Man vs Ape - social complexities

An interview with Rebecca Saxe, a cognitive scientist at MIT, sheds light on   humans’ unique ability to teach and interest passing along cultural knowledge and how it compares with other social animals.

Q: Is it true that there might be a brain region dedicated to this coordinating of two minds?

Saxe: Well, what we do know is that there are definitely regions in the human brain that seem to play special roles in social cognition—in seeing and thinking about other people. And different parts of your brain get involved in coordinating and reasoning about different kinds of social tasks. It appears that this kind of cooperation recruits a very specific part of your brain, right behind the middle of your forehead.

In the last five years, there’s been a huge explosion of research with new tools, new imaging tools, that make it possible to study the living, thinking human brain. And that’s allowed us to study the brain basis of all kinds of things that are uniquely human.

Bonobo whisperer

A video on NOVA’s website tells the story of Kanzi, a bonobo who learned and understands English without ever being directly taught language skills. The  27 year-old bonobo communicates with researchers at the Great Ape Trust in Iowa using lexigrams, or symbols representing words.

If there were a superstar within the bonobo community, Kanzi, which means “treasure” in Swahili, would certainly be it. Born in 1980, Kanzi came to Georgia State University’s Language Research Center at the age of six months. He is regarded as the first ape to demonstrate real comprehension of spoken speech.

Kanzi has been presented with a variety of carefully controlled tests which demonstrate his comprehension of speech. In these tests, spoken words are presented through headphones and Kanzi is requested to indicate the real object, the photo or the lexigram that the word represents. He is essentially 100 percent accurate on all words that are a part of vocabulary at any given age. Today, his vocabulary includes more than 500 words! His comprehension of spoken language is at least equivalent to that of a two-and-a-half-year-old child.

Kanzi’s achievements are not limited to language, but include tool use and tool manufacturing. Kanzi has shown skills as a stone tool maker and he is very proud of his ability to flake Oldowan style cutting knives. He learned to do this from Dr. Nick Toth, an anthropologist with The Stone Age Institute in Bloomington, IN. Kanzi’s stone knives are very sharp and he’s able to cut hide and thick ropes with them. He has also demonstrated his unspecified and musical skills, having played with Sir Paul McCartney and Peter Gabriel.

Okay to hunt elephants?

photo coutesy of Brian Snelson  

Successful conservation efforts are resulting in new problems as the swelling number of elephants may exceed what parks can support.  The South African government recently lifted the ban on killing elephants as a last resort in controlling the population.  According to an article in the Guardian

Amid words of protest and expressions of relief environment minister Martinus van Schalkwyk announced the elephant had been a victim of its own success with numbers growing from 8,000 to nearly 20,000 in national parks and private reserves in just over a decade.

 Supporters of culling point to growing difficulties in managing elephants in the country’s biggest and most famous game reserve, Kruger National Park. It has more than 12,500 elephants, 5,000 more than is sustainable, according to park officials. Ecologists say the animals’ huge appetites and fondness for “habitat re-engineering” - reducing forests to flatland by uprooting trees and trampling plants as they feed and roam - threaten the park’s biodiversity. 

However, elephants endear a lot of support from South Africans and the rest of the world because of their perceived gentle nature and the strength of their social bonds.  Some conservation groups, and animal rights advocates oppose lifting the restriction and approaching the situation as a numbers game.

Michele Pickover of Animal Rights Africa, which has threatened to urge a tourist boycott if culling goes ahead, said there was no scientific proof that the killing of elephants was necessary or even effective in controlling the population.

“This is a sad day for the country. Elephants are being treated as commodities by the government and game managers,” she said.

This article from National Geographic in 2004 gives more background on the debate, which has been going on for years and has included the voices of many different groups:  parks managers, game rangers, academics, community leaders, and the representatives of animal rights groups.  

Wolf population management

After the gray wolf is delisted, responsibility for population management transfers from the U.S government to individual states like Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.

