#chimpanzee behavior

[official-boyfriend]

(The first sentence is cut off but starts: "Washoe, for example, puzzled...")

I'm reading Jane Goodall's Through A Window and this excerpt from the chapter The Mind of the Chimpanzee is delightful. I'm going to call Alka Seltzer "listen drink" forever and ever.

[inanator]

Eye contact causes me discomfort, sorry if you thought I was an inconsiderate jerk when I lowered my gaze in a show of submission.

[transitionalforms]

In an experiment study Melis et al. presented pairs of chimpanzees with out-of-reach food that could be obtained only if both partners pulled simultaneously on the two ends of a rope connected to a platform. When there were two piles of food, one in front of each individual, the pairs were often successful. However, when there was only one pile of food in the middle of the platform, pulling it in typically resulted in the dominant individual monopolizing all the food. This naturally demotivated the subordinate for future collaborative efforts, so cooperation fell apart over trials. In stark contrast, in a study designed by Warneken et al. to be as comparable as possible to this one, three-year-old children were not bothered at all by the food being in a single pile in the middle of the board; they collaborated successfully over many trials no matter how the food was laid out.

Tomasello, M. (2016). A natural history of human morality. Harvard University Press.

Discussing

Melis, A. P., Hare, B., & Tomasello, M. (2006). Chimpanzees recruit the best collaborators. Science, 311(5765), 1297-1300.

and

Warneken, F., Lohse, K., Melis, A. P., & Tomasello, M. (2011). Young children share the spoils after collaboration. Psychological science, 22(2), 267-273.

[transitionalforms]

One set of studies has carefully documented the behavior of an alpha male chimpanzee in an open-plan zoo. The male initially collected and stored piles of stones early in the morning, to throw at zoo visitors later in the day as part of an aggressive threat display. When the zoo keepers responded by removing his stashes before the zoo opened each day to prevent this, he proved quite adept at concealing his stashes... Note that at all times when he collected and concelaed his stashes he was in a calm state, in the absence of the stimuli (human visitors) that would later provoke his rage.

Carruthers, Peter. The centered mind: what the science of working memory shows us about the nature of human thought. OUP Oxford, 2015. p 221

Discussing: 

Osvath, Mathias. "Spontaneous planning for future stone throwing by a male chimpanzee." Current biology 19.5 (2009): R190-R191.