Rise of the Apes

In other news, I viewed Rise of the Planet of the Apes the other weekend, and was generally impressed. Primatologists are supposed to be supportive of the movie because it did away with any remaining need for ape actors, by demonstrating that CG apes are just as effective. Inaccurate portrayal of these species must be viewed as a lesser evil, in this light.

"Rise" does a number of good things when it comes to showing off primate behavior, but when it goes wrong, it goes wrong. The scene where Caesar "asks permission" was almost offensive. Not only is this open palm gesture not a natural behavior as indicated, but it doesn't make any sense, behaviorally. Chimps do not ask permission, not in any explicit sense. This error betrays a gross misunderstanding of primate cognition.

Yet, the most unrealistic part of the movie was Caesar's appearance. I understand what they were going for: they wanted to make Caesar look more human, and make his emotive gestures jive with human movie-goers. His sclera are white, his snout is short, and his features are generally softened. Unfortunately, this aesthetic decision sent Caesar into the uncanny valley. He doesn't look like a chimp, and he does not look human, either. He looks unnatural. He was still my favorite character, though.

The other ape characters, like Rocket the alpha chimp, looked remarkably real, more real than I was expecting. The days of ape acting are over; anyone still using live apes in film and photo has no excuse other than greed.

Despite some of the things I've sad, the Oscar for Visual Effects should have been awarded to "Rise" - Hugo's gears and flying papers do not stack up. Maybe they were more challenging from an engineering perspective, but the fact is that the psychology of getting people to believe that human-like creatures are real is a far more impressive accomplishment.

The Language of Consciousness

Thanks to the wonders of Leap Day, I can now make this post before the end of February. Tis a Leap Day Miracle. I've been doing a lot of writing lately, mostly the dry sciencey kind, but I've had time for some fun stuff on the side, so I have no excuse for not writing more here.

Today, I have a news story for you, which reveals an interesting finding: that chimpanzees are thinking about what other chimps know when they open their big mouths.

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Chimpanzees consider their audience when communicating

Researchers found that wild chimps that spotted a poisonous snake were more likely to make their "alert call" in the presence of a chimp that had not seen the threat. This indicates that the animals "understand the mindset" of others.

read more...

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My criticisms of the paper as they are of the news article, but seeing as the news article is what most people read, it may be of greater lasting importance.

Let me begin by saying that I am not the world's biggest fan of ape language research. In a nutshell, I believe that apes don't need to be using our version of language to communicate in a complex manner. Much of this is the fault of the news media, since the best way to connect with a lay audience is to relate findings to topics the audience is intimately familiar with. Few topics are as strong as language, in this regard.

Entirely absent from this article is any mention of Theory of Mind, which is more what this research is about than language. This is an important finding because it suggest that chimps have mental models of what other chimps know. The soft vocalization in the presence of the snake suggest that they may even model what non-conspecifics, i.e. other species, are aware of.

Most animals flat-out cannot do this. Even in primates, the ability is hotly debated. Baboons, for instance, elaborately model other baboons' relationships with members of the troop, but modeling of immediately state-of-mind is not something we have a lot of evidence to support.

The ability to comprehend that others exist in the same capacity as one's self is one of the major stepping stones to achieving consciousness. Humans have this ability, but it has been doubtful that any other species comes close. The mirror self-recognition test, one of the most difficult to pass and hotly debated tests in animal cognition, only evaluates an animal's ability to recognize its own unique existence, much less the existence of other minds. These recent findings suggest that the chimps have abilities that go far beyond self-recognition; it is very exciting work.

The Tooth Fairy

Good, here is the post, left intact on my other computer. I said I would keep this update at least once a week. Once a month, however shameful that rate may be, is something I can stick to. So now I've technically got October and November covered. But it doesn't help matters that there hasn't been a great deal of interesting news coming out of the monkeyworld, either, so I can't even write half-strength posts about that. Regardless, here is an entry that is quite overdue.

Life as a male baboon is short and brutish, as it is for so many males in the wild. And females, when you often think about it. But usually not as short.

The bottom line is that males fight a lot, and when they fight, almost all of the damage they do to one another is with their massive fangs. But teeth don't last forever, just like male rank in the troop never lasts. After years of raking each others' flesh and bones with their canines, not to mention the added wear from, you know, eating, the canines will be lost.

