Sneaky Rambo Chimp

A fun story about further research into the malicious forward planning of the infamous stone-throwing chimp, Santino, in the Furuvik Zoo, north of Stockholm. Over the course of a year, researchers from Lund University, tracked his ability to camouflage his intentions to throw stones at unsuspecting zoo visitors by curbing his aggressive displays so as to reduce clues to immediate intent, and to build clumps of hay on the perimeter of his enclosure to hide caches of stones, ready for the next onslaught. It clearly seems that he has some degree of foresight and planning or the future, rather similar to the behaviour of the crows that I mentioned in CLEVER CORVIDS where they provisioned for a future breakfast by caching food from the night before only if they had been treated in a curmudgeonly fashion the day before. The question, as ever, with these studies, is what degree of theory of mind the chimp needs to be able to enact such strategies. It is not necessary for him to be thinking "I will hide the stones here because they will not think that the hay is hiding missiles" thereby profiting from the human visitors' false state of knowledge.

Because the paper is published in PLoS 1 it is freely available for those who want to read in full. The URL is:
 http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0036782

Otherwise a good precis of the research can be accessed here:

http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=120108&CultureCode=en

Psychopathy linked to specific structural abnormalities in the social brain

In the chapter INSIDE THE BRAIN in NOT A CHIMP I detail significant anatomical and cell differences between humans and chimps relating to parts of the brain responsible for social cognition: the so-called 'social brain'. Here, Nigel Blackwood, from King's College, London, reveals results from MRI studies of prisoners with the 'cold' or psychopathic form of anti-social personality disorder and shows structural abnormalities in parts of the prefrontal cortex and the temporal pole. he claims this is the first detailed study to relate psychopathy to deficits in the 'social brain' .http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-psychopathy-linked-specific-abnormalities-brain.html

Extra gene drove instant leap in human brain evolution

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-extra-gene-drove-instant-human.html

In NOT A CHIMP I devote one chapter, called MORE IS BETTER, to the extent to which phenomena like gene duplication have driven human evolution and widened the genomic gap between humans and our near neighbours - chimpanzees. Evan Eichler's work was heavily mentioned in the book and in this recent report on his work with Franck Polleux, an expert in brain development at The Scripps Research Institute, they make trenchant claims for the dramatic effects of gene duplication at crucial points in our hominin evolutionary history that may have been very important in brain growth and development - and unique human brain anatomy. The gene in question is SRGAP2. Here's a section of this Medical Express report which encapsulates what happened and why it may be very important:

""There are approximately 30 genes that were selectively duplicated in humans," said Franck Polleux. "These are some of our most recent genomic innovations."

Intriguingly, many of these genes appear to play some role in the developing brain. Polleux and Evan Eichler, a genome scientist at the University of Washington, focused their expertise and attention on one of the genes known as SRGAP2. This gene has, in fact, been duplicated at least twice during the course of human evolution, first about 3.5 million years ago and then again about 2.5 million years ago.

The new work shows that the second and relatively recent duplication event produced only a partial copy of the gene. This copy acts at exactly the same time and place as the original, allowing it to interact with and block the ancestral gene's function.

"This innovation couldn't have happened without that incomplete duplication," Eichler said. "Our data suggest a mechanism where incomplete duplication of this gene created a novel function 'at birth'."

Interestingly, the novel gene appears to have arisen just as the fossil record shows a transition from human's extinct Australopithecus ancestors to the genus Homo (as in Homo sapiens), which led to modern humans. That's also when the brains of our ancestors began to expand and when dramatic changes in cognitive abilities are likely to have emerged."

The gene is involved in neuronal migration to appropriate parts of the developing brain from the epithelium from which neurons bud off. It also seems to govern the complexity of projections any neuron can develop - a key factor in eventual complexity of interconnectivity of neurons - network.

Josh Klein's TED talk on the intelligence of crows

A fascinating and well delivered TED talk on the intelligence of crows that mirrors the information in the CLEVER CORVIDS chapter of NOT A CHIMP. Well worth a watch.

Ravens remember relationships they had with others

In the chapter CLEVER CORVIDS in NOT A CHIMP I mention the research, on ravens, of theory of mind in ravens by Tomas Bugnyar and colleagues. Here is yet another offering from this camp that points to extensive memory of social relationships in ravens and yet another example of he casual denigration of avian minds by the use of the term "bird-brained"!!

A quote from the Physorg article sums it up:-

"Ravens respond to calls from previously unknown individuals with even lower and rougher calls and thus try to increase the acoustic perceivable body-size – also in humans larger people have lower voices than smaller ones and angry humans rougher voices. While it was known that mammals change their voices based on the relationship they share with others, the researchers were now able to show for the first time that also birds change their calls according to relationship quality.
The duration of the memory is beyond the previously estimated ability for birds; the ability to remember relationship valence has been shown for the first time in animals."

Our Missing Genes

In a chapter titled LESS IS MORE in my book NOT A CHIMP I talk about a number of loss-of-function mutations in the human genome where a gene that functions in our primate cousins has become silenced in us. Turned into a pseudogene. Sometimes this can lead to disease and sometimes it can be shown that it is adaptive - part of the evolution of our genome. In this report on a recent SCIENCE paper, the research group found over 1000 genuine loss-of-function mutations in the human genome and suggested every European has at least 20 of them.

Tame Theory: Did Bonobos Domesticate Themselves?

In NOT A CHIMP I devote a chapter to the idea, first suggested to me by Richard Wrangham, that humans may have self-domesticated. I mention at length Wrangham's work with Brian Hare on the differences between bonobos and chimpanzees and their suggestion that self-domestication processes were very important in deriving those differences. Here, in Scientific American, is a useful article going over that ground, following a scientific paper co-authored by Wrangham, Hare and Wobber.