Arquivo da tag: Socialidade animal

10.17.13

A pair of common marmosets. Image: Bart van Dorp/Flickr

The sounds of marmoset monkeys chattering may hint at the mysterious origins of human language.

A new study shows that marmosets exchange calls in a precisely timed, back-and-forth fashion typical of human conversation, but not found in other primates. The monkeys don’t appear to have a language, but the timing suggests the foundations of our own.

“That could be the foundation of more sophisticated things, like syntax,” said psychologist Asif Ghazanfar of Princeton University, co-author of the study, which was published today in Current Biology. “You can’t have any of those other really cool aspects of language without first having this.”

‘If you went back 10 million years, you’d be hard-pressed to predict that an ape would end up with the planet’s most complex vocal communication.’

How language, so complex and information-rich, evolved in Homo sapiens and, as far as we know, no other species, is one of anthropology’s outstanding questions. The traditional, seemingly intuitive answer is that it arose from the vocalizations of ancestors who were capable of a few rudimentary noises and wanted to say more.

Confounding that narrative, though, is the comparatively less-vocal nature of many other primates, including our closest living relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos. They do vocalize, of course, and even say some interesting things, but not with the same flow expected of some proto-human linguistic capability.

That conundrum has led researchers to propose another possible origin of language, one rooted not in our voices but rather our bodies, and in particular our hands. According to this narrative, gesture would have been as important to our ancestors as sound. Indeed, neurological processes underlying speech and language are also intimately linked with motor skills, raising the possibility that language formed on the cognitive scaffold of gesture — and chimpanzees do have a large repertoire of hand movements.

But many scientists, including Ghazanfar and the study’s lead author, fellow Princeton psychologist Daniel Takahashi, aren’t convinced. If human language did follow on gesture, they wonder, why don’t chimps talk more? There’s also no evidence in chimpanzees for vocal turn-taking, or waiting for another person to finish speaking before replying, which is universal in human languages. “If we don’t take turns, if we’re overlapping, it’s very difficult to understand each other,” said Ghazanfar. “Turn-taking is foundational.”

Yet even if chimps don’t take turns, Ghazanfar and Takahashi found that marmosets do. In the new study, they placed pairs of marmosets in the opposite corners of a room, separated by a curtain that allowed them to hear but not see each other, and recorded the ensuing chatter.

These proved to follow turn-taking patterns, with a pause of several seconds between the completion of one monkey’s whistles and the other’s beginning. And unlike the duets of birds, which are often highly synchronized, the exchanges had nothing to do with mating or territoriality. The monkeys were conversing.

Monkey Conversation:
Whistles encoding information about the caller’s identity are exchanged back and forth according to rules of timing also found in human conversation.

Audio: Takahashi et al./Ethology

As for what they said, marmoset whistles are thought to encode information about a caller’s identity, age, gender and location. Ghazanfar thinks the conversations are a sort of “vocal grooming,” a way of easing stress or conveying affection, but delivered at a distance. It only works when monkeys know they’re being addressed individually, which is conveyed by the turn-taking form.

“It could be a pre-adaptation for language,” said evolutionary biologist Thore Bergman of the University of Michigan, who was not involved in the study. Bergman’s own research involveshuman-sounding lip smacks made by monkeys called geladas.

As for why marmosets and humans take turns, but not chimpanzees, Ghazanfar suspects it’s a function of our social systems. Marmosets are cooperative breeders: Group members take care of offspring unrelated to them, creating community-oriented dynamics of behavior and communication. Ancestral humans may have lived the same way.

Without a time machine, of course, questions about the origin of human language won’t ever be settled. As Bergmann noted, the findings don’t exclude the possible importance of gesture. It’s possible that human language arose from the fortuitous interactions of gesture, vocalization and social structure with evolutionary pressure.

Indeterminacy aside, though, it’s fun to speculate, and also to wonder whether the seeds of complex language now exist in animals other than ourselves. Many whales and dolphins, along with syntax-using monkeys and even prairie dogs, communicate in very sophisticated ways.

“If you went back 10 million years, you’d be hard-pressed to predict an ape would end up with the planet’s most complex vocal communication system,” said Thore Bergman. “Why that happened is a really big puzzle.”

Citation: “Coupled Oscillator Dynamics of Vocal Turn-Taking in Monkeys.” By Daniel Takahashi, Darshana Narayanan and Asif Ghazanfar. Current Biology, 17 October 2013.

Chimpanzees of a Feather Sit Together: Friendships Are Based On Similar Personalities (Science Daily)

10/10/2013UncategorizedAnimais, Inteligência animal, Socialidade animalrenzotaddei

Oct. 9, 2013 — Like humans, many animals have close and stable friendships. However, until now, it has been unclear what makes particular individuals bond. Cognitive Biologists of the University of Vienna, Austria, and the University of Zurich, Switzerland, explored the question and found that chimpanzees choose their friendships based on similarity of personality.

The results of this study appear in the scientific journal Evolution and Human Behaviour.

Chimpanzee Tushi. (Credit: (Copyright: Jorg Massen)

Jorg Massen (University of Vienna) and Sonja Koski (University of Zurich) together measured chimpanzee personality in two zoos with behavioural experiments and years of observations of chimpanzee behaviour. They also carefully logged which chimpanzee sat in body contact with whom most. “This is a clear sign of friendship among chimpanzees,” explains Jorg Massen. Subsequently, the researchers tested, if those chimpanzees who sit together frequently have similar or different personality types.

“We found that, especially among unrelated friends, the most sociable and bold individuals preferred the company of other highly sociable and bold individuals, whereas shy and less sociable ones spent time with other similarly aloof and shy chimpanzees,” says the researcher. The researchers argue that such a strong preference for self-like individuals is probably adaptive, because frequent cooperation becomes more reliable when both partners have similar behavioural tendencies and emotional states.

This finding strongly resembles the known “similarity effect” in humans: We tend to make friends with people who are equally extraverted, friendly and bold as ourselves. “It appears that what draws and keeps both chimpanzee and human friends together is similarity in gregariousness and boldness, suggesting that preference for self-like friends dates back to our last common ancestor,” ends Jorg Massen.

Journal Reference:

Jorg J.M. Massen, Sonja E. Koski. Chimps of a feather sit together: chimpanzee friendships are based on homophily in personality. Evolution and Human Behavior, 2013; DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2013.08.008

Orangutans Plan Their Future Route and Communicate It to Others (Science Daily)

13/09/2013UncategorizedAnimais, Cognição, Inteligência animal, Linguística, Primatologia, Socialidade animalrenzotaddei

Sep. 11, 2013 — Male orangutans plan their travel route up to one day in advance and communicate it to other members of their species. In order to attract females and repel male rivals, they call in the direction in which they are going to travel. Anthropologists at the University of Zurich have found that not only captive, but also wild-living orangutans make use of their planning ability.

Male orangutans face the direction they plan to travel and emit ‘long calls’ in that direction. (Credit: UZH)

For a long time it was thought that only humans had the ability to anticipate future actions, whereas animals are caught in the here and now. But in recent years, clever experiments with great apes in zoos have shown that they do remember past events and can plan for their future needs. Anthropologists at the University of Zurich have now investigated whether wild apes also have this skill, following them for several years through the dense tropical swamplands of Sumatra.

Orangutans communicate their plans

Orangutans generally journey through the forest alone, but they also maintain social relationships. Adult males sometimes emit loud ‘long calls’ to attract females and repel rivals. Their cheek pads act as a funnel for amplifying the sound in the same way as a megaphone. Females that only hear a faint call come closer in order not to lose contact. Non-dominant males on the other hand hurry in the opposite direction if they hear the call coming loud and clear in their direction.

