebellion by either refusing to perform the task or refusing to eat the cucumber.

This is an “irrational” response in the sense that if profit-maximizing is what life (and economics) is about, one should always take what one can get. Monkeys will always accept and eat a piece of cucumber whenever we give it to them, but apparently not when their partner is getting a better deal. In humans, this reaction is known as “inequity aversion.”

I actually don’t think the response is irrational at all, but related to the fact that in a cooperative system, one needs to watch what kind of investment one makes and what one gets in return. If your partners always ends up getting a greater share, this means that you’re being taken advantage of. So, the rational thing to do is withhold cooperation until the reward division improves.

This holds an important message for American society which is becoming less fair by the day.

The Gini-index (which measures income inequality) keeps rising and is now more in line with that of third-world countries than of other industrialized nations. If monkeys already have trouble accepting income inequality, you can imagine what it does to us. It creates great tensions within a society, and we know that tensions affect psychological and physical well-being. Some attribute the dismal health statistics of Americans (now #42 in the world’s longevity ranking) to the social frictions of an unfair society (see Richard Wilkinson, 2005: The Impact of Inequality).

Q: Do promiscuous gay men and bonobos have anything in common?

A: Bonobos often engage in sex with same-sex partners, but they’re not gay in that they also have sex with the opposite sex. They’re “bi.” They seek sex often for social reasons, to reduce tensions, and to form friendships. I am not sure that this also applies to human gay promiscuity, or whether the latter is purely pleasure-oriented.

Q: Do you think that many of the results you and your collaborators have found would be similar if the experiments were done in the wild?

A: The relation between fieldwork and captive work on primates is an important one.

True, our grape-versus-cucumber test cannot be conducted with wild monkeys for the simple reason that they’re not used to receiving food from humans. It is unlikely, however, that the striking psychological mechanism that we observed, leading to great agitation in the monkeys, comes out of the blue.

As said, I look at it as evolved in the context of cooperation, mainly to ensure commensurate rewards for efforts. So, I expect the same inequity aversion in dogs and wolves, but not cats (which are solitary hunters, and shouldn’t care much about what others get).

Cooperation has been observed among wild capuchins. They sometimes work together to capture (and eat) giant squirrels or coati pups. After the hunt, they enjoy the spoils — which is where reward division comes in.

The fact that capuchins are capable of cooperation hints at the right evolutionary impetus for inequity aversion.

I know, in fact, of no untrained skills discovered in captivity that have never been found in the same species in the wild. Tool-use, for example, was first known of zoo apes, and everyone said that this doesn’t count — until of course wild apes also were shown to use tools.

Or, take reconciliation behavior, which I discovered in a zoo colony of chimpanzees — and everyone said that obviously wild primates wouldn’t do such a thing. But we now have data on close to thirty different primates that reconcile after fights (and also non-primates, such as dolphins and hyenas), and the evidence includes wild monkeys and apes.

I do believe, however, that captive studies can never replace studies in the field. They just have different insights to offer, such as with the studies of chimpanzee cultures.

Many chimpanzee groups in Africa have their own unique traditions, such as nut-cracking or social customs. The field workers speculate they learn these behaviors from each other through imitation. They can’t prove this, however. This is where captive studies come in, as we are capable of testing what apes can learn. Our studies strongly support the field work in that we have shown apes capable of picking up new skills from each other.

Q: Are baby monkeys as helpless and dependent on their mothers (or other adults) as human babies?

A: All primates are characterized by a long dependency — in monkeys, such as macaques and baboons, usually the first two years. But even after this, the bond is maintained, and the mother provides support and grooming.

In the apes, the period of dependence is quite a bit longer. Nursing lasts for four, sometimes five years, and the mother carries her young first on her belly, then on her back. Given the load this represents, she can’t have too many offspring. So, she has one baby at a time, and the inter-birth interval in the wild is five or six years. Young chimpanzees become relatively independent by eight, but aren’t considered adult until they are over twelve years old.

Q: Possibly the dumbest question: have you observed primates engaged in incestuous sexual behavior? if so, is it ignored, rewarded, or punished by the social group?

A: Very timely question. Whereas I look at the polygamist sect in Texas with intrigue, as they seem to mimic the mating system of quite a few animals (sending out young males so that the dominant males can freely reproduce with lots of females), the incestuous man in Austria doesn’t fit anything I know about primates, because all animals have ways of avoiding inbreeding. There is, in fact, very little inbreeding even at zoos, where sometimes daughters grow up with males who could be their fathers.

The general rule in primates is that one sex or the other leaves the group at puberty. In many monkeys, the males leave and seek another group. With apes (and overwhelmingly in human societies, too), it are the females who leave. You can imagine that this takes care of a lot of inbreeding opportunities, as the migrants go find groups where they meet unrelated members of the opposite sex.

On top of this, animals follow the so-called Westermarck effect, which is also thought to apply to humans. The rule is that individuals who grow up together develop sexual aversion for each other. Siblings or mother-son combinations just don’t have a great desire to have sex. Westermarck formulated this idea long ago, and it has been tested with many animals, and generally holds up. There is also evidence of Kibbutz and Chinese marriage data that in humans, too, individuals who grow up together, even if they’re unrelated, avoid sexual relations.

Q: How much does culture vary between chimp troops? If a chimp moves from one troop to another, will it teach the new troop anything of its old culture?

A: There are instances in the wild of female chimpanzees entering a new community from the outside, and bringing new knowledge with them. They don’t bring radical change, but usually small steps, such as the female knowing a certain nut that can be eaten and that her host community doesn’t touch.