Usually it doesn't happen all at once. I haven't had a chance to witness this process much, but usually the tip ends up broken, and then the main shaft will break off, and finally the entire tooth will fall out.

This isn't a great picture, but it is an amusing one to be sure, and as informative as we need. I unfortunately do not have any pictures from my own baboons because no one I know has a quality camera and the particular attention or desire to snap shots of the old males' canine-less maws. However, the above picture of a gelada serves the purpose well enough. He's mid yawn in this picture, and you can't see his remaining teeth yet, but you can already easily tell that they're missing. Look at how the skin stretches, and is pulled inward; if there were teeth there, the skin would be a comparatively flat surface, but without the large canines, the skin is pulled into the empty space to lessen the tension as the monkey yawns.

Among the troops, there are many old males who look like this. Old Chester and Betrand are missing all of their canines, and Mortimer is almost there. I suppose Morty must be a bit younger than I initially thought, since a chipped, yellowed, but intact lower canine remains in his mouth. None of these baboons will ever be on the top of the pile ever again, but they're still extremely dangerous, and have more than enough strength to take on any baboon female out there.


Fights aren't the only thing that ends the lives of monkey teeth. I know a few middle-aged rhesus macaques who've barely faught a day in their lives, but some of them are missing canines as well. Furthermore, there is a troop of baboons further down on the cape which roams near a bread factory. They frequently raid said factory, and the result is extremely bad baboon teeth, thanks to the large amounts of processed carbohydrate in the bread.

I mention the topic of teeth because recently, Aaron came out of a routine fight, and one of his upper canines was missing. Not too long ago, I noticed that Aaron's teeth were not as bright and shiny as we had previously thought. They were not visibly marred, but quite yellow. Further reason to believe that while Aaron is still a strong baboon in his prime, he is not as young an we once thought.

Rather than being on the upswing in terms of strength, Aaron has begun his decline, which is a scary prospect for a male baboon. There will be many more challenges to Aaron's authority, and the end of his reign is now in sight.

On that note, Happy Solemnity of All Saints.

Post Averted

Hi everyone,

I had a post all ready, and I kind of deleted it all and Blogger saved over. I don't even know how it happened, I couldn't seem to even undo the deletion. Kind of a crappy deal. And I was feeling pretty bad about not posting, even though my RSI has not been treating me well of late.

There is a chance that the post survives on my other computer, in which case I will post it tomorrow, otherwise I may wait until Wednesday or Friday to rewrite the thing. Sorry.

At least in the formal archive, there will be no blank entry for the entire month of October.

Rural Legends

One day, about a year ago, I heard a colleague recalling a tale from the north of the country, about how the baboon up there would raid the local farms, and at times, they would not only take food with them, but puppies. I inititally assumed the puppies were being dragged along to be eaten, despite the fact that baboons do not hunt. I was quickly corrected, for according to the story, the puppies were subdued by the baboons, for as long as necessary, until they behaved as if they were born baboons.

The idea was that the baboons were basically forcing the dogs to ethologically imprint on them, causing the dogs to identify with the baboons as members of their own species, other dogs. What is odd is that the puppies, at least those in the video, are not terribly young, which is usually a requirement for successful imprinting. On the other hand, humans can adopt puppies who have been raised by a mother for some time. The likely key is that the dog is a domesticated species, altered to allow for easier taming and imprinting. Konrad Lorenz had no such advantage when he trained his geese.

You hear a lot of crazy things about baboons from some of the locals, that they eat farm animals by night, or cast magical curses on innocent townsfolk, so at the time, I assumed that the yarn about dogs being raised as baboons was just another tall tale. What baboon would sit on top of a dog for years until it wised up?

I'm not one to contradict video evidence, though. In the future, perhaps I will be able to know better: though I originally heard the story from an unreliable source, it was corroborated by the aforementioned colleague, who I trust. He hadn't seen any such cases first-hand, but the evidence he'd been presented with was convincing enough for him. The truth of the phenomenon makes it no less impressive. Monkeys, baboons included, are often quite impatient, and I am honestly shocked that baboons around the continent have the forethought and will to tame their own dogs.

I look forward to reading a scholarly paper on this process any day now.

Missing the Point

Project Nim, the hot new film about the life and times of Nim Chimpsy, famed ape language subject, has been out in select theaters for a few weeks now. The press has been abuzz about the film, and its been received remarkably well by critics and viewers alike. Someone is my position was bound to hear a lot about it before I ever got around to seeing it, but see it I did, and now that I have, I can say a few words about how troubling a film it is.

