Primatology
emjohnson | September 28, 2009SUNY-Binghampton evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson currently has a response to my review "Survival of the Kindest" up at Seedmagazine.com. In his response he suggests that Dawkinsian critics such as Frans de Waal and Joan Roughgarden have adopted a group selection perspective in all but name:
Rejecting group selection was wrong.
The rejection of group selection as an important evolutionary force in the 1960s was one of the biggest blunders in the history of evolutionary thought. The extremely simple idea--I was just able to describe in just a few lines--was branded as so wrong that…
ddobbs | September 22, 2009
Eric Michael Johnson contemplates the hearts, minds, teeth, and claws of bonobos and other primates.
Tara Smith explains why she'll be getting her kids their (seasonal) flu vaccines. Revere does likewise
Daniel Menaker, former honcho at Random House, defends the midlist. (Where was he when my book was getting so much push?)
Just in case you missed it, lack of insurance is killing 45,000 people a year (Times) in the U.S. This doesn't include preventable deaths among the underinsured (like yours truly, who is sitting on some surgery that he'd rather put behind him). You can download the…
emjohnson | September 21, 2009Heracles battles Death for generosity's sake / Frederic Lord Leighton (1869-71)
Whereas great scientific theories stand the test of time when they accurately predict the natural world through repeated empirical trials, great literature transcends the ages when it speaks to universal qualities of human experience. Such inspirational works can also, without the authors realizing at the time, reveal the sublime beauty and tragedy of our evolutionary drama. Few classical authors have tapped into this zeitgeist of biological experience as the Greek tragedian Euripides. The conflict between…
emjohnson | September 20, 2009
As part of the series of reposts leading up to my review of Frans de Waal's newest book The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society I present the third of three pieces that appeared after Ian Parker's 2007 article "Swingers" appeared in The New Yorker.
In my earlier pieces "Bonobo (Re)Visions" as well as "Bonobos and the Politics of Human Nature" I pointed out how conservative pundits were eager to jump on any criticism of this species because it fit their ideology of nature as "red in tooth and claw" (to use the line from Tennyson). In his response in eSkeptic Frans de Waal…
emjohnson | September 19, 2009Bonobos often adopt a "missionary" posture during copulation (photograph by Frans de Waal).
As part of the series of reposts leading up to my review of Frans de Waal's newest book The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society I present the second of three pieces that appeared after Ian Parker's 2007 article "Swingers" appeared in The New Yorker.
As I wrote earlier in Bonobo (Re)Visions, Ian Parker's "exposé" in The New Yorker was beautifully written but wrong on many levels. Now the straw man who Parker claims to have torn down, primatologist Frans de Waal, answers his…
emjohnson | September 18, 2009
As part of the series of reposts leading up to my review of Frans de Waal's newest book The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society I present the first of three pieces that appeared after Ian Parker's 2007 article "Swingers" appeared in The New Yorker.
As expected, the apologists for unreason who promote Intelligent Design have jumped on the recent article in The New Yorker about bonobos. This inspired me to write at more length about the article since this is a species I've studied closely for the last two years. Denyse O'Leary at Uncommon Descent uses the article to proudly…
emjohnson | September 17, 2009
Darwin evicts a Social Darwinist and Eugenicist from his house / Northwestern Univ.
Primatologist Frans de Waal, author of such classic works as Chimpanzee Politics, Peacemaking Among Primates, Good Natured: The Origin of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals, and Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape is now coming out with his new book The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society. My review of this work will be out early next week to mark the book's national release on September 22. Today and in the next few days I will be reposting pieces I've written over the years on the…
emjohnson | August 17, 2009Benjamin Franklin once quipped, "Where there's marriage without love there will be love without marriage." His affairs are well known in American history, however this founding father may have been stating a truth extending to evolutionary history as well.
Christopher Ryan (author of the forthcoming Sex at Dawn) offers some thoughts on the role of novelty in the sex lives of our favorite primate. He suggests that men are drawn to variety in sexual partners while women are drawn to variety in technique:
When researchers decided to look at this issue to develop a Sexual Boredom Scale, they…
emjohnson | August 11, 2009The Daily Show's Jon Oliver investigates the question of whether humans are more closely related to orangutans or chimpanzees. The answer shouldn't surprise you in the slightest (though it will be quite funny).
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Orangutans aren't the only ones who engage in face to face sex. Bonobos do it as one of their many inventive positions. Leaving the genetic evidence aside, behaviorally the likelihood that humans…
emjohnson | August 10, 2009John Hawks points to a news story showing that orangutans make musical instruments:
When in a tight situation, the orangutans will strip the leaves off a twig and make a crude musical instrument to alter the calls they use to ward off predators -- not exactly a Stradivarius, but it seems to get the job done. . .
. . . Orangutans make this noise when they feel threatened, for example, when they fear a predator -- such as a snake, clouded leopard, tiger or human -- most likely to ward the predator off and not as a distress call.