“To optimize the effect of these calls, it thus would make sense for the male to call in the direction of his future whereabouts, if he already knew about them,” explains Carel van Schaik. “We then actually observed that the males traveled for several hours in approximately the same direction as they had called.”

In extreme cases, long calls made around nesting time in the evening predicted the travel direction better than random until the evening of the next day.Carel van Schaik and his team conclude that orangutans plan their route up to a day ahead. In addition, the males often announced changes in travel direction with a new, better-fitting long call. The researchers also found that in the morning, the other orangutans reacted correctly to the long call of the previous evening, even if no new long call was emitted.

“Our study makes it clear that wild orangutans do not simply live in the here and now, but can imagine a future and even announce their plans. In this sense, then, they have become a bit more like us,” concludes Carel van Schaik.

Journal Reference:

Carel P. van Schaik, Laura Damerius, Karin Isler. Wild Orangutan Males Plan and Communicate Their Travel Direction One Day in Advance. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (9): e74896 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0074896

Face-Off With a Deadly Predator (National Geographic)

06/09/2013UncategorizedAnimais, Inteligência animal, Interação humanos-animais, Socialidade animal, Violênciarenzotaddei

12/11/2009
Paul Nicklen describes his most amazing experience as a National Geographic photographer – coming face-to-face with one of Antarctica’s most vicious predators.

Primate Calls, Like Human Speech, Can Help Infants Form Categories (Science Daily)

03/09/2013UncategorizedAnimais, Educação, Inteligência animal, Socialidade animalrenzotaddei

Sep. 2, 2013 — Human infants’ responses to the vocalizations of non-human primates shed light on the developmental origin of a crucial link between human language and core cognitive capacities, a new study reports.

Mantled howler (Alouatta seniculus) howling. (Credit: © michaklootwijk / Fotolia)

Previous studies have shown that even in infants too young to speak, listening to human speech supports core cognitive processes, including the formation of object categories.

Alissa Ferry, lead author and currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Language, Cognition and Development Lab at the Scuola Internationale Superiore di Studi Avanzati in Trieste, Italy, together with Northwestern University colleagues, documented that this link is initially broad enough to include the vocalizations of non-human primates.

“We found that for 3- and 4-month-old infants, non-human primate vocalizations promoted object categorization, mirroring exactly the effects of human speech, but that by six months, non-human primate vocalizations no longer had this effect — the link to cognition had been tuned specifically to human language,” Ferry said.

In humans, language is the primary conduit for conveying our thoughts. The new findings document that for young infants, listening to the vocalizations of humans and non-human primates supports the fundamental cognitive process of categorization. From this broad beginning, the infant mind identifies which signals are part of their language and begins to systematically link these signals to meaning.

Furthermore, the researchers found that infants’ response to non-human primate vocalizations at three and four months was not just due to the sounds’ acoustic complexity, as infants who heard backward human speech segments failed to form object categories at any age.

Susan Hespos, co-author and associate professor of psychology at Northwestern said, “For me, the most stunning aspect of these findings is that an unfamiliar sound like a lemur call confers precisely the same effect as human language for 3- and 4-month-old infants. More broadly, this finding implies that the origins of the link between language and categorization cannot be derived from learning alone.”

“These results reveal that the link between language and object categories, evident as early as three months, derives from a broader template that initially encompasses vocalizations of human and non-human primates and is rapidly tuned specifically to human vocalizations,” said Sandra Waxman, co-author and Louis W. Menk Professor of Psychology at Northwestern.

Waxman said these new results open the door to new research questions.

“Is this link sufficiently broad to include vocalizations beyond those of our closest genealogical cousins,” asks Waxman, “or is it restricted to primates, whose vocalizations may be perceptually just close enough to our own to serve as early candidates for the platform on which human language is launched?”

Journal Reference:

Alissa Ferry et al. Non-human primate vocalizations support categorizations in very young human infants.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, September 3, 2013

The Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography (Cultural Anthropology)

17/08/2013UncategorizedAnimais, Antropologia, Interação humanos-animais, Socialidade animalrenzotaddei

Abstract

June 14, 2010

A Special Issue of Cultural Anthropology

Edited by Eben Kirksey and Stefan Helmreich

In the November 2010 issue of Cultural Anthropology, Eben Kirksey and Stefan Helmreich explore how creatures previously appearing on the margins of anthropology — as part of the landscape, as food for humans, as symbols — have been pressed into the foreground in recent ethnographies. Multispecies ethnographers are studying the host of organisms whose lives and deaths are linked to human social worlds. A project allied with Eduardo Kohn’s “anthropology of life”—“an anthropology that is not just confined to the human but is concerned with the effects of our entanglements with other kinds of living selves” (2007:4)—multispecies ethnography centers on how a multitude of organisms’ livelihoods shape and are shaped by political, economic, and cultural forces.

“Becomings”—new kinds of relations emerging from nonhierarchical alliances, symbiotic attachments, and the mingling of creative agents (cf. Deleuze and Guattari 1987:241–242)—abound in this chronicle of the emergence of multispecies ethnography, and in the essays in this collection.“The idea of becoming transforms types into events, objects into actions,” writes contributor Celia Lowe.

The work of Donna Haraway also provides one key starting point for the “species turn” in anthropology: “If we appreciate the foolishness of human exceptionalism,” she writes in When Species Meet, “then we know that becoming is always becoming with—in a contact zone where the outcome, where who is in the world, is at stake” (2008:244).

Anna Tsing’s scholarship also provides a charter for multispecies ethnographers. In an forthcoming essay, “Unruly Edges: Mushrooms as Companion Species”, she suggests that “human nature is an interspecies relationship” (Tsing n.d.; see Haraway 2008:19). Displacing studies of animal behavior used by social conservatives and sociobiologists to naturalize autocratic and militaristic ideologies, Tsing began studying mushrooms to imagine a human nature that shifted historically along with varied webs of interspecies dependence. Searching familiar places in the parklands of northern California for mushrooms—looking for the orange folds of chanterelles or the warm muffins of king boletes—she discovered a world of mutually flourishing companions. Aspiring to mimic the “mycorrhizal sociality” of mushrooms, Tsing formed the Matsutake Worlds Research Group—an ethnographic research team centered on matsutake, an aromatic gourmet mushroom in the genus Tricholoma, a “species cluster.” Following the matsutake mushroom through commodity chains in Europe, North America, and East Asia, this group has experimented with new modes of collaborative ethnographic research while studying scale-making and multispecies relations.

Multispecies ethnography has emerged with the activity of a swarm, a network with no center to dictate order, populated by “a multitude of different creative agents” (Hardt and Negri 2005:92). The Multispecies Salon — a series of panels, round tables, and events in art galleries held at the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association (in 2006 and 2008) — was one place, among many others, where this swarm alighted. In November the Multispecies Salon will travel to New Orleans. Here, at the 2010 AAA meetings, a lively group of interlocutors—wild artists and para-ethnographers—will come together to discuss the multispecies zeitgeist that is sweeping the social sciences and the humanities.

Inline_img_0243 — Eben Kirksey, “Untitled.” April 6, 2010.