An excerpt from the Idaho Wolf Conservation and Management Plan:

IDFG is charged by statute with the management of Idaho’s wildlife (Idaho Code §36-103(a): “All wildlife, including all wild animals, wild birds, and fish, within the state of Idaho, is hereby declared to be the property of the state of Idaho. It shall be preserved, protected, perpetuated, and managed. It shall be only captured or taken at such times or places, under such conditions, or by such means, or in such manner, as will preserve, protect and perpetuate such wildlife, and provide for the citizens of this state and, as by law permitted to others, continued supplies of such wildlife for hunting, fishing and trapping.”). This plan will enable the transition of the management of the gray wolf back to the IDFG as either a big game animal, furbearer, or special classification of predator that provides for controlled take after delisting. This classification will enable IDFG to provide protection for wolves as well as consider the impacts of wolves on other big game species, those sectors of the economy dependent upon sport hunting, livestock, domestic animals, and humans.

Radio program highlights animal intelligence

You may be surprised to learn how smart those birds at your backyard bird-feeder are.

On the next Calling All Pets, find out of being called a “Bird Brain” isn’t such a bad thing. Join Larry Meiller and zoologist Patricia McConnell as they explore the topic of intelligence in ravens and also welcome a guest to talk about the seductive mating rituals of animals in the high seas!

This post on scienceblogs.com explores the research of Bernd Heinrich from a recent article in Scientific American.  Heinrich designed experiments to test ravens’ ability to solve problems, investigating whether behaviors were motivated by logic or instinct.  Results suggested that they do, in fact, use logic.

Genetics lesson

I encountered an interesting and informative post on scienceblogs.com that gives a mini-tutorial comparing population genetics vs. quantitative genetics.

Population genetics is based on research into the genetic composition of biological populations, and the changes that occur over time.   Various factors, including natural selection, can influence changes in genetic composition.

Population geneticists use intricate mathematical models of gene frequency dynamics to examine and predict the likely patterns of genetic variation in actual populations, and compare the findings with empirical data.

Animal testing

The morality and usefulness of animal testing is a hotly debated issue with a lot of misinformation being offered as fact along the way.  

However, one advantage of the debate is increased accountability and oversight of researchers who use animals.  By and large, most researchers  recognize that animals should be cared for humanely and aim to provide the best care for the animals used in their research. 

Another advantage is increased resources devoted to developing effective alternatives to animal testing, like computer modeling.

“The EPA and the National Institutes of Health announced a toxicity testing agreement that will allow the EPA to use NIH Chemical Genomics Center’s high-speed, automated screening robots to test suspected toxic compounds, using cells and isolated molecular targets instead of laboratory animals, the EPA said Thursday in a release,” according to a United Press International article on Friday

This is not to say that animal testing should be abandoned altogether.  Research using animals has provided many significant medical advancements, vaccines for example. With all the recent advancements in technology, it is a good idea to consider how research using animals could be refined or replaced when practical.

Protection of smelt - impact on SoCal

Image courtesy of http://www.delta.dfg.ca.gov

Until the droughts in Georgia last summer, I was not aware that water reservoirs and supplies were affected by protections for aquatic animals.

In Georgia’s case, Congressman John Linder was upset that water was being diverted from Lake Lanier that supplies over 3 million residents with water to support a federally protected species of mussel in Florida, according to an article in USA Today.

“We’ve learned from this what a blunt weapon the Endangered Species Act has become,” said state Rep. John Linder. “We need to understand this lake was created not for mussels but for people.”

The first step towards declaring the longfin smelt an endangered or threatened species was taken last week, according to an article in the LA Times.

The California Fish and Game Commission voted 3 to 0 to adopt protection for longfin smelt. The tiny fish makes its home in the delta, which serves as headwaters for the state and federal canals that send water to Southern California.

Those aqueducts, which deliver water to 25 million people and 2 million acres of farmland, have seen exports decline more than 40% in recent weeks because of court-ordered restrictions intended to save another diminutive fish, the delta smelt.

