Primates // Current

Deciphering the Chatter of Monkeys and Chimps

Deciphering the Chatter of Monkeys
By NICHOLAS WADE

Walking through the Tai forest of Ivory Coast, Klaus Zuberbühler could hear the calls of the Diana monkeys, but the babble held no meaning for him.

That was in 1990. Today, after nearly 20 years of studying animal communication, he can translate the forest’s sounds. This call means a Diana monkey has seen a leopard. That one means it has sighted another predator, the crowned eagle. “In our experience time and again, it’s a humbling experience to realize there is so much more information being passed in ways which hadn’t been noticed before,” said Dr. Zuberbühler, a psychologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

Do apes and monkeys have a secret language that has not yet been decrypted? And if so, will it resolve the mystery of how the human faculty for language evolved? Biologists have approached the issue in two ways, by trying to teach human language to chimpanzees and other species, and by listening to animals in the wild.

The first approach has been propelled by people’s intense desire — perhaps reinforced by childhood exposure to the loquacious animals in cartoons — to communicate with other species. Scientists have invested enormous effort in teaching chimpanzees language, whether in the form of speech or signs. A New York Times reporter who understands sign language, Boyce Rensberger, was able in 1974 to conduct what may be the first newspaper interview with another species when he conversed with Lucy, a signing chimp. She invited him up her tree, a proposal he declined, said Mr. Rensberger, who is now at M.I.T.

But with a few exceptions, teaching animals human language has proved to be a dead end. They should speak, perhaps, but they do not. They can communicate very expressively — think how definitely dogs can make their desires known — but they do not link symbolic sounds together in sentences or have anything close to language.

Better insights have come from listening to the sounds made by animals in the wild. Vervet monkeys were found in 1980 to have specific alarm calls for their most serious predators. If the calls were recorded and played back to them, the monkeys would respond appropriately. They jumped into bushes on hearing the leopard call, scanned the ground at the snake call, and looked up when played the eagle call.

It is tempting to think of the vervet calls as words for “leopard,” “snake” or “eagle,” but that is not really so. The vervets do not combine the calls with other sounds to make new meanings. They do not modulate them, so far as is known, to convey that a leopard is 10, or 100, feet away. Their alarm calls seem less like words and more like a person saying “Ouch!” — a vocal representation of an inner mental state rather than an attempt to convey exact information.

But the calls do have specific meaning, which is a start. And the biologists who analyzed the vervet calls, Robert Seyfarth and Dorothy Cheney of the University of Pennsylvania, detected another significant element in primates’ communication when they moved on to study baboons. Baboons are very sensitive to who stands where in their society’s hierarchy. If played a recording of a superior baboon threatening an inferior, and the latter screaming in terror, baboons will pay no attention — this is business as usual in baboon affairs. But when researchers concoct a recording in which an inferior’s threat grunt precedes a superior’s scream, baboons will look in amazement toward the loudspeaker broadcasting this apparent revolution in their social order.

CONTINUED...Deciphering the Chatter of Monkeys By NICHOLAS WADE Walking through the Tai forest... more

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Titus the legendary mountain gorilla silverback dies of old age

The "Gorilla King" Titus has passed away from old age.

September 2009. On the morning of Sept. 14, trackers at the Karisoke Research Centre found the legendary silverback gorilla Titus, dead on his night nest in Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda. He was 35, which is quite old for a male mountain gorilla. Titus had been the dominant male in one of the gorilla groups studied for many years by Karisoke and was the subject of the documentary "Gorilla King" TV series.

Born in 1974
Titus' eventful life began in 1974, observed by Dian Fossey and her research assistant Kelly Stewart, daughter of actor Jimmy Stewart. Kelly was the first to see the newborn, so she named him Titus after a character in a novel she was reading. His mother, the elderly Flossie, lived in Fossey's Group Four, led by his father, Uncle Bert. Fossey noted in Gorillas in the Mist that Titus seemed to be "underdeveloped and spindly" and had difficulty breathing. He soon overcame these disabilities, the first of many challenges he faced in childhood.

Father killed by poachers
When Titus was 4 years old, poachers killed his father Uncle Bert, his uncle Digit, and his younger brother. Soon after, a newly arrived silverback named Beetsme killed Titus' infant sister, causing his mother and older sister to flee to another group. Titus was left at age 5 to live with a few unrelated males, including Beetsme and Tiger, that were soon joined by Peanuts and two others. The group remained all-male for several years, until another group's silverback died and five females came to join the bachelors. Beetsme eventually drove off all the other males except for Titus, who was favoured by Papoose, the dominant female.

Even tempered
An unusually even tempered and skillful leader, Titus maintained his dominance over a group of some 25 individuals without difficulty for many years.
...

Please follow link to learn more about Titus and his incredible story...

* Follow the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International on Twitter.com and get the latest updates http://twitter.com/savinggorillasThe "Gorilla King" Titus has passed away from old age. September 2009. On... more

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If you care anything about primates, hypocrisy or justice, you’re going to want to read this blog entry from Priscilla Feral, President of Friends of Animals.

In a nutshell, PeTA is, for the third time, again suing Primarily Primates, Inc., a non-profit animal sanctuary in San Antonio, Texas that is managed by Friends of Animals (FoA) and operates solely to house and rehabilitate various non-native animals, such as primates, birds and an African lion.

These animals are typically the throwaways from pet trade and biomedical research facilities and without PPI’s intervention would have had an uncertain future – if any at all.

After two unsuccessful lawsuits, both of which were dismissed for unsubstantiated claims, one would think PeTA would not only examine its own agenda for legitimacy, but seriously reconsider wasting further donation dollars on giddy court cases. But, as Feral writes in her blog;

“As a $30 million per year organization, PETA can afford to file all the frivolous lawsuits it wants, hire as many lawyers as it wants, and make all of the frivolous arguments it wants. However, PETA is hard-pressed to explain how this lawsuit helps any of the animals in PPI’s care…”

The mission statement of Friends of Animals is to ‘cultivate a respectful view of nonhuman animals, free-living and domestic.’ They engage in nationwide spay and neuter campaigns, strongly support veganism and are staunch advocates for animal care, activism and compassion. Funny, but according to PeTA’s PR machines, they do, too.

So, we’ll be watching this case closely in the coming weeks. In the meantime, we hope you will send a letter to PeTA expressing your outrage that donation dollars are being spent on eating one of their own.

Personal Note:
I have always been a strong supporter of PETA. I have also supported Friends of Animals and many other organizations that promote animal rights, animal welfare legislation and environmental ethics. So, readining a post like this is disturbing.
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TAGS

tagged w/ Primates

Deciphering the Chatter of Monkeys and Chimps

Monkey Will Be Sent to Mars

emptiness of space to primates in under 10 minutes depiction -awesome

Titus the legendary mountain gorilla silverback dies of old age

UW-Madisn to Expand Primate Research Labs

gorilla hands for sale: 6 USD

Orangutans vs Palm Plantations

Portraits From the Steampunk Planet of the Apes

Spider Monkeys Invent Medicinal Tools.

Orangutan and dog - best friends forever.

Militants Killing Animals in Congo National Park

PeTA: Eating One Of It’s Own?

54-million-year-old skull explains the evolution of primate brains

Rwanda 'baptises' 18 endangered baby gorillas

Hidden Crimes

GORILLAS – Gentle Giants in Need

Are the Mountain Gorillas Still in Peril?

Corporate Giant Blocking Deforestation for Palm Oil

No Justice for Monkey Boiled Alive

Test shows chimp in mauling had Xanax

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