When the director, James Marsh, was interviewed on a recent episode of The Bat Segundo Show, he repeatedly stated things like "that isn’t the film that I think would work for me" or "(that film isn't) the one I’m interested in making" when asked why he left out any mention whatsoever of other key players like Washoe and Nim's namesake, Noam Chomsky. But wait a moment, Mr. Marsh who's story is this, yours or Nim's?

Our society has entered a bountiful era of docu-dramas: The Kennedys, John Adams, The Tudors, and Frost/Nixon, just to name a few. We are inundated by colorful depictions of "history," some of which vary wildly from the known facts. I believe that in this new epoch of docu-dramas, now more than ever, films that call themselves documentaries have a responsibility to viewers, a responsibility to constructively inform.

Marsh makes it clear that his intent is to tell a story, a very particular story about the entity that was Nim. The other characters, the humans, don't really matter. They're in the movie because they need to be, without them there could be no telling of Nim's story. Once they no longer have a place in telling the story, they have no place in Marsh's movie. What results is the depressing tale of one misunderstood chimpanzee who made scientific history, but honestly got off pretty damn good compared to the vast majority of research animals. Is it accurate? The film manages to be scientifically accurate, but that isn't saying much, considering that Marsh's technique for ensuring scientific accuracy is to only include as much scientific history in the movie as is absolutely necessary.

Let us now return to my prompt, and I admit right here, that I am missing the point. If its neither about the people and how they were changed by Nim, nor the science and how it changed our understanding of our place in the world, nor the animal rights angle, then just what is a person supposed to think about after watching Project Nim?

I've been told that my "What can we learn from this? How can we act on what we learn?" mentality is part of my lot as a member of Generation Y. I've never found that to be an explanation why one shouldn't try to learn how to improve and not repeat past mistakes. Its not as if my generation was the first in a hundred years to overquote George Santayana.

These are the questions I must ask: "What are we to take away from this? What are we supposed to learn about the world around us, and in turn ourselves? How are we intended to change, as enlightened by this documentary?"

Marsh's films do not lend themselves to his approach. The problem first appeared to me when I saw Man on Wire, Marsh's first documentary film. Marsh does some ingenious stuff with style and cinematography, but the entire experience left me wanting. Look at other critically acclaimed, modern documentaries which focus on small group, like King of Kong (or Darkon, Murderball, The Woman Who Married the Eiffel Tower, and plenty of others). King of Kong is a narrative, and a compelling one at that. It also has no trouble taking the time to tell you about the people, the communities who make these stories possible, how these groups have come to exist (and persist), and why they mean something.

Man on Wire fails spectacularly at this aspect. Marsh is excellent at manipulating his audience in order to draw them into the immediate story (though personally I never managed to care that much), but in the end it falls flat. Marsh shows us an entire team of underground tightrope walkers, but who are these people? What kind of person was drawn to that ideal in the 70's? Where are they now? What did that experience mean to them in the context of the rest of their lives? Man on Wire failed to actually address the most important part of a documentary: Why should anyone care about these brief events from the 70's? What's the impact? What's the point?

I admit that I am a little bit bitter because if Project Nim were more like King of Kong, about the people who are living in a post-Nim primate research world, it would be about people like me. Instead, Project Nim is about a few people, some of whom are still involved in the primate cognition world, as they were almost 40 years ago. And its not actually about them, either! Its about Nim, except that never does Marsh ever consult any real primate ethologist to try and understand what Nim actually would have been going through during these experiences. Marsh implicitly criticizes the human in the movie for personifying Nim and not treating him like a chimpanzee, yet Marsh himself makes no effort to rise above these personifications.

Gah, the frustration mounts the more I contemplate the movie. Anyway, those are my stylistic gripes with Project Nim. Now for the ugly part.

There's some dirty, nasty deceptions of the involved humans by Marsh. I'll only point out one, but I think it is the most egregious. Marsh implies very stongly that when Nim was taken to LEMSIP, Dr. Terrace, the project leader, did nothing whatsoever to aid Nim in his plight. In fact, Terrace spearheaded the effort to have Nim released, bringing the issue to the media's attention and publicly challenging LEMSIP. Terrace offers this and other concerns in an article recently published in the LA Times.