The “Twins,” a chimerical pair of grubs with wings, graces the cover of the November 2010 issue of Cultural Anthropology. This ceramic piece was created by Marnia Johnston, who joined Eben Kirksey in curating the Multispecies Salon. Only adult insects have wings. Their juvenile forms, larvae, do not. “Humans are acquiring adult characteristics, such as breasts, at an early age,” Johnston told us. “Endocrine disrupting chemicals, like Bovine Growth Hormone,” she continued, “are working on the bodies of humans and multiple other species. I want people to think about how our chemical dependencies change us and the world we live in.”

Questions for Classroom Discussion

1. What were the Science Wars? What distinguishes emerging conversations about nature and culture in anthropology from this earlier historical moment?

2. What does anthropos mean? As the facts of life are being remade by the biosciences, what is anthropos becoming?

3. In the Anthropocene, a new epoch in Earth’s history, are there elements of nature that exist outside of culture?

About the Authors

Eben Kirksey is a cultural anthropologist at the CUNY Graduate Center who studies the political dimensions of imagination as well as the interplay of natural and cultural history. As a graduate student at the University of Oxford, and UC Santa Cruz, he published four articles in peer-reviewed journals and two chapters in edited books on these themes. His doctoral dissertation and first book, “Freedom in Entangled Worlds”, is about an indigenous political movement in West Papua, the half of New Guinea under Indonesian control (forthcoming 2011). As a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow (2008-2010), he conducted an ethnography of place at multiple biological research stations in Latin America. Following the movement of people and organisms—across national borders and through a fragmented landscape—he studied oblique powers at play in global assemblages.

Stefan Helmreich has worked as a Postdoctoral Associate in Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University, an External Faculty Fellow at the Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture at Rutgers University, and as Assistant Professor of Science and Society at New York University. The National Science Foundation and the Wenner-Gren Foundation have funded his research. Helmreich’s research examines the works and lives of contemporary biologists puzzling through the conceptual boundaries of “life” as a category of analysis. He has written extensively on Artificial Life, most notably in Silicon Second Nature: Culturing Artificial Life in a Digital World (University of California Press, 1998), which in 2001 won the Diana Forsythe Book Prize from the American Anthropological Association. His latest book, Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas (University of California Press, 2009), is a study of marine biologists working in realms usually out of sight and reach: the microscopic world, the deep sea, and oceans outside national sovereignty.

The Multispecies Salon 3: SWARM

An Innovent panel at the AAA Meeting in New Orleans

Get Involved: CFP

Call for Papers: from Deborah Bird Rose and Thom van Dooren

Editors’ Footnotes

Cultural Anthropology has published a number of essay that map new directions in anthropology, including George Marcus’s “The End(s) of Ethnography: Social/Cultural Anthropology’s Signature Form of Producing Knowledge in Transition” (2008); Michael M. J. Fischer’s “Four Genealogies for a Recombinant Anthropology of Science and Technology” (2007); Daniel Segal’s “Editor’s Note: On Anthropology and/in/of Science”(2001); and Gary Lee Downey, Joseph Dumit, and Sarah Williams’s “Cyborg Anthropology” (1995).

Cultural Anthropology has also published essays on art and/as cultural analysis. See Kenneth George’s “Ethics, Iconoclasm, and Qur’anic Art in Indonesia” (2009), and Liam Buckley’s “Objects of Love and Decay: Colonial Photographs in a Postcolonial Archive” (2005).

Dolphins gain unprecedented protection in India (Deutsche Welle)

31/07/2013UncategorizedAnimais, Direitos animais, Inteligência animal, Interação humanos-animais, Socialidade animalrenzotaddei

delfin en acrobacia © davidpitu #28124646

BIODIVERSITY
Date 24.05.2013
Author Saroja Coelho

India has officially recognized dolphins as non-human persons, whose rights to life and liberty must be respected. Dolphin parks that were being built across the country will instead be shut down.

India’s Ministry of Environment and Forests has advised state governments to ban dolphinariums and other commercial entertainment that involves the capture and confinement of cetacean species such as orcas and bottlenose dolphins. In a statement, the government said research had clearly established cetaceans are highly intelligent and sensitive, and that dolphins “should be seen as ‘non-human persons’ and as such should have their own specific rights.”

The move comes after weeks of protest against a dolphin park in the state of Kerala and several other marine mammal entertainment facilities which were to be built this year. Animal welfare advocates welcomed the decision.

“This opens up a whole new discourse of ethics in the animal protection movement in India,” said Puja Mitra from the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organizations (FIAPO). Mitra is a leading voice in the Indian movement to end dolphin captivity.

Indian officials say it is morally unacceptable to exploit cetaceans in commercial entertainment

“The scientific evidence we provided during the campaign talked about cetacean intelligence and introduced the concept of non-human persons,” she said in an interview with DW.

Indiais the fourth country in the world to ban the capture and import of cetaceans for the purpose of commercial entertainment – along with Costa Rica, Hungary, and Chile.

Dolphins are persons, not performers

The movement to recognize whale and dolphins as individuals with self-awareness and a set of rights gained momentum three years ago in Helsinki, Finland when scientists and ethicists drafted a Declaration of Rights for Cetaceans. “We affirm that all cetaceans as persons have the right to life, liberty and well-being,” they wrote.

Dolphins are naturally playful and curious, which has made them popular with aqurium visitors

The signatories included leading marine scientist Lori Marino who produced evidence that cetaceans have large, complex brains especially in areas involved in communication and cognition. Her work has shown that dolphins have a level of self-awareness similar to that of human beings. Dolphins can recognize their own reflection, use tools and understand abstract concepts. They develop unique signature whistles allowing friends and family members to recognize them, similar to the way human beings use names.

“They share intimate, close bonds with their family groups. They have their own culture, their own hunting practices – even variations in the way they communicate,” said FIAPO’s Puja Mitra.

But it is precisely this ability to learn tricks and charm audiences that have made whales and dolphins a favorite in aquatic entertainment programs around the world.

Seaworld slaughter

Disposable personal income has increased in India and there is a growing market for entertainment. Dolphin park proposals were being considered in Delhi, Kochi and Mumbai.

India’s growing middle class is hungry for entertainment

“There’s nothing like having a few animals on display, particularly ones that are so sensitive and intelligent as these dolphins,” said Belinda Wright from the Wildlife Protection Society of India in an interview with DW. “It’s a good money making proposition.”

But audiences are usually oblivious to the documented suffering of these marine performers.

“The majority of dolphins and whales in captivity have been sourced through wild captures in Japan, in Taiji, in the Caribbean, in the Solomon Islands and parts of Russia. These captures are very violent,” Mitra explained.

“They drive groups of dolphins into shallow bay areas where young females whose bodies are unmarked and are thought to be suitable for display are removed. The rest are often slaughtered.”

Mitra argued that the experience of captivity is tantamount to torture. She explained that orcas and other dolphins navigate by using sonar signals, but in tanks, the reverberations bounce off the walls, causing them “immense distress”. She described dolphins banging their heads on the walls and orcas wearing away their teeth as they pull at bars and bite walls.

Tanks terminated

In response to the new ban, the Greater Cochin Development Authority (CGDA) told DW that it has withdrawn licenses for a dolphin park in the city of Kochi, where there have been massive animal rights demonstrations in recent months.

epa03452781 A beluga whale passes by young visitors in the Cold Water Quest exhibit at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 30 October 2012. The Georgia Aquarium, which opened in 2005, features more than 10 million gallons of water and over 60 different exhibits. EPA/ERIK S. LESSER<br />

Will the ban on captive dolphin exploitation lead to more protection for other highly intelligent non-humans?

“It is illegal now,” said N. Venugopal, who heads the CGDA. “It is over. We will not allow it anymore.”

