Jungle // Current

Making a monkey's of economics

Primatologists are giving "guerilla marketing" a whole new meaning.

In Indonesia, researchers have watched how long-tail macaques trade for sex. In South Africa, vervet monkeys climbed the ladder of their social group by learning a new trade in apples.

This line of study examines how economic models explain social behavior in the natural world.

"Animals neither negotiate verbally nor conclude binding contracts, but nevertheless regularly exchange goods and services without overt coercion and manage to arrive at agreements over exchange rates," European researchers wrote in a recent paper on market behavior among vervet monkeys in South Africa.

"It's really looking at the economy of nature," said Michael David Gumert, a primatologist and assistant professor in the division of psychology at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Gumert spent 20 months in the jungles of Indonesia studying long-tail macaques, observing the mating market among the monkeys.

Gumert found that male monkeys "pay" for sex by grooming female monkeys. After being groomed, females would mate nearly four times an hour with the groomer, and are less likely to mate with others. But the larger the market of male companions, the higher the price of sex: Areas with low density of males, the price was only eight minutes of grooming. In areas where there were more males, the price could double to 16 minutes.

Sex isn't the only commodity for sale in the jungle. Female macaques will line up to groom a new mother in order to hold her offspring, Gumert observed. "When a mother has a baby, the other females are attracted to the baby and want access to it," he said.

The findings support the "biological market theory," a term created by researchers Ronald Noe and Peter Hammerstein in trying to understand reciprocal behavior in primates and the unwritten code of trade that appears in the wild.

Researchers stop short of saying this research has -- so far -- signaled that economics is an innate trait in our closest animal cousins, but it raises thought provoking questions if there is an evolutionary dynamic to the forces that gave rise to Wall Street.

From an evolutionary standpoint, the tacit negotiation that happens in primate groups suggests that the maxim that "only the strong survive" isn't quite right, Gumert said. "It seems really more like, 'only the cooperative survive'."

http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/business/2009/11/04/stevens.spotlight.monkey.business.cnnPrimatologists are giving "guerilla marketing" a whole new meaning. In Indonesia,... more

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1,000 Malayan tigers roaming in the wild by 2020

Positive conservation from the Malayan government. Can they actually do it?

Malaysia aims to double its wild tiger population
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysia has launched an ambitious plan to double its wild tiger population within 12 years by protecting jungle corridors where poachers prey on the endangered big cats, activists said Monday.

The National Tiger Action Plan aims to have 1,000 Malayan tigers roaming in the wild by 2020, said Sara Sukor, a spokeswoman for Malaysia's chapter of the World Wildlife Fund, one of several conservation groups that helped the government create the plan.

Authorities estimate Malaysia's wild tiger population has fallen from 3,000 to 500 in the last half-century, largely due to illegal hunting and the human encroachment and destruction of the tigers' natural jungle habitat. Tiger meat is exported, served at exotic restaurants and used in traditional Chinese medicine — all illegal acts under Malaysian law.

Malayan tigers have been protected by wildlife laws since the early 1970s, but the National Tiger Action Plan is the government's first concerted effort to reverse the population decline instead of merely slowing it, according to the plan that was launched this month.

Government officials and conservationists will restore and manage key jungle corridors that connect tiger habitats, providing the animals with a wider territory and mitigating the impact of infrastructure such as roads, railways and oil pipelines.

Under the plan, the government has also vowed to better enforce its wildlife laws, remove tigers from areas where they might come into conflict with humans and boost scientific research in tiger protection, said the WWF's Sukor.

"We are optimistic the plan will succeed with cooperation among all the agencies involved," Sukor said. "We want to show that we are serious about wildlife protection."

Conservationists have long urged the government to step up wildlife protection, particularly by increasing penalties against poachers and smugglers of endangered species. Such offenses are typically punished by small fines without prison sentences.

Malaysia's tropical forests are home to a wide range of threatened animals, including orangutans, Borneo sun bears, Sumatran rhinoceroses and pygmy elephants.Positive conservation from the Malayan government. Can they actually do it?... more