Don't take my word for it, the situation is documented in Elizabeth Hess's book, Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human, and the particular passage is available for your reading enjoyment thanks to Google Books (provided the correct pages are up on the rotation). Hess is by no means easy on Terrace, but she gives credit where it is due.

One should note that this is the book which the movie is supposedly based on. Marsh knew what actually happened, he must have, yet he deliberately omitted that part of the story and presented Dr. Terrace in exactly the opposite light. No one in this story is an angel, but they're still people and they still have lives. Marsh refuses to apologize for any of his protrayals.

I'm not an expert in Nim's history though, so I've no idea just how much else Marsh twisted in his presentation of this history. It doesn't matter much, I simply can't condone this level of blatant misrepresentation, and it taints the entire film.

Project Nim is an interesting film to watch, in spite of the fact that it is not a very good movie. It does provide a window into the life of one very real ape, and no amount of misportrayal, deludedness, and lack of direction can make the classic, pure footage of Nim being Nim less remarkable.

I have no idea what's going on

The picture says it all. I've had all these good things to write about come up, and then BOOM this new grant socked me right in the bean machine and my life instantly shattered into little pieces of madness. In short, I have too much stuff to do, and my hands are sore from all the writing.

In truth, the submissive behavior this (zoo) baboon appears to begin by presenting his butt, a standard submissive behavior, but then everything shifts into nightmare world territory when he lifts the leg, starts screaming at the humans, and does the weird hand thing. I've seen the hand thing before, but in macaque monkeys. And its only this one guy in the colony who will sometimes rest his hand near his tail when he is being groomed from behind. He's a bit of a jittery monkey overall, but not totally neurotic; he's much calmer than that baboon is under similar circumstances.

Then again, its also a juvenile, so his behavior is difficult to analyze. There must be something ethologically relevant to "hand-to-butt" behavior, though. I've seen it too many times in too many species. Its related to the presentation behavior, which is in turn derived from the female copulation stance. Females don't have the luxury of being able to scratch their butts during copulation; there's an awful lot of force involved, and the female's frame needs all the support it can get to absorb it all. Where would the added hand gesture have originated? Oh look, I found at least one recent, directly relevant article discussing this subject.

Well look at that, complex thought is still possible in my mind afterall. I'm too curious not to write up a synopsis of these findings regarding the copulation position, and I do have a much needed vacation coming up.

Where You're Not Quite On Top

This paper has been making the rounds, unsurprisingly, given its featured status in Science and the fact that it was picked up by the New York Times.

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Baboon Study Shows Benefits for Nice Guys, Who Finish 2nd

From the wild to Wall Street, as everyone knows, the alpha male runs the show, enjoying power over other males and, as a field biologist might put it, the best access to mating opportunities.

The beta is No. 2 in the wolf pack or the baboon troop, not such a bad position. But conversationally, the term has become an almost derisive label for the nice guy, the good boy all grown up, the husband women look for after the fling with Russell Crowe.

It may now be time to take a step back from alpha worship. Field biologists, the people who gave the culture the alpha/beta trope in the first place, have found there can be a big downside to being No. 1.

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I don't mean to imply that the paper is bad by asking this, but how exactly does the New York Times decide what to write up in their science section? I suppose a great deal of it must be author dependant, like this one by Nicholas Wade, which was clearly a topic which he would choose to write about.
The paper is a great media story, too, since it addresses a controversial issue, and manages to get into the human element of the back and forth rhetoric between Stephen Jay Gould and... well, a lot of people in paleoanthropology.

Enjoy the read. It covers a lot of old and new ground about what may and may not cause stress among primates from all walks of life, who have achieved varied levels of success. If you're trying to figure out how stressed you are and what personality type you are, you're probably still better off getting some old fashioned tests.

On post-ejaculatory wiping

Stop monkeying around and pass me a leaf

Chimpanzees in Budongo Forest in Uganda regularly employ leaves as 'napkins' to wipe their penis after sex, researchers discovered

The authors of a study called High Frequency of Postcoital Penis Cleaning in Budongo Chimpanzees do not beat about the bush. "We report on postcoital penis cleaning in chimpanzees," they write. "In penis cleaning, leaves are employed as 'napkins' to wipe clean the penis after sex. Alternatively, the same cleaning motion can be done without leaves, simply using the fingers. Not all chimpanzee communities studied across Africa clean their penes and, where documented, the behaviour is rare. By contrast, we identify postcoital penis cleaning in Budongo Forest, Uganda, as customary."