He said the government hadn’t lost money on the development but declined to comment on how much the dolphin park was worth.

Boost for Ganges River dolphin

It’s possible that India’s new ban on cetacean captivity will lead to renewed interest in protecting the country’s own Ganges River dolphin.

“I hope this will put some energy into India’s Action Plan for the Gangetic Dolphin, which is supposed to run until 2020,” said Belinda Wright from the Wildlife Protection Society of India. “But there’s been very little action.

She said the ban was a good first stop, but warned against excessive optimism. “I’m very proud that India has done this,” she said. “I’m not trying to be cynical but I have been a conservationist in India for four decades. One gets thrilled with the wording, but I don’t think it’s going to turn to the tables.”

“But dolphins for now are safe from dolphinariums, and that’s a good thing,” she added.

Wild Cat Found Mimicking Monkey Calls; Predatory Trickery Documented for the First Time in Wild Felids in Americas (Science Daily)

08/07/2013UncategorizedAnimais, Inteligência animal, Socialidade animalrenzotaddei

July 9, 2010 — In a fascinating example of vocal mimicry, researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and UFAM (Federal University of Amazonas) have documented a wild cat species imitating the call of its intended victim: a small, squirrel-sized monkey known as a pied tamarin. This is the first recorded instance of a wild cat species in the Americas mimicking the calls of its prey.

Marguay (Leopardus wiedii). (Credit: iStockphoto/Jeff Grabert)

The extraordinary behavior was recorded by researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society and UFAM in the Amazonian forests of the Reserva Florestal Adolpho Ducke in Brazil. The observations confirmed what until now had been only anecdotal reports from Amazonian inhabitants of wild cat species — including jaguars and pumas — actually mimicking primates, agoutis, and other species in order to draw them within striking range.

The observations appear in the June issue of Neotropical Primates. The authors of the paper include: Fabiano de Oliveira Calleia of Projeto Sauim-de-Coleira/UFAM; Fabio Rohe of the Wildlife Conservation Society; and Marcelo Gordo of Projeto Sauim-de-Coleira/UFAM.

“Cats are known for their physical agility, but this vocal manipulation of prey species indicates a psychological cunning which merits further study,” said WCS researcher Fabio Rohe.

Researchers first recorded the incident in 2005 when a group of eight pied tamarins were feeding in a ficus tree. They then observed a margay emitting calls similar to those made by tamarin babies. This attracted the attention of a tamarin “sentinel,” which climbed down from the tree to investigate the sounds coming from a tangle of vines called lianas. While the sentinel monkey started vocalizing to warn the rest of the group of the strange calls, the monkeys were clearly confounded by these familiar vocalizations, choosing to investigate rather than flee. Four other tamarins climbed down to assess the nature of the calls. At that moment, a margay emerged from the foliage walking down the trunk of a tree in a squirrel-like fashion, jumping down and then moving towards the monkeys. Realizing the ruse, the sentinel screamed an alarm and sent the other tamarins fleeing.

While this specific instance of mimicry was unsuccessful, researchers were amazed at the ingenuity of the hunting strategy.

“This observation further proves the reliability of information obtained from Amazonian inhabitants,” said Dr. Avecita Chicchón, director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Latin America Program. “This means that accounts of jaguars and pumas using the same vocal mimicry to attract prey–but not yet recorded by scientists–also deserve investigation.”

WCS is currently monitoring populations of the pied tamarin — listed as “Endangered” on the IUCN’s Red List — and is seeking financial support to continue the study, which aims to protect this and other species from extinction. Next to Madagascar, the Amazon has the highest diversity of primates on Earth.

These behavioral insights also are indications of intact Amazon rainforest habitat. WCS works throughout the Amazon to evaluate the conservation importance of these rainforests, which have become increasingly threatened by development.

Social Animals Have More Social Smarts (Science Daily)

05/07/2013UncategorizedInteligência animal, Interação humanos-animais, Socialidade animalrenzotaddei

June 26, 2013 — Lemurs from species that hang out in big tribes are more likely to steal food behind your back instead of in front of your face.

In a series of stills taken from videotaped experiments, Duke undergraduates Joel Bray (left) and Aaron Sandel test a ringtailed lemur’s (Lemur catta) willingness to take food from a watched or unwatched plate. (Credit: Evan MacLean, Duke)

This behavior suggests that primates who live in larger social groups tend to have more “social intelligence,” a new study shows. The results appear June 27 in PLOS ONE.

A Duke University experiment tested whether living in larger social networks directly relates to higher social abilities in animals. Working with six different species of lemurs living at the Duke Lemur Center, a team of undergraduate researchers tested 60 individuals to see if they would be more likely to steal a piece of food if a human wasn’t watching them.

In one test, a pair of human testers sat with two plates of food. One person faced the plate and the lemur entering the room, the other had his or her back turned. In a second, testers sat in profile, facing toward or away from the plate. In a third, they wore a black band either over their eyes or over their mouths and both faced the plates and lemurs.

As the lemurs jumped onto the table where the plates were and decided which bit of food to grab, the ones from large social groups, like the ringtailed lemur (Lemur catta), were evidently more sensitive to social cues that a person might be watching, said Evan MacLean, a research scientist in the Department Of Evolutionary Anthropology who led the research team. Lemurs from small-group species, like the mongoose lemur (Eulemur mongoz), were less sensitive to the humans’ orientation.

Few of the lemurs apparently understood the significance of a blindfold.

The work is the first to test the relationship between group size and social intelligence across multiple species. The findings support the “social intelligence hypothesis,” which suggests that living in large social networks drove the evolution of complex social cognition in primates, including humans, MacLean said.

Behavioral experiments are critical to test the idea because assumptions about intelligence based solely on brain size may not hold up, he said. Indeed, this study found that some lemur species had evolved more social smarts without increasing the size of their brains.

Journal Reference:

Evan L. MacLean, Aaron A. Sandel, Joel Bray, Ricki E. Oldenkamp, Rachna B. Reddy, Brian A. Hare. Group Size Predicts Social but Not Nonsocial Cognition in Lemurs.PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (6): e66359 DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0066359

Social Networks Could Help Prevent Disease Outbreaks in Endangered Chimpanzees (Science Daily)

06/06/2013UncategorizedAnimismo, Ecologia, Inteligência animal, Interação humanos-animais, Saúde, Socialidade animalrenzotaddei

June 5, 2013 — Many think of social networks in terms of Facebook friends and Twitter followers, but for recent University of Georgia doctoral graduate Julie Rushmore, social networks are tools in the fight against infectious diseases.

Two adult males in the Kanyawara chimpanzee community rest in Kibale National Park, Uganda. (Credit: Julie Rushmore/UGA)

Rushmore, who completed her doctorate in the Odum School of Ecology in May, analyzed the social networks of wild chimpanzees to determine which individuals were most likely to contract and spread pathogens. Her findings, published in the Journal of Animal Ecology on June 5, could help wildlife managers target their efforts to prevent outbreaks and potentially help public health officials prevent disease in human populations as well.

Effective disease intervention for this species is important for a number of reasons. Wild chimpanzees are highly endangered, and diseases — including some that also infect humans — are among the most serious threats to their survival. And due to habitat loss, chimpanzees increasingly overlap with human populations, so disease outbreaks could spread to people and livestock, and vice versa.

Disease prevention in wildlife is logistically challenging, and resources are scarce, Rushmore explained. Even when vaccines are available, it is impractical to vaccinate every individual in a wildlife population. She and her colleagues decided to use social network analysis to pinpoint individuals most important in disease transmission.

