Primate In Psychology

A few weeks ago, I spent a lovely Monday afternoon observing two different primates at the Santa Ana Zoo. I got to the zoo around two in the afternoon, and to my surprise, the zoo was decently crowded. The Santa Ana Zoo is smaller in comparison to other zoos like the Los Angeles Zoo, but still had a decent amount of animals there. Covering a small 20 acres of land, I came across two primates that fit perfectly for the purposes of this course project. I chose to observe an endangered ape, the white-handed gibbon, and an endangered new world monkey, the golden-headed lion tamarin.

The Salvation Army Laredo Texas Corps, is a place of humble means that has been ravished by the impact of poverty. However, in the midst such disparity, there lives and exist soldiers that are sold out for Christ and The Salvation Army. Recently, the soldiers passions have been reinvigorated to love, serve, and make Salvation their number one priority. The main focus of the corps has been to enhance and develop programs, in order to, allow soldiers passions to flourish; by expanding the Kingdom and the work of The Salvation Army here in Laredo.

Throughout the term, reading the book, “Through a Window” by Jane Goodall has been quite intriguing for me, in that it has inspired me with new ideas and perceptions about how our own species has evolved over time. I have really enjoyed seeing the many similarities that hominids share with other primate species, especially chimpanzees. Goodall’s research only further proves that we are not only extremely biologically similar to chimpanzees in our DNA, but have many behavioral similarities as well. The film, “Monkey in the Mirror” also shows support for our likeness in intellectuality. These documented findings on chimpanzee and human resemblances provides the strong evidence needed to conclude the fact that humans do indeed share a common ancestor with great apes.

Joseph Henrich began, A Puzzling Primate, by describing how physically inept human beings are when compared to the rest of the animal kingdom. He continues with this logic when he demonstrates, that humans in this era, would not be able to survive if placed in the wild forest environment. Due to the biological weakness of humans, culture became a necessary defense mechanism and a form of protection. Culture became a unique way for humans to adapt. Despite the obvious physical weakness of humans, through culture we have rose to be the dominant species.

They are very fast and can be able to run within short distances using the most minimal time. It takes less than 10 seconds to run within a distance of approximately 100 meters. While the animals move around they try to monitor the environment as quadrupedally and monitoring of the environment can be able to take as much as up to ten minutes in any case they have doubts of where they are, this alerts them of any predators. Consortship is a situation where the two animals would stay close to each other and monitor the movement and environment of each other. This is done as long as the animals are out in an environment that is not seen as being friendly. The patas can be seen to be less vocal and they move around in silence, they make certain noise only once when they have seen a predator. The noise or the sound takes just a few seconds as long as the danger is taken away

     I think that if culture is defined as learned behavior, than it is reasonable to say that primates posses a form of culture. Primates have been observed making tools to aid in collecting food and developing communication system, both of which are learned behaviors.

Primates are one of the most interesting mammals on earth, not only because of their complex social structures, but because they hold so many similar characteristics to humans. Primates are often cited as our closest living relatives and on two separate occasions I observed four separate species of primates at the San Diego Zoo that can justify their use of their physical characteristics and behaviors that may be similar as well as different to the other primates and ours.

The primates species that I observed were the Bornean orangutans and the Sumatran orangutans. There were three adult females. one adult male, and one infant female. The orangutans were observed at San Diego zoo’s ape webcam on April 26, 2106.

In a study conducted in 1985 observing primates, it was determined that the major effect of dietary cholesterol is its LDL raising effects. High intakes of cholesterol increase the number of circulating LDL’s and it can also change its size and composition. [12] It was during this time period that the mechanisms by which SFA are thought to increase blood cholesterol concentrations came about. One mechanism for the increase in LDL cholesterol levels is the suppression of LDL receptor activity. Studies in tissue cultures have shown that increasing the cholesterol content of a cell will down-regulate synthesis of LDL receptors. [13] This will lead to an increase in concentration of blood cholesterol. Another cause for an increase in blood cholesterol concentration through intake of dietary SFA is the composition of the newly secreted lipoproteins. With a high saturated fat intake, the LDL’s become rich in cholesterol esters, leaving the triglycerides in the blood. [14] The use of non-human primates in

Through this assignment, we will see how primates express their behaviors and understand the meaning behind them. For my observation, it will be based on the orangutans, which is classified in the genus Pongo. The San Diego zoo itself is set up with a lot of ropes, balls, hammocks, rocks and more for the animal to interact with in the grassy area. There are many levels of ground elevations that allowed the primate to have maximum space to explore around and live in. After seeing how the specie interacts and behaves, I can relate it to human behaviors and how we gain our roots from them. One of the small orangutans I observed was very active and kept climbing on different levels of the ropes and interacted with many other of the inhabitants.

Climbing, when it comes to the observed non-human primates, is used as a way of exercise as well as encouraging a sense of security and survival. Climbing the trees expends energy in the monkeys, often leaping between branches and trees at whim. Beyond this, climbing allows the monkeys to get adjusted and familiar with their surroundings as well as giving them a decent vantage point to see potential predators or prey. With humans, however, climbing serves other purposes. Humans utilize climbing for a number of reasons that are, in the grand scheme of things, very rarely survival.

According to my observation, even though Chimpanzee, and Gorilla are similar, they differ in many other ways when we go deeper in physical, and behavioral traits. However, both species also share the majority part of their DNA with Humans. Based on some reliable researches, some scientists realized that humans did not come from apes but instead shared common ancestors. As a matter of fact, humans and Primates are different, but share most of their genome, explaining why we found some similar patterns of behavior among humans, and

One of the main reasons why we are so interested in the other primates is that by looking at them we can obtain some ideas of what our ancestor must have been like a few millions years ago. Even though, we are not descended from any modern-type monkey or ape, our lineage does appear to have gone through stages in which we were a medium-sized, reasonably intelligent creature with good binocular vision, hands that were good at manipulation and the ability to climb trees. An evolutionary trend in primates involves the development of offspring both before and after birth and their integration into complex social systems. Another trend in primate evolution has been toward a more elaborate brain. In addition to brain size and gestation periods,

The Qantas airlines was up against the transport worker union(TWU), Australian and international pilot union( AIPA) , Australian licensed engineers union (ALAEA). These unions enforce strike as they represent engineers, pilots , ground staffs and baggage handlers. The Australian licensed engineer union and the Australian and international pilot association have been in negotiation with Qantas airlines since August 2010. While the transport worker unions had been in negotiation since may 2011. However, the dispute between employees and employers occurred as it became public word that jobs were being sent offshore. The union step in ensure this would not affect employees as well as improved their current employment condition. They demanded for

Muireann Quigley, in his article, “Non-Human primates: the appropriate subjects of biomedical research?” discusses the ethical issue of whether or not we should be using non-human primates in biomedical research. Throughout this article, Quigley raises the question is it ethical to perform testing on non-human primates? By looking at the accuracy of this testing, the type of research done, and the capacity of the subjects we can see that if the experiment is not ethical to perform on a human then it is not ethical to conducted on a non-human primate.