http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0043267
In NOT A CHIMP I go into great detail about social cognition and look closely about what we know about the domestication of dogs and how the process of domestication in dogs and arctic foxes has led to changes in structure and brain chemistry that have accompanied a heightened ability to empathize with humans, track human movements closely, and react accurately to human cues as to the location of something. Here researchers extend the canon to ferrets- showing that domesticated ferrets test very much the same as dogs over a range of social cognition tasks involving interaction with their owners. fascinating stuff - and because it is in PLoS1 it is open access so you can download the whole paper.
Are we humans simply remodelled apes? Chimps with a tweak? Is the difference between our genomes so minuscule it justifies the argument that our cognition and behaviour must also differ from chimps by barely a whisker? If “chimps are us” should we grant them human rights? Or is this one of the biggest fallacies in the study of evolution? NOT A CHIMP argues that these similarities have been grossly over-exaggerated - we should keep chimps at arm’s length. Are humans cognitively unique after all?
Saturday, 18 August 2012
When it comes to food, chimps only think of themselves
http://phys.org/news/2012-08-food-chimps.html
There have been many ingenious test set ups designed to evaluate a sense of fairness and sharing in chimps and bonobos. Some experiments have suggested that a chimp will actively manipulate an apparatus so that a human can reach an object or a fellow chimp get access to food otherwise denied him. Other experiments have suggested chimps have little concept of fairness and sharing. The debate shuttles back and forth. The experiment described here, run by researchers under Keith Jensen at Queen Mary College, London, suggests very strongly that chimps do not have any real sense of fairness whereas you can see an impulse to share in very young children.
There have been many ingenious test set ups designed to evaluate a sense of fairness and sharing in chimps and bonobos. Some experiments have suggested that a chimp will actively manipulate an apparatus so that a human can reach an object or a fellow chimp get access to food otherwise denied him. Other experiments have suggested chimps have little concept of fairness and sharing. The debate shuttles back and forth. The experiment described here, run by researchers under Keith Jensen at Queen Mary College, London, suggests very strongly that chimps do not have any real sense of fairness whereas you can see an impulse to share in very young children.