“Modeling studies in humans have shown that targeting central individuals for vaccination is significantly more effective than randomly vaccinating,” Rushmore said. “There have been a few social network studies in wildlife systems — bees, lions, meerkats, lizards and giraffes — but this is the first paper to map out social networks in the context of disease transmission and conservation for wild primates.”

Rushmore observed a community of wild chimpanzees in Kibale National Park in Uganda, recording the interactions of individuals and family groups over a nine-month period to determine which individuals — and which types of individuals — were most central.

“Chimpanzees are ideal for this study because to collect this observational behavioral data, you don’t need to collar them or use any invasive methods. You can essentially just observe chimpanzees in their natural environment and identify them individually based on their facial features,” she said.

Rushmore collected information about the traits of individual chimpanzees including age, sex, rank and family size. Rank for adult males was based on dominance, while for adult females and juveniles it was based on location: Those that lived and foraged in the interior of the community’s territory were considered of higher rank than those that roamed its edges.

From December 2009 to August 2010, Rushmore recorded the interactions of chimpanzees in the community at 15-minute intervals between 6 a.m. and 7:30 p.m., four to six days per week. She mapped her observations onto a diagram showing how often each individual associated with the others.

This analysis revealed that the most central figures in the network turned out to be high-ranking mothers and juveniles with large families. “They form nursing parties — essentially like day care — where several families will hang out together,” she said. “In that way they become quite central because they have contact with a large portion of the community.”

Second in centrality were the high-ranking males.

“There are many studies in humans, and at least one in chimpanzees, showing that from an immunological perspective, juveniles and children are really important for maintaining diseases in populations through play and things like that,” she said.

“In addition, high-ranking male chimpanzees are often immunosuppressed because they have high levels of testosterone and have been shown to have higher rates of parasitism. So it seems that in addition to being central to the network, the juveniles and the high-ranking males in particular could also have lower immunity than other individuals, which might help facilitate them acquiring and transmitting pathogens.”

Rushmore’s findings have implications for disease prevention beyond chimpanzees.

“This work can easily be applied to other systems,” she said. “You could use similar methods to identify which traits are predictive of centrality. The theme that would carry over from our findings is that these central individuals are likely important to target for vaccination or treatment.”

Rushmore and her colleagues are continuing their research into social networks and disease. They currently are using infectious disease models to simulate outbreaks on these networks and to develop targeted pathogen interventions.

“Ultimately, we want to develop vaccination strategies that could both prevent large outbreaks and lower the number of animals requiring vaccination,” Rushmore said.

The study’s co-authors were Damien Caillaud of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International and the University of Texas at Austin, Leopold Matamba of the UGA department of mathematics, Rebecca M. Stumpf of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Stephen P. Borgatti of the University of Kentucky and Sonia Altizer of the UGA Odum School of Ecology.

Journal Reference:

Julie Rushmore, Damien Caillaud, Leopold Matamba, Rebecca M. Stumpf, Stephen P. Borgatti, Sonia Altizer.Social network analysis of wild chimpanzees provides insights for predicting infectious disease risk. Journal of Animal Ecology, 2013; DOI: 10.1111/1365-2656.12088

Chimpanzees Have Five Universal Personality Dimensions (Science Daily)

06/06/2013UncategorizedAnimais, Antropologia, Cognição, Interação humanos-animais, Psicologia, Socialidade animalrenzotaddei

June 3, 2013 — While psychologists have long debated the core personality dimensions that define humanity, primate researchers have been working to uncover the defining personality traits for humankind’s closest living relative, the chimpanzee. New research, published in the June 3 issue ofAmerican Journal of Primatology provides strong support for the universal existence of five personality dimensions in chimpanzees: reactivity/undependability, dominance, openness, extraversion and agreeableness with a possible sixth factor, methodical, needing further investigation.

Chimpanzee. New research provides strong support for the universal existence of five personality dimensions in chimpanzees: reactivity/undependability, dominance, openness, extraversion and agreeableness with a possible sixth factor, methodical, needing further investigation. (Credit: © anekoho / Fotolia)

“Understanding chimpanzee personality has important theoretical and practical implications,” explained lead author Hani Freeman, postdoctoral fellow with the Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes at Lincoln Park Zoo. “From an academic standpoint, the findings can inform investigations into the evolution of personality. From a practical standpoint, caretakers of chimpanzees living in zoos or elsewhere can now tailor individualized care based on each animal’s personality thereby improving animal welfare.”

The study of chimpanzee personality is not novel; however, according to the authors, previous instruments designed to measure personality left a number of vital questions unanswered.

“Some personality scales used for chimpanzees were originally designed for another species. These ‘top-down’ approaches are susceptible to including traits that are not relevant for chimps, or fail to include all the relevant aspects of chimpanzee personality,” explained Freeman. “Another tactic, called a ‘bottom-up’ approach, derives traits specifically for chimpanzees without taking into account information from previous scales. This approach also has limitations as it impedes comparisons with findings in other studies and other species, which is essential if you want to use research on chimpanzees to better understand the evolution of human personality traits.”

To address the limitations of each approach and gain a better understanding of chimpanzee personality, the authors developed a new personality rating scale that incorporated the strengths of both types of scales. This new scale consisted of 41 behavioral descriptors including boldness, jealousy, friendliness and stinginess amongst others. Seventeen raters who work closely and directly with chimpanzees used the scale to assess 99 chimpanzees in their care at the Michale E. Keeling Center for Comparative Medicine and Research, UT MD Anderson Cancer Center in Bastrop, Texas.

The chimpanzees rated were aged 8 to 48, a majority had been captive born and mother-raised, and all had lived at the facility for at least two years.

To validate their findings, the researchers used two years worth of behavioral data collected on the chimpanzees. As the authors expected, the findings showed the personality ratings were associated with differences in how the chimpanzees behaved. The researchers also showed the raters tended to agree in their independent judgments of chimpanzees’ personalities, suggesting the raters were not merely projecting traits onto the chimpanzees.

Researchers suggest that one benefit to having the chimpanzees rated on the five core personality dimensions is that this information can now be used to make predictions that will help in their management, such as how individual chimpanzees will behave in various social situations. This type of information will help zoos better anticipate certain behaviors from various individuals, and will assist them in providing individualized care.

Journal Reference:

Hani D. Freeman, Sarah F. Brosnan, Lydia M. Hopper, Susan P. Lambeth, Steven J. Schapiro, Samuel D. Gosling.Developing a Comprehensive and Comparative Questionnaire for Measuring Personality in Chimpanzees Using a Simultaneous Top-Down/Bottom-Up Design. American Journal of Primatology, 2013; DOI: 10.1002/ajp.22168

Ants and Carnivorous Plants Conspire for Mutualistic Feeding (Science Daily)

24/05/2013UncategorizedAnimais, Formigas, Socialidade animalrenzotaddei

May 22, 2013 — An insect-eating pitcher plant teams up with ants to prevent mosquito larvae from stealing its nutrients, according to research published May 22 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Mathias Scharmann and colleagues from the University of Cambridge and the University Brunei Darussalam.