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My first thought: What about masturbation?

The Guardian doesn't mention it at all, but the paper does... once. Its little more than a passing acknowledgement, however, all mentions from there on out are specific to coitus, and the data included in their tables follow suit.

Masturbation is a behavior distinct from copulation. The two end in orgasm for the male, but the resemblances end there. The two activities serve entirely different purposes: coitus is for reproduction and social purposes, masturbation (in males) is for monitoring and controlling ejaculate output.

Which is not to say it is impossible that the two activities could have overlapping purposes. That's where this study starts to come into play, or could come into play. But, the paper chooses not to examine masturbation activities in this context. I'm not sure quite why, to be honest.

Take to the baboons: I've seen them almost always finger clean after they pluck the rooster, but I cannot think of a single copulation which involved cleaning. Granted, copulations are much messier affairs, but its the female who dart after sex. The male generally follows leisurely behind for a few paces, or sits down and starts grunting. That'd be an interesting behavior to compare to across species, and in the case of masturbation, it really should not be difficult at all to gather data.

Unless chimps aren't into jerking off as much as most other social primates. I really think I would have heard about it if that was the case.

A final aside: it would be great to see some, you know, significance statistics for the data in this paper. Otherwise, fun read!

Thanks to Pfeng or Retrochef or whatever she prefers to call herself these days for the tip on this paper.

O’Hara, S., & Lee, P. (2006). High Frequency of Postcoital Penis Cleaning in Budongo Chimpanzees Folia Primatologica, 77 (5), 353-358 DOI: 10.1159/000093700

When you look into the monkey, the monkey looks into you

Monkey steals camera to snap himself

A macaque monkey in Indonesia took a camera from a wildlife photographer before snapping himself in a variety of poses.

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The black macaque, one of the more eerie looking monkeys around. I say this a lot, but there's something about those eyes. However, one must remember that while these two pictures are quite a sight, there are probably seventy more of the monkey rubbing his fur against the lens. I'd really like to see all of those, actually.

The picture I've selected is almost certainly an example of aggressive behavior, however. It would be easier to tell with a few more frames, but the bared teeth and the lifted eyebrows. This monkey is looking into a dark, reflective lens, and does not realize that this mirror image is him. He believes it is a different monkey, at least something that is being threatening right back at him.

This reminds me of an idea we had among the researchers. We were out there all day, and as I have noted, the baboons have a particular liking for cars. Since the baboons would swarm over a car, whether new or old, we've been able to witness some interesting behaviors. A slightly reflective windshield does not differ much from a camera lens, and if the monkeys looked into the windshield, one could assess whether or not they were self-aware based on their reaction to seeing their own image.

This also could have yielded an extra effect over the range of ages. A car is sort of like a trophy for certain baboons. The adults give a damn one way or the other about the cars as long as they aren't trying to run the troop over. The largest of the juveniles, even subadults, quickly lay claim to the highest point on the car (the roof), leaving the hood, side mirrors, trunk, and bumpers for the smaller baboons to ensconce themselves on.

The mirrors and windshields created interesting effects from what I did observe on the side. For the young ones, the mirrors were clearly frightening, so there's no theory of mind there. I never determined if the older males reacted in the same way, as they messed around with the mirrors much less. The potential exists for something bigger, however. Put some big mirrors under the windshield, and watch all the monkeys react. You could even introduce a laser pointer to the experiment and to take a kind of mirror recognition approach.

I do not think that an experiment like that would yield positive results, though. A little evidence exists that macaques can pass mirror self-recognition tests, but the majority of research has indicated that they cannot. Baboons might be a different story, but baboons are even more socially adept than macaques, which means that their intelligence is focused on understanding conspecifics, but not necessarily themselves.

Properly controlling this experiment would be kind of a nightmare, but it might have been well suited enough for a pilot study. The large sample size and strong spread of individuals in different age groups is a major strength of working with baboons in general. To my knowledge, not much longitudinal work has been done in wild baboons where the focus has been on the juvenile years. This is a time where social bonds are more malleable, and less clear to everyone. It would be great to better understand social and cognitive development during these formative years, but I freely admit that several lifetimes of work would probably be required to lay the foundations of this research.