Q: Can any primate can be taught any sustained, rhythmic, gravitationally constrained movement behavior lasting for 10 seconds to 1 minute without missing a beat? (The speed must be at the rate of 450 to 550 milliseconds per step.)

For example: jumping up and down in place, marching in place, stepping 2 steps up onto then 2 steps down off of a stool.

Do any primates show the “stepping reflex” present in neonates?

A: This question is a bit too precise for me to answer, but of course many animals have an excellent sense of rhythm, since this is part of their locomotion.

Look at the regular wing-beat of many birds (or butterflies, for that matter). A large animal, like an elephant, could never move as elegantly as it does if it didn’t coordinate the rhythm of its four legs carefully, which requires rhythm.

Chimpanzees drum, and they can do so in a very nice and steady rhythm. They usually don’t do so for long, but occasionally they get really into it and keep hitting a hollow object for minutes on end until it drives everybody crazy.

Perhaps the best video of a bird with a great sense of rhythm is the one of Snowball, the cockatoo, who seems to have an extraordinary sense of rhythm. Pronking or stotting Thompson gazelles also come to mind: they jump up and down in a display that is believed to signal their health to potential predators, who will go look for easier prey.

Q: What did you learn from Desmond Morris?

A: Great question. Desmond Morris is the most underrated behavioral biologist (ethologist) of his generation. His books have shaped the view of many, because he openly discussed, with great humor and flair, the human-animal connection before we had sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, and the like.

He also formulated ideas that others have adopted (stolen?) without any reference to him, such as that human talking is a bit like primate grooming, or that the human family arose so as to reduce competition among males, allowing them to go hunt together in the knowledge that each one would have a mate to return to.

These are very interesting ideas, albeit a bit untestable, but the main point is that Morris opened up the discussion about human origins and how they relate to animal behavior. He did all of this in a way that people understood and wanted to read.

But being such a popular “vulgarizer,” real scientists sometimes look down upon him.

The history of his popularity is interesting. I heard from his publisher that Morris had written many books before The Naked Ape, his giant 1960’s best seller (with a for-those-days very provocative title and cover). But those previous books hadn’t done too well.

He would entertain visitors at the London Zoo with a popular overview of comparisons between human and animal behavior. Everyone thought it was funny and deep and informative, and after his publisher had heard him speak, he said, “There’s your book!”

He wrote it in three months, I believe, because it was already all in his head.

I admire the guy, because it took guts to write what he wrote. As a student, I learned about his book because my professors kept warning us not to read Desmond Morris. The result was, of course, that we felt we had to.

What I learned: Keep the reader interested, whatever it takes, so long as you don’t violate the truth.

Q: I recently learned that there is a simple, funny test that helps to find out whether a toddler is self-conscious or not; simply put a red dot on his or her nose in front of a mirror and see whether or not the child tries to wipe it off. Now of course, that’s only self-consciousness; it doesn’t tell you how aware the child is of others and of the differences between those others and itself. This made me wonder, how self-conscious are primates?

A: Mirror self-recognition is tested this way. Children pass this test between 18 to 24 months, and the only animals thus far which have passed are the four great ape species (including chimpanzees), dolphins, and elephants. We conducted the elephant test at the Bronx zoo with a jumbo-sized mirror, and put some of the videos of this experiment on the web.

Q: Do you have any thoughts, personal or professional, on the so-called aquatic ape hypothesis of human evolution? (Posted by Sir Alister Hardy.)

A: It’s an honor to receive this question from you, who developed the hypothesis. I find that the idea has many intriguing elements to it, such as the subcutaneous fat layer and diving reflex that marks us humans. But until I see overwhelming evidence of human ancestors who lived near the water edge and survived mainly on aquatic plants and animals, it remains a hypothesis.

Finding one or two such settlements would in fact be insufficient, because for water to have been a major evolutionary force in the origin of humans, I’d guess we would need to find that during a certain time period this was the only way our ancestors survived.

Thus far, the evidence isn’t there. But perhaps you feel that the paleontologists haven’t been looking in the right places?

Long ago (in Peacemaking among Primates, 1989), I made some tongue-in-cheek speculations about bonobos as aquatic apes. They are the only apes to enter water voluntarily, seemingly enjoying it. There were rumors at the time that they’d walk bipedally into shallow rivers, which is a logical thing to do if you want to keep your head above the surface.

In recent years, I have heard few such stories, so perhaps they were exaggerated. But there is in fact footage of such behavior at a Belgian zoo.

For me the aquatic ape theory is not dead, but in great need of further evidence.

Q: Can an animal be “immoral” or are they “amoral”?

A: That’s a BIG question, which I can’t answer in a brief note. An organism can only be immoral if it is part, and adheres to, an agreed-upon system of morality, as we do. I don’t believe that chimpanzees, or other nonhuman animals, are moral beings in the sense that we are.

But to call them amoral isn’t correct either. Amoral means a total absence of morality, and it is obvious that the building blocks of morality (empathy, sympathy, cooperation, social rules) can be found in animals other than us.

The view that the natural world is “amoral” comes from Charles Darwin’s contemporary, T. H. Huxley, who felt that nature could never have produced human morality. He saw nature as inherently nasty.

I strongly disagree with this bleak view, as did Darwin himself (in The Descent of Man), but Huxley’s views are unfortunately still very much with us. I wrote an entire book to counter them: Primates & Philosophers."

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