The carnivorous pitcher plant Nepenthes bicalcarata (A) and the ant Camponotus schmitzi (B) team up to fight fly larvae (C) that steal the plant’s prey. (Credit: Scharmann M, Thornham DG, Grafe TU, Federle W (2013) A Novel Type of Nutritional Ant–Plant Interaction: Ant Partners of Carnivorous Pitcher Plants Prevent Nutrient Export by Dipteran Pitcher Infauna. PLoS ONE 8(5): e63556. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0063556)

The unusual relationship between insect-eating pitcher plants and ants that live exclusively on them has long puzzled scientists. The Camponotus schmitzi ants live only on one species of Bornean pitcher plants (Nepenthes bicalcarata), where they walk across slippery pitcher traps, swim and dive in the plant’s digestive fluids and consume nectar and prey that fall into the trap. Though the benefits to the ants are obvious, it has been harder to tell what exactly the plants gain. However, plants that harbor the insects grow larger than those that do not, suggesting a mutualistic relationship exists between the two.

In this new study, researchers demonstrated a flow of nutrients from ants to their plant hosts, and found that plants colonized by insects received more nitrogen than those that did not host ants. Ants appeared to increase the pitchers’ capture efficiency by keeping traps clean, and also protected the plants by actively hunting mosquito larvae that otherwise bred in pitcher fluids and sucked up plant nutrients.

“Kneeling down in the swamp amidst huge pitcher plants in a Bornean rainforest, it was a truly jaw-dropping experience when we first noticed how very aggressive and skilled theCamponotus schmitzi ants were in underwater hunting: it was a mosquito massacre!” says Scharmann. “Later, when we discovered that the ants’ droppings are returned to the plant, it became clear that this unique behaviour could actually play an important role in the complex relationship of the pitcher plant with the ants.”

Based on these observations, the authors suggest that nutrients the pitchers would have otherwise lost to flies are instead returned to them as ant colony wastes. They conclude that the interaction between ants, pitcher plants and mosquito larvae in the pitcher represents a new type of mutualism, where animals can help mitigate the damage caused by nutrient thieves to a plant.

Journal Reference:

Mathias Scharmann, Daniel G. Thornham, T. Ulmar Grafe, Walter Federle. A Novel Type of Nutritional Ant–Plant Interaction: Ant Partners of Carnivorous Pitcher Plants Prevent Nutrient Export by Dipteran Pitcher Infauna.PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (5): e63556 DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0063556

Oldest Evidence of Split Between Old World Monkeys and Apes: Primate Fossils Are 25 Million Years Old (Science Daily)

23/05/2013UncategorizedAnimais, Evolução, Evolucionismo, Macacos, Primatas, Socialidade animalrenzotaddei

May 15, 2013 — Two fossil discoveries from the East African Rift reveal new information about the evolution of primates, according to a study published online in Nature this week led by Ohio University scientists.

Artist’s reconstruction of Rukwapithecus (front, center) and Nsungwepithecus (right). (Credit: Mauricio Anton)

The team’s findings document the oldest fossils of two major groups of primates: the group that today includes apes and humans (hominoids), and the group that includes Old World monkeys such as baboons and macaques (cercopithecoids).

Geological analyses of the study site indicate that the finds are 25 million years old, significantly older than fossils previously documented for either of the two groups.

Both primates are new to science, and were collected from a single fossil site in the Rukwa Rift Basin of Tanzania.Rukwapithecus fleaglei is an early hominoid represented by a mandible preserving several teeth. Nsungwepithecus gunnelli is an early cercopithecoid represented by a tooth and jaw fragment.

The primates lived during the Oligocene epoch, which lasted from 34 to 23 million years ago. For the first time, the study documents that the two lineages were already evolving separately during this geological period.

“The late Oligocene is among the least sampled intervals in primate evolutionary history, and the Rukwa field area provides a first glimpse of the animals that were alive at that time from Africa south of the equator,” said Nancy Stevens, an associate professor of paleontology in Ohio University’s Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine who leads the paleontological team.

Documenting the early evolutionary history of these groups has been elusive, as there are few fossil-bearing deposits of the appropriate age, Stevens explained. Using an approach that dated multiple minerals contained within the rocks, team geologists could determine a precise age for the specimens.

“The rift setting provides an advantage in that it preserves datable materials together with these important primate fossils,” said lead geologist Eric Roberts of James Cook University in Australia.

Prior to these finds, the oldest fossil representatives of the hominoid and cercopithecoid lineages were recorded from the early Miocene, at sites dating millions of years younger.

The new discoveries are particularly important for helping to reconcile a long-standing disagreement between divergence time estimates derived from analyses of DNA sequences from living primates and those suggested by the primate fossil record, Stevens said. Studies of clock-like mutations in primate DNA have indicated that the split between apes and Old

World monkeys occurred between 30 million and 25 million years ago.

“Fossils from the Rukwa Rift Basin in southwestern Tanzania provide the first real test of the hypothesis that these groups diverged so early, by revealing a novel glimpse into this late Oligocene terrestrial ecosystem,” Stevens said.

The new fossils are the first primate discoveries from this precise location within the Rukwa deposits, and two of only a handful of known primate species from the entire late Oligocene, globally.

The scientists scanned the specimens in the Ohio University’s MicroCT scanner, allowing them to create detailed 3-dimensional reconstructions of the ancient specimens that were used for comparisons with other fossils.

“This is another great example that underscores how modern imaging and computational approaches allow us to address more refined questions about vertebrate evolutionary history,” said Patrick O’Connor, co-author and professor of anatomy in Ohio University’s Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine.

In addition to the new primates, Rukwa field sites have produced several other fossil vertebrate and invertebrate species new to science. The late Oligocene interval is interesting because it provides a final snapshot of the unique species inhabiting Africa prior to large-scale faunal exchange with Eurasia that occurred later in the Cenozoic Era, Stevens said.

A key aspect of the Rukwa Rift Basin project is the interdisciplinary nature of the research team, with paleontologists and geologists working together to reconstruct vertebrate evolutionary history in the context of the developing East African Rift System.

“Since its inception this project has employed a multifaceted approach for addressing a series of large-scale biological and geological questions centered on the East African Rift System in Tanzania,” O’Connor said.

The team’s research, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Leakey Foundation and the National Geographic Society, underscores the integration of paleontological and geological approaches that are essential for addressing complex issues in vertebrate evolutionary history, the scientists noted.

Co-authors on the study are Patrick O’Connor, Cornelia Krause and Eric Gorscak of Ohio University, Erik Seiffert of SUNY Stony Brook University, Eric Roberts of James Cook University in Australia, Mark Schmitz of Boise State University, Sifa Ngasala of Michigan State University, Tobin Hieronymus of Northeast Ohio Medical University and Joseph Temu of the Tanzania Antiquities Unit.

Journal Reference:

Nancy J. Stevens, Erik R. Seiffert, Patrick M. O’Connor, Eric M. Roberts, Mark D. Schmitz, Cornelia Krause, Eric Gorscak, Sifa Ngasala, Tobin L. Hieronymus, Joseph Temu.Palaeontological evidence for an Oligocene divergence between Old World monkeys and apes.Nature, 2013; DOI: 10.1038/nature12161

Tamed fox shows domestication’s effects on the brain (Science News)

23/05/2013UncategorizedAnimais, Interação humanos-animais, neurociências, Neurofisiologia, Raposas, Socialidade animalrenzotaddei

Gene activity changes accompany doglike behavior

By Tina Hesman Saey

Web edition: May 15, 2013

Taming silver foxes (shown) alters their behavior. A new study links those behavior changes to changes in brain chemicals. Tom Reichner/Shutterstock

COLD SPRING HARBOR, N.Y. – Taming foxes changes not only the animals’ behavior but also their brain chemistry, a new study shows.

The finding could shed light on how the foxes’ genetic cousins, wolves, morphed into man’s best friend. Lenore Pipes of Cornell University presented the results May 10 at the Biology of Genomes conference.