The researchers call the noises produced "kiss squeeks." It…
emjohnson | August 7, 2009The Evolution of Spite is the Evil Twin of Altruism
Someone walks into a crowded restaurant, looks about the diners calmly, and blows themselves up as well as everyone nearby. Why? This is a scenario that forces us to explain the dark side of human nature. Why do humans have a capacity for such hate that they'll take their own lives in order to destroy others?
A study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on chimpanzee behavior suggests that humans may be alone in this way: a dubious distinction to say the least. In a review published in the Chicago Tribune the researchers…
emjohnson | July 23, 2009Primate sociality is linked to brain networks for pair bonds.
Social conservatives are fond of linking morality with monogamy and will be quick to condemn the moral crimes of adulterous felatio while ignoring the moral crimes of cutting social programs for poor mothers. However, in a bizarre twist, research suggests that morality and monogamy are closely intertwined, though it's doubtful many conservatives will champion the reasons why.
In the journal Science Robin Dunbar revisits the question with a unique perspective as to why some species (including humans) succeed so well as members of…
emjohnson | July 17, 2009How genes for altruism can benefit strangers as well as kin
The generosity of adoption has long been considered a unique human hallmark.
Image: Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
For decades it was conventional dogma that humans were the only species that used tools. "Man the Toolmaker" was our celebrated designation. The hominin fossil Homo habilis (or "handy" man) was even defined within our genera primarily because the skeleton was associated with stone implements. However, when Jane Goodall discovered chimpanzees using modified sticks at Gombe to "fish" for termites, Louis Leakey famously…
emjohnson | July 7, 2009
"It seems really very unfair that man should have chosen the gorilla to symbolize everything that is aggressive and violent, when that is one thing that gorillas are not, and that we are."- Sir Richard Attenborough
This quote sets the tone for a new award winning short film (see below) from the non-profit organization Explore. Primates, and great apes in particular, have long fascinated and repulsed us based on their uncanny resemblance. In order to deflect this repulsion they have frequently been portrayed as monstrous, violent and expressing a host of bestial attributes. A case in point…
ddobbs | May 18, 2009
A ring-tailed lemur, via Afarensis
Here's one that'll grab you. Via Discover's 80beats science news blog:
A small, lemur-like creature may have been an early ancestor of monkeys, apes, and humans. A magnificently preserved fossil dating from 47 million years ago reveals an animal that had, among other things, opposable thumbs, similar to humans', and unlike those found on other modern mammals. It has fingernails instead of claws. And scientists say they believe there is evidence it was able to walk on its hind legs [ABC News].
This from a study to be published in PLoS ONE tomorrow, and which…
neurotopia | August 19, 2008Lots of attention has been paid to the capacity of great apes to use objects as tools. Well, here we have an example of a chimpanzee at the Honolulu Zoo using a toad as a "marital aide". I feel bad for the poor toad, it certainly doesn't deserve to be treated like an object.
There's not more I can say about the subject, frankly I'm still simultaneously trying to process it and scrub it from my brain. Again, not safe for work viewing.
neurotopia | February 29, 2008Here we have yet another example of evolution cobbling together new proteins from existing structures. And what do you know, it kinda matters:
The TRIM5-CypA gene found in Asian macaques is a hybrid of two existing proteins, TRIM5 and CypA. This combination creates a single protein that blocks infections by lentiviruses.
This is the second time a TRIM5-CypA hybrid gene has been identified in monkeys. The other one -- TRIMCyp -- was found in South American owl monkeys in 2004. But it's not likely that these two gene combinations arose from a single common ancestor, the Harvard researchers…
neurotopia | November 12, 2007My simian brethren are taking over:
"Wildlife officials are trying to find them. As police we're not experts in dealing with monkeys. We can deal with mad bulls but monkeys are more difficult," he said.
Along with an estimated 35,000 sacred cows and buffaloes that roam free in the capital, marauding monkeys have been longstanding pests.
They routinely scamper through government offices, courts and even police stations and hospitals as well as terrorise neighbourhoods.
They even took down the deputy mayor of Delhi!!!
He was on his balcony reading a newspaper when four monkeys appeared. As he…
neurotopia | October 26, 2007It's not a good millenium to be a monkey.
GENEVA (AFP) - Nearly a third of all non-human primates could be wiped out, threatened by illegal wildlife trade, climate change and destruction of their habitat, a new report warned on Friday.
Twenty-nine percent of all monkeys, apes and gorilla species are now in danger of going extinct, according to the report by the Swiss-based World Conservation Union (IUCN).
A complete shame because we have so many close relatives on our family bush that can teach us about evolution, how our brains work, and generally what it means to be human.
It highlighted…
neurotopia | August 14, 2006As every Evil Monkey knows, you've bestowed upon a student from UVA a great honor.
S.R. Sidarth, a senior at the University of Virginia, had been trailing Allen with a video camera to document his travels and speeches for the Webb campaign. During a campaign speech Friday in Breaks, Virginia, near the Kentucky border, Allen singled out Sidarth and called him a word that sounded like "Macaca."
"This fellow here over here with the yellow shirt, Macaca, or whatever his name is. He's with my opponent. He's following us around everywhere. And it's just great. We're going to places all over…