The addition of the longfin smelt to the protected list could affect water exports even more because its life cycle and breeding season are different from delta smelt, prompting restrictions that might begin earlier each year and end later.

Like its aquatic cousin, the longfin smelt has seen its population plummet in recent years. In 2007, it hit a record low along with several other types of delta fish, in what is considered a broad decline in the environmental health of the state’s biggest estuary.

It is unclear exactly how global warming and climate change will affect drought conditions in different parts of the United States, but there is little doubt that it will have an impact.

Examples like these illuminate the broader struggle to protect threatened species while maintaining sufficient resources to support human populations. Clearly these issues will warrant more attention and research.

Tropical birds living in Chicago

photo courtesy of Eloise Mason

Trudging along the snow-covered streets of Hyde Park, you hear chirping and screeching resembling the sound of Styrofoam pieces rubbing together.  You look up and see a bright green and blue parakeet.  You may think that all the cold and snow has finally made you go mad, but there really are tropical birds that have colonized on the South Side of Chicago. They are called monk parakeets.

These birds have been living in Hyde Park for more than 30 years. No one knows exactly how the wild parakeets arrived in Chicago, but it seems they are here to stay.

Mark Spreyer, a biologist who directs the Stillman Nature Center in South Barrington, has written about the monk parakeet and led tours for people interested in seeing the exotic birds.  He told Parrot Chronicles the monk parakeets ”chose the right place to put up a colony. Everyone there really likes them. It’s a really diverse neighborhood and I think there’s a kind of multiculturalism connection between the people and the birds. They fascinate people,” he said.

Stephen Pruett-Jones, associate professor of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago, will give a lecture on the exotic birds who have settled in Hyde Park.  The impact of these non-native birds on other bird species, the environment and the community is the topic of Pruett-Jones’ lecture at noon on Feb. 20. 

Roughly one foot long, the monk parakeet is a very social and gregarious bird. The plume of green feathers on the bird’s head and neck inspired its scientific name, myiopsitta monachus, because its hood of feathers resembles a monk’s hood, according to the Houston Audubon Society. 

Pruett-Jones has been observing these birds for more than 15 years, and is generating a map of monk parakeet nests in Chicago and the surrounding areas including northwest Indiana and southern Wisconsin, with help from undergraduate students and local inhabitants’ sightings.

Experiments conducted in aviaries with captive birds have found the large nests provide a four-degree advantage over outside temperatures, so it is slightly warmer in the nests.  However, “if that was the only thing they had going for them, they could not survive the winters.  They only survive the winters because they have access to a large good-quality food source,” in birdfeeders, said Pruett-Jones. 

“I think this winter will probably slow them up,” said Spreyer.  The thick snow cover could make it harder to find food, and may “knock their numbers back a bit,” he said. Pruett-Jones estimates the number in Hyde Park at about 200.

The birds are of some concern for utility companies in Illinois.  Monk parakeets occasionally build their nests on utility poles and power transformers, which can ignite fires and cause power outages. 

The lecture will be in the Swift common room at the University of Chicago in Hyde Park.  Admission is $5 at the door, and includes a vegetarian meal. Reserve a place before Tuesday at noon by contacting divinitylunch@gmail.com

NRDC fights Bush administration

The NRDC put out a press release on Tuesday concerning a law suit they filed under the freedom of information act against the Bush administration.  The group charges that the government is purposely covering up research by the Minerals Management Service finding the dangers of allowing drilling in the Arctic Ocean.

“This opposition has highlighted that, among other concerns, there are no methods proven effective for cleaning up oil spills in the Arctic Ocean. This is especially troubling because the federal Minerals Management Service admits that oil spills are likely in the Chukchi Sea if it is opened to oil and gas development.”

The NRDC would like to protect the habitats of polar bears, endangered bowhead whales, gray whales, Pacific walrus, seals, threatened eider, and other marine birds and fish.