The foxes she worked with come from a long line started in 1959 when a Russian scientist named Dmitry Belyaev attempted to recreate dog domestication, but using foxes instead of wolves. He bred silver foxes (Vulpes vulpes), which are actually a type of red fox with white-tipped black fur. Belyaev and his colleagues selected the least aggressive animals they could find at local fox farms and bred them. Each generation, the scientists picked the tamest animals to mate, creating ever friendlier foxes. Now, more than 50 years later, the foxes act like dogs, wagging their tails, jumping with excitement and leaping into the arms of caregivers for caresses.

At the same time, the scientists also bred the most aggressive foxes on the farms. The descendents of those foxes crouch, flatten their ears, growl, bare their teeth and lunge at people who approach their cages.

The foxes’ tame and aggressive behaviors are rooted in genetics, but scientists have not found DNA changes that account for the differences. Rather than search for changes in genes themselves, Pipes and her colleagues took an indirect approach, looking for differences in the activity of genes in the foxes’ brains.

The team collected two brain parts, the prefrontal cortex and amygdala, from a dozen aggressive foxes and a dozen tame ones. The prefrontal cortex, an area at the front of the brain, is involved in decision making and in controlling social behavior, among other tasks. The amygdala, a pair of almond-size regions on either side of the brain, helps process emotional information.

Pipes found that the activity of hundreds of genes in the two brain regions differed between the groups of affable and hostile foxes. For example, aggressive animals had increased activity of some genes for sensing dopamine. Pipes speculated that tame animals’ lower levels of dopamine sensors might make them less anxious.

The team had expected to find changes in many genes involved in serotonin signaling, a process targeted by some popular antidepressants such as Prozac. Tame foxes are known to have more serotonin in their brains. But only one gene for sensing serotonin had higher activity in the friendly animals.

In a different sort of analysis, Pipes discovered that all aggressive foxes carry one form of the GRM3 glutamate receptor gene, while a majority of the friendly foxes have a different variant of the gene. In people, genetic variants of GRM3 have been linked to schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other mood disorders. Other genes involved in transmitting glutamate signals, which help regulate mood, had increased activity in tame foxes, Pipes said.

It is not clear whether similar brain chemical changes accompanied the transformation of wolves into dogs, said Adam Freedman, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University. Even if dogs and wolves now have differing brain chemical levels, researchers can’t turn back time to watch the process unfold; they can only guess at how domestication happened. “We have to reconstruct an unobservable series of steps,” he said. Pipes’ study is an interesting example of what might have happened to dogs’ brains during domestication, he said.

Convívio entre homens e cães criou semelhanças genéticas (O Globo)

19/05/2013UncategorizedAnimais, Evolução, Interação humanos-animais, Socialidade animalrenzotaddei

Amigos há 32 mil anos, a milenar relação entre as duas espécies tem estudo apresentado por zoólogos chineses

ROBERTA JANSEN

Publicado:17/05/13 – 6h00; Atualizado:17/05/13 – 6h00

<br />Amizade milenar . Um homem e seu cachorro: novo estudo revela que relação já dura 32 mil anos e funciona tão bem porque evoluiu de forma compartilhada<br />Foto: John Hart / AP Amizade milenar . Um homem e seu cachorro: novo estudo revela que relação já dura 32 mil anos e funciona tão bem porque evoluiu de forma compartilhada John Hart / AP

RIO- Cachorros podem, de fato, ser os melhores amigos do homem porque compartilham uma história evolutiva em comum muito mais longa do que se imaginava. Estudo publicado esta semana na “Nature Communications” revelou que os cães teriam sido domesticados há 32 mil anos — quase o dobro do que se acreditava. Esta duradoura e intensa relação teria, inclusive, um impacto na genética dos animais e dos homens, que foi ficando parecida em alguns aspectos. Na verdade, conclui o estudo, os cães se auto-domesticaram para serem mais aceitos pelos humanos que, por sua vez, também se adaptaram aos animais.

Um grupo de pesquisadores do Instituto de Zoologia da China, coordenados por Ya-Ping Zhang, obteve o genoma completo de quatro lobos cinzentos de diferentes pontos da Ásia e da Europa, três cachorros nativos do sudoeste da China, e três representantes de raças atuais. Geneticistas confirmaram que os cães nativos da China representam o primeiro estágio da domesticação canina — o genoma deles traz informação sobre a transição de lobos para os cachorros ancestrais, tornando-os uma espécie de “elo perdido” da domesticação.

Os lobos se auto-domesticaram

A equipe descobriu também que os lobos apresentam a maior diversidade genética, enquanto que os cachorros modernos ficam com a menor. Analisando a quantidade de mutações, os especialistas conseguiram estabelecer que a separação entre lobos e cães nativos chineses ocorreu na Ásia, há 32 mil anos.

Diferentemente do que se imaginava, dizem os cientistas, os homens não adotaram filhotes de lobos. Teria sido bem o oposto disso.

O processo provavelmente começou com os lobos que rondavam em torno de populações humanas de caçadores-coletores em busca de restos de alimento e carcaças, num processo que os pesquisadores chamam de auto-domesticação.

— A hipótese mais interessante levantada por essa pesquisa é a auto-domesticação — afirmou Zhang em entrevista. — De acordo com essa hipótese, os primeiros lobos teriam sido atraídos para viver e caçar com os humanos. E com sucessivas mudanças adaptativas, esses animais se tornaram progressivamente mais propensos a viver com os homens.

Nesta situação, os lobos mais agressivos teriam se saído muito mal, porque a tendência seria que fossem mortos pelos homens. Os animais mais mansos, no entanto, teriam se adaptado melhor e se multiplicado. Ou seja, os lobos se auto-domesticaram.

A pesquisa conseguiu estabelecer que a domesticação impôs uma determinante força seletiva nos genes envolvidos na digestão e no metabolismo — provavelmente por conta da mudança de uma dieta estritamente carnívora para uma onívora.

Os genes que governam processos neurológicos complexos também sofreram tal pressão, sobretudo devido à necessidade de redução da agressão e do aumento de complexos processos de interação com os seres humanos.

Curiosamente, o grupo descobriu que a contraparte humana de diversos desses genes, particularmente aqueles envolvidos nos processos neurológicos, também sofreram uma forte pressão seletiva ao longo do tempo, refletindo os fatores ambientais similares vivenciados por homens e cachorros ao longo de milhares de anos de uma relação tão próxima.

Mais dóceis e mansos

Alguns dos genes estão associados a doenças similares no homem e no cão. Outros são ativos na região do córtex pré-frontal, onde os mamíferos tomam decisões sobre o comportamento. Alguns genes estão envolvidos no maior número de conexões entre os neurônios. Um gene em particular, o SLC6A4, é responsável pela codificação da proteína que transporta o neurotransmissor serotonina.

— Outros estudos já haviam revelado que o gene é relacionado ao comportamento agressivo e ao transtorno obsessivo-compulsivo não apenas em homens mas também em cachorros — afirmou Zhang.

Mudança semelhante foi também constatada nos homens — indicando que nós também tivemos que nos tornar menos agressivos para tolerar os outros e viver bem em grupos.

Para o cientista, o estudo da base genética de diversas doenças em cães pode ajudar na compreensão de doenças similares em humanos.

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Fish Win Fights On Strength of Personality (Science Daily)

27/04/2013UncategorizedAnimais, Inteligência animal, Socialidade animalrenzotaddei

Apr. 26, 2013 — When predicting the outcome of a fight, the big guy doesn’t always win suggests new research on fish. Scientists at the University of Exeter and Texas A&M University found that when fish fight over food, it is personality, rather than size, that determines whether they will be victorious. The findings suggest that when resources are in short supply personality traits such as aggression could be more important than strength when it comes to survival.

Scientists at the University of Exeter and Texas A&M University found that when fish fight over food, it is personality, rather than size, that determines whether they will be victorious. (Credit: University of Exeter)

The study, published in the journalBehavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, found that small fish were able to do well in contests for food against larger fish provided they were aggressive. Regardless of their initial size, it was the fish that tended to have consistently aggressive behaviour — or personalities — that repeatedly won food and as a result put on weight.

Dr Alastair Wilson from Biosciences at the University of Exeter said: “We wondered if we were witnessing a form of Napoleon, or small man, syndrome. Certainly our study indicates that small fish with an aggressive personality are capable of defeating their larger, more passive counterparts when it comes to fights over food. The research suggests that personality can have far reaching implications for life and survival.”

The sheepshead swordtail fish (Xiphophorus birchmanni) fish were placed in pairs in a fish tank, food was added and their behaviour was captured on film. The feeding contest trials were carried out with both male and female fish. The researchers found that while males regularly attacked their opponent to win the food, females were much less aggressive and rarely attacked.

In animals, personality is considered to be behaviour that is repeatedly observed under certain conditions. Major aspects of personality such as shyness or aggressiveness have previously been characterised and are thought to have important ecological significance. There is also evidence to suggest that certain aspects of personality can be inherited. Further work on whether winning food through aggression could ultimately improve reproductive success will shed light on the heritability of personality traits.

Journal Reference:

Alastair J Wilson, Andrew Grimmer, Gil G. Rosenthal.Causes and consequences of contest outcome: aggressiveness, dominance and growth in the sheepshead swordtail, Xiphophorus birchmanni.Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 2013; DOI:10.1007/s00265-013-1540-7

‘When in Rome’: Monkeys Found to Conform to Social Norms (Science Daily)

26/04/2013UncategorizedAnimais, Inteligência animal, Socialidade animalrenzotaddei

Apr. 25, 2013 — The human tendency to adopt the behaviour of others when on their home territory has been found in non-human primates.

Vervet monkeys. (Credit: © JLindsay / Fotolia)

Researchers at the University of St Andrews observed ‘striking’ fickleness in male monkeys, when it comes to copying the behaviour of others in new groups. The findings could help explain the evolution of our human desire to seek out ‘local knowledge’ when visiting a new place or culture.

The new discovery was made by Dr Erica van de Waal and Professor Andrew Whiten of the University of St Andrews, along with Christèle Borgeaud of the University of Neuchâtel.

Professor Whiten commented, “As the saying goes, ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do’. Our findings suggest that a willingness to conform to what all those around you are doing when you visit a different culture is a disposition shared with other primates.”

The research was carried out by observing wild vervet monkeys in South Africa. The researchers originally set out to test how strongly wild vervet monkey infants are influenced by their mothers’ habits.

But more interestingly, they found that adult males migrating to new groups conformed quickly to the social norms of their new neighbours, whether it made sense to them or not.

Professor Whiten commented, “The males’ fickleness is certainly a striking discovery. At first sight their willingness to conform to local norms may seem a rather mindless response — but after all, it’s how we humans often behave when we visit different cultures.

“It may make sense in nature, where the knowledge of the locals is often the best guide to what are the optimal behaviours in their environment, so copying them may actually make a lot of sense.”

In the initial study, the researchers provided each of two groups of wild monkeys with a box of maize corn dyed pink and another dyed blue. The blue corn was made to taste repulsive and the monkeys soon learned to eat only pink corn. Two other groups were trained in this way to eat only blue corn.

A new generation of infants were later offered both colours of food — neither tasting badly — and the adult monkeys present appeared to remember which colour they had previously preferred.

Almost every infant copied the rest of the group, eating only the one preferred colour of corn.

The crucial discovery came when males began to migrate between groups during the mating season.

The researchers found that of the ten males who moved to groups eating a different coloured corn to the one they were used to, all but one switched to the new local norm immediately.

The one monkey who did not switch, was the top ranking in his new group who appeared unconcerned about adopting local behavior.

Dr van de Waal conducted the field experiments at the Inkawu Vervet Project in the Mawana private game reserve in South Africa. She became familiar with all 109 monkeys, making it possible for her to document the behaviour of the males who migrated to new groups.

She said, “The willingness of the immigrant males to adopt the local preference of their new groups surprised us all. The copying behaviour of both the new, naïve infants and the migrating males reveals the potency and importance of social learning in these wild primates, extending even to the conformity we know so well in humans.”

Commenting on the research, leading primatologist Professor Frans de Waal, of the Yerkes Primate Center of Emory University, said that the study “is one of the few successful field experiments on cultural transmission to date, and a remarkably elegant one at that.”

The study has been hailed by leading primate experts as rare experimental proof of ‘cultural transmission’ in wild primates to date. The research is published April 25 by the journalScience.

Journal Reference:

E. van de Waal, C. Borgeaud, A. Whiten. Potent Social Learning and Conformity Shape a Wild Primate’s Foraging Decisions. Science, 2013; 340 (6131): 483 DOI:10.1126/science.1232769

Chimpanzees Use Botanical Skills to Discover Fruit (Science Daily)

11/04/2013UncategorizedEcologia, Inteligência animal, Socialidade animalrenzotaddei

Apr. 10, 2013 — Fruit-eating animals are known to use their spatial memory to relocate fruit, yet, it is unclear how they manage to find fruit in the first place. Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have now investigated which strategies chimpanzees in the Taï National Park in Côte d’Ivoire, West Africa, use in order to find fruit in the rain forest. The result: Chimpanzees know that trees of certain species produce fruit simultaneously and use this botanical knowledge during their daily search for fruit.

Chimpanzees gazing up tree crowns in their search for fruit. (Credit: Ammie Kalan)

To investigate if chimpanzees know that if a tree is carrying fruit, then other trees of the same species are likely to carry fruit as well, the researchers conducted observations of their inspections, i.e. the visual checking of fruit availability in tree crowns. They focused their analyses on recordings in which they saw chimpanzees inspect empty trees, when they made “mistakes.”

By analysing these “mistakes,” the researchers were able to exclude that sensory cues of fruit had triggered the inspection and were the first to learn that chimpanzees had expectations of finding fruit days before feeding on it. They, in addition, significantly increased their expectations of finding fruit after tasting the first fruit in season. “They did not simply develop a ‘taste’ for specific fruit on which they had fed frequently,” says Karline Janmaat. “Instead, inspection probability was predicted by a particular botanical feature — the level of synchrony in fruit production of the species of encountered trees.”

The researchers conclude that chimpanzees know that trees of certain species produce fruit simultaneously and use this information during their daily search for fruit. They base their expectations of finding fruit on a combination of botanical knowledge founded on the success rates of fruit discovery and an ability to categorize fruits into distinct species. “Our results provide new insights into the variety of food-finding strategies employed by our close relatives, the chimpanzees, and may well elucidate the evolutionary origins of categorization abilities and abstract thinking in humans,” says Christophe Boesch, director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology’s Department of Primatology.

Journal Reference:

Karline R. L. Janmaat, Simone D. Ban & Christophe Boesch Ta. Chimpanzees use Botanical Skills to Discover Fruit: What we can Learn from their Mistakes.Animal Cognition, 10 April 2013

Young Children Have Grammar and Chimpanzees Don’t (