A Primate's Talking Analysis

Within this essay, we will study more in depth the behavioral as well as physical traits of two primates at a zoo from their interaction with their peers to their place in the group. This observation would enable us to further understand the possible existing correlation between humans and primates. First, I studied a female chimpanzee with her baby, and then, a dominant male gorilla, in San Francisco Zoo at about noon, on May 23, 2015, for an hour each. Even though they share some similarities such as having a large brain, living for a long time, and being bored in their enclosure, they are still different; when gorillas are the largest, chimpanzees are the smartest. In fact, chimps use tools to catch food, they would not be able to reach

1. The social structure and behavior of chimps in their communities or troops suggest many questions. What research questions might Dr. Hahn and her associates ask?

The complex world of primates revolves around a spectrum of different behaviors and physical features that can be intertwined with their evolutionary history and current ecosystem. Two species of baboons that share a common ancestor dating back twenty million years ago are Papio hamadryas and Theropithecus gelada (Falk, 173). More commonly called as hamadryas baboons and geladas, they are known to share many characteristics because of this common lineage. In fact, they are categorized under the same order of classification, down to the same subfamily of primates, known as cercopithecidae. Despite sharing a common subfamily, these two species of baboons manage to encompass divergent qualities in response to their environment.

Ranking within a group of females begins with the mother with female daughters (Huguet et al. 2015). The daughter’s rank will be below the mothers (Huguet et al. 2015). Adult female Baboons are mostly nursing or pregnant most of their lives and for this reason alone they spend most of their lives with other females friends or relatives that are pregnant as well (Huguet et al. 2015). While a female is pregnant she will avoid the male baboons of the group (Huguet et al. 2015). The pregnant and nursing females of the group rest mostly during the day (Huguet et al. 2015). The younger females gather around the oldest females of the group and they all lay close together in a bunch to protect themselves and their young from jealous males and predators (Huguet et al. 2015). While prowling through the wild, the dominant males of the group travel in the center of the troop (Huguet et al. 2015). They do this to keep order among the females and the juveniles, while the younger males travel around the outer surfaces of the group (Huguet et al. 2015).

In a study done to understand the sexism inherent in other primate species, scientists took a look at the species in which violence against its female members does and doesn’t occur- enter the female-dominated species of Bonobos. Instead of using force, males will network with females to gain support from them- the young male bonobos see this behaviour and mimic what their successful fathers do. Observed Bonobo populations seem to prioritise grooming over aggression when dealing with the ladies. And, this works! While the bonobos are still using stratagem to bring about the same end result of copulation, compared to the notoriously aggressive savanna baboons, a more functional society

Baboons have unbelievable social behaviors and interactions with people and other primates (Huguet et al. 2015). They have a matrilineal social behavior, which basically means their communication skills and social network comes from the female members of the species (Huguet et all. 2015). Baboons travel, hunt, and live within extremely large group within the wild (Huguet et al. 2015). Their groups can range from 30 monkey up to 300 monkeys depending on how limited the food is within the area they are living (Huguet et al.

Elephants now join an elite club of social cooperators: chimpanzees, hyenas, rooks, and humans. In the video Elephants show cooperation, the article Elephants can lend a helping trunk, and the passage Elephants know when they need a helping trunk in a cooperative task, The authors demonstrate the intelligence of elephants. They conduct an experiment which shows how elephants work together to achieve a goal. All three sources illustrate the cognitive ability of these sagacious creatures.

Did you know that elephants can use different tools and understand the human body language? These skills can help elephants go through experiments in order to get a treat. The elephants needs cooperation skills in order to pull a rope at the same time with another elephant, and that allows them to get the treat. Each piece of writing and the video presents the idea of the experiment differently. In addition, all of the tones in each piece is very different, and that affects the way each piece explains the experiment. Within the article, passage, and video, each explains the test the elephants went through in different ways and tones.

An intelligent young monkey from the Indianapolis Zoo has been reported to be able to imitate the “pitch and tone of human sounds,” said by his handlers. This noteworthy 11-year-old orangutan is named Rocky, and he can produce sounds that can be made out as the letter “A” and is heard as “Ah.” Robert Shumaker, the director of the zoo, has stated,“What we have to consider now is the possibility that the origins of spoken language are not exclusively human…” Through this statement, we can see that this discovery with Rocky may indicate that the origins of spoken language could have begun by the great apes. There is no definite answer to whether or not the spoken language did start with monkeys. However, I believe that this could be a possibility.

Baboons seemed to share many similar qualities of chimpanzees in their aggressive courting and mating styles. Before courting the female baboon, the males first fight over their dominance of that female. This show of violence takes place during the females first menstrual cycle. The winner of this fight would then become physically violent towards the female by hitting, biting, scratching and chasing, but not copulating. After this aggressive display, the female became fearful whenever in her attacker’s presence, but, ultimately would enter a coupling with him. She would remain by his side due to a sense of obligation, and while ovulating would choose to mate with her harasser. These types of intimidations amongst primates have been more commonly found in promiscuous social

de Waal, F. (1982) Chimpanzee politics: power and sex among apes. New York: Harper and Row.

The communication styles of animals had always been a subject of discussion in my family. Whenever we

Why is human speech is unique compared to other animals? Well, both humans and animals can communicate in motions, however humans can communicate in forms of signals and symbols, which could be gestures, sounds, or written words. Main differences between human and primates in regards to speech is that humans have an open vocal system while primates have a closed vocal system. Homo sapiens is probably the only animal that uses language to communicate with one another which distinguishes us from other animals. Through age four, most folks are able to communicate through oral language. At age six or seven, us humans are able to understand and express written thoughts. This distinctive ability of communicating through a native language clearly separates us from all animals. Then we question: where did we obtain this distinctive trait? Most animals make sounds and grunts to communicate. Are humans really the only species that can communicate in a form of spoken language? When it comes to evolution, humans evolved from apes. The first putative hominin is Sahelanthropus tchadensis from Chad, which is about 6-7 million years old, as noted by Michel Brunet among others in their 2002 paper in Nature, while our closest living relative to the Homo sapiens is the chimpanzee, yet chimps do not have speech which indicates some degree of genetic divergence. Molecular data suggest that humans and chimpanzees diverged from a common ancestor ~5-7 million

When people think of hierarchy, they tend to think of mother, father, son, daughter - their private clan, and in the primate world, those rules still apply. Observing the chimpanzee, it was clear to see that the “alpha” males stood on higher ground than the females. A majority of the males were sitting on the rocks and most of the females stayed on the bottom with their child wrap around their back. The

Furthermore, he shows that the amount of time devoted to social grooming in modern non-human primates is proportional to the respective sizes of their social groups. Problematically for the case of humans, in order to achieve a group size of up to 150 people, Dunbar’s (1993, 1996a) evidence suggests that we would need to engage in social ‘grooming’ for up to 43% of our day. Since this is unfeasible, especially for early hominids whose time was devoted to foraging for food, a novel mechanism became necessary to bond large social groups more efficiently. Dunbar argues that this mechanism was speech, highlighting the fact that in modern humans the mean amount of time spent socially interacting is 20% of waking hours – the same as the upper limit found in non-human primates. This efficiency attained from using language for social ‘grooming’ is derived from the fact that in conversation we can ‘groom’ several individuals simultaneously - typically a conversation consists of one speaker and up to three listeners (Dunbar et al., 1997). This means that linguistic bonding is three times more efficient than other primates’ physical grooming, which corresponds with the fact that typical human social groups (about 150 people) are three times larger than the largest social groups observed in other primates.