http://news.aol.com/newsbloggers/2007/08/03/bonobo-promiscuity-another-myth-bites-the-dust/
Bonobo Promiscuity? Another Myth Bites the Dust
Posted Aug 3rd 2007 6:58AM by Dinesh D'SouzaFiled under: Science, Cultural Left, Bizarre, Sex
For the past few decades the African apes called bonobos have been the favorite animal of the social liberals. The reason is that bonobos are regarded as peace-loving, love-making animals. At the Bonobo Conservation Institute they describe bonobos as "hippie" chimps who "make love, not war." Supposedly bonobos are bisexual apes who engage in incessant and indiscriminate sexual activity as an alternative to power struggles and male wars of domination. I'm surprised the Democratic Party hasn't changed its symbol from the donkey to the bonobo.
Well, maybe the liberals should put their bonobsession on hold for a while...
The July 30 issue of the New Yorker has a fascinating article on the work of the German anthropologist Gottfried Hohmann, who is considered the world's leading authority on bonobos in the wild. The key term here is "in the wild." Most of the research on bonobos to date has been done by the Dutch anthropologist Frans de Waal. Studying bonobos in cages, de Waal discovered that bonobos seem to have sex a lot: oral sex, anal sex, all kinds of sex. In de Waal's famous portrait, the bonobo emerges as a creature much more interested in sex than in work or power or anything else. In other words, de Waal's bonobos bore a startling similarity to the Dutch.
Hohmann's work shows that de Waal got it mostly wrong. Yes, bonobos act a bit weird in captivity, but what would you do if you were stuck in a cage? What else is there to do except look for unoccupied orifices? Just as people in prisons engage in all kinds of strange behavior, so too bonobos that are locked up behave in unnatural ways. "Unnatural" here means anti-Darwinian. Hohman's suspicions about de Waal's work were aroused by his recognition that the peace-loving promiscuous bonobo would not make sense under Darwin's theory of evolution. Darwin posits a struggle for existence and throughout nature this means a struggle for survival, reproduction and power. So how could bonobos be different?
Turns out they aren't. Observe bonobos in the wild for long periods of time, and they don't act much different from other kinds of apes. De Waal's famous contrast between the bonobo and the chimpanzee turns out to be largely illusory. Bonobos too have power struggles. There is patriarchy among bonobos, just as with other apes. "It was so easy for Frans to charm everyone," Hohmann says. "He had the big stories. We don't have the big stories." What Hohmann is leaving out here is the human tendency to distort evidence to suit our prejudices. Libertines and other social liberals loved Margaret Mead's now-discredited accounts of promiscuity in Samoa because they made the Samoans into libertines. Once the Samoans were shown not to conform to the liberal expectation, bonobos were fashioned into the new Samoans.
Now the liberals have to look for another mascot. Who will it be: the Andalusian ant? The New Zealand platypus? Perhaps these fellows should stick with the donkey.
Reader Comments ( Page 1 of 3)
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1. Looks to me like you spend too much time worrying about Liberal sex lives and need to get one of your own. Might loosen you up a tad.
kevin at 8:16AM on Aug 3rd 2007
Saturday, August 4, 2007
Great apes love a game of charadesBy Roger Highfield, Science Editor
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/08/02/sciapes102.xml
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 02/08/2007
How to ape orang-utan
Great apes and humans have long been known to share certain character traits and now it seems they share the same tactics for playing parlour games - charades in particular.
Orangutans repeat gestures until they are fully understood
Orangutans use the same strategy that generations of partygoers follow when playing the popular game by using actions repeatedly and more frantically until they get their message across.
The findings, by researchers at the University of St Andrews and published in today's edition of Current Biology, give a remarkable glimpse of the origins of language millions of years ago and point to greater cognitive ability in orangutans.
Prof Richard Byrne of the University of St Andrews, who led the study, said: "We were surprised that the orangutans' responses so clearly signalled their assessment of the audience's comprehension.
''Looking at the tapes of the animals' responses, you can easily work out whether the orangutan thinks it has been fully, partially, or not understood, without seeing what went before.
"This means that, in effect, they are passing information back to the audience about how well they are doing in understanding them, hence our 'charades' analogy.''
The researchers presented orangutans with tempting food, such as bananas, and a not-so-tempting food item, such as a leek or celery, that had to be reached with human help.
But there was a catch. Rather than play along all the time, the researcher deliberately misunderstood the orangutan's requests, providing them with only half of the treat in some cases and, in others, handing over the less pleasant food.
In response, the apes persisted, changing their gestures to get their point across - focusing on gestures already used and repeating them frequently.
How to ape orang-utan
Note, the meaning of these gestures tends to vary from group to group, though these are common meanings:
Pucker lips as in raspberry sound (Ugh)
Point with one or two fingers extended (Give me that)
Rock/Swing entire body/ Bang the cage, or an object/ Throw an object/ Clap hands. (Hey, look at me!)
Shake hands (Quicker/hurry!)
Yawn (Do we have to do any more experiments?)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/08/02/sciapes102.xml
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 02/08/2007
How to ape orang-utan
Great apes and humans have long been known to share certain character traits and now it seems they share the same tactics for playing parlour games - charades in particular.
Orangutans repeat gestures until they are fully understood
Orangutans use the same strategy that generations of partygoers follow when playing the popular game by using actions repeatedly and more frantically until they get their message across.
The findings, by researchers at the University of St Andrews and published in today's edition of Current Biology, give a remarkable glimpse of the origins of language millions of years ago and point to greater cognitive ability in orangutans.
Prof Richard Byrne of the University of St Andrews, who led the study, said: "We were surprised that the orangutans' responses so clearly signalled their assessment of the audience's comprehension.
''Looking at the tapes of the animals' responses, you can easily work out whether the orangutan thinks it has been fully, partially, or not understood, without seeing what went before.
"This means that, in effect, they are passing information back to the audience about how well they are doing in understanding them, hence our 'charades' analogy.''
The researchers presented orangutans with tempting food, such as bananas, and a not-so-tempting food item, such as a leek or celery, that had to be reached with human help.
But there was a catch. Rather than play along all the time, the researcher deliberately misunderstood the orangutan's requests, providing them with only half of the treat in some cases and, in others, handing over the less pleasant food.
In response, the apes persisted, changing their gestures to get their point across - focusing on gestures already used and repeating them frequently.
How to ape orang-utan
Note, the meaning of these gestures tends to vary from group to group, though these are common meanings:
Pucker lips as in raspberry sound (Ugh)
Point with one or two fingers extended (Give me that)
Rock/Swing entire body/ Bang the cage, or an object/ Throw an object/ Clap hands. (Hey, look at me!)
Shake hands (Quicker/hurry!)
Yawn (Do we have to do any more experiments?)
Sunday, July 15, 2007
The giant lion-eating chimps of the magic forest
To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk
Found: the giant lion-eating chimps of the magic forest
James Randerson, science correspondent
Saturday July 14 2007
The Guardian
Deep in the Congolese jungle is a band of apes that, according to local legend, kill lions, catch fish and even howl at the moon. Local hunters speak of massive creatures that seem to be some sort of hybrid between a chimp and a gorilla.
Their location at the centre of one of the bloodiest conflicts on the planet, the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has meant that the mystery apes have been little studied by western scientists. Reaching the region means negotiating the shifting fortunes of warring rebel factions, and the heart of the animals' range is deep in impenetrable forest.
But despite the difficulties, a handful of scientists have succeeded in studying the animals. Early speculation that the apes may be some yeti-like new species or a chimp/gorilla hybrid proved unfounded, but the truth has turned out to be in many ways even more fascinating. They are actually a population of super-sized chimps with a unique culture - and it seems, a taste for big cat flesh.
The most detailed and recent data comes from Cleve Hicks, at the University of Amsterdam, who has spent 18 months in the field watching the Bili apes - named after a local town - since 2004. His team's most striking find came after one of his trackers heard chimps calling for several days from the same spot.
When he investigated he came across a chimp feasting on the carcass of a leopard. Mr Hicks cannot be sure the animal was killed by the chimp, but the find lends credence to the apes' lion-eating reputation.
"What we have found is this completely new chimpanzee culture," said Mr Hicks. Previously, researchers had only managed to snatch glimpses of the animals or take photos of them using camera traps. But Mr Hicks used local knowledge to get closer to them and photograph them.
"We were told of this sort of fabled land out west by one of our trackers who goes out there to fish," said Mr Hicks whose project is supported by the Wasmoeth Wildlife Foundation. "I call it the magic forest. It is a very special place."
Getting there means a gruelling 40km (25-mile) trek through the jungle, from the nearest road, not to mention navigating croc-infested rivers. But when he arrived he found apes without their normal fear of humans. Chimps near the road flee immediately at the sight of people because they know the consequences of a hunter's rifle, but these animals were happy to approach him. "The further away from the road the more fearless the chimps got," he added.
Mr Hicks reports that he found a unique chimp culture. For example, unlike their cousins in other parts of Africa the chimps regularly bed down for the night in nests on the ground. Around a fifth of the nests he found were there rather than in the trees.
"How can they get away with sleeping on the ground when there are lions, leopards, golden cats around as well as other dangerous animals like elephants and buffalo?" said Mr Hicks.
"I don't like to paint them as being more aggressive, but maybe they prey on some of these predators and the predators kind of leave them alone." He is keen to point out though that they don't howl at the moon.
"The ground nests were very big and there was obviously something very unusual going on there. They are not unknown elsewhere but very unusual," said Colin Groves, an expert on primate morphology at the Australian National University in Canberra who has observed the nests in the field.
Prof Groves believes that the Bili apes should prompt a radical rethink of the family tree of chimp sub-species. He has proposed that primatologists should now recognise five different sub-divisions instead of the current four.
Mr Hicks said the animals also have what he calls a "smashing culture" - a blunt but effective way of solving problems. He has found hundreds of snails and hard-shelled fruits smashed for food, seen chimps carrying termite mounds to rocks to break them open and also found a turtle that was almost certainly smashed apart by chimps.
Like chimp populations in other parts of Africa, the Bili chimps use sticks to fish for ants, but here the tools are up to 2.5 metres long.
The most exciting thing about this population of chimps though is that it is much bigger than anyone realised and may be one of the largest remaining continuous populations of the species left in Africa. Mr Hicks and his colleague Jeroen Swinkels surveyed an area of 7,000 square kilometres and found chimps everywhere. Their unique culture was uniform throughout.
However, the future for the Bili apes is far from secure. "Things are not promising," said Karl Ammann, an independent wildlife photographer who began investigating the apes 1996. "The absence of a strong central government has resulted in most of the region becoming more independent and lawless. In conservation terms this is a disaster."
Copyright Guardian News and Media Limited
Friday, July 13, 2007
Talk, Talk, Talk: One Thing We Do Better than Apes
Talk, Talk, Talk: One Thing We Do Better than Apes
http://www.livescience.com/health/070713_hn_chat.html
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Visit LiveScience -- http://www.livescience.com
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Monday, July 9, 2007
Internet of the Apes
Network of the apes is jungle internet
Look away now if you are not of a Darwinian disposition. Behavioural scientists have compiled research into how the group dynamics among apes can mirror those of network engineers in IT departments.
The researchers found that apes use highly complex trail markers, made up of sticks and leaves, to silently communicate in the dense tropical forests where they live along the Congo River.
The discovery is in opposition to the belief of many scientists that apes lack the brain structure for complex communications.
Downtime firmly believes that this is a primitive attempt to establish a jungle internet and, if allowed to continue unchecked, could possibly lead to a Planet Of The Apes-style situation, where network managers are forced to flee half-buried datacentres on horseback as apes gain Cisco certification.
Furthermore, in the current market, if the apes can tack on some Web 2.0 functionality, they could probably sell their trail of sticks to Google for about £10bn.
It could just be enough to save the rainforests of the world, or at least to buy several bananas.
Look away now if you are not of a Darwinian disposition. Behavioural scientists have compiled research into how the group dynamics among apes can mirror those of network engineers in IT departments.
The researchers found that apes use highly complex trail markers, made up of sticks and leaves, to silently communicate in the dense tropical forests where they live along the Congo River.
The discovery is in opposition to the belief of many scientists that apes lack the brain structure for complex communications.
Downtime firmly believes that this is a primitive attempt to establish a jungle internet and, if allowed to continue unchecked, could possibly lead to a Planet Of The Apes-style situation, where network managers are forced to flee half-buried datacentres on horseback as apes gain Cisco certification.
Furthermore, in the current market, if the apes can tack on some Web 2.0 functionality, they could probably sell their trail of sticks to Google for about £10bn.
It could just be enough to save the rainforests of the world, or at least to buy several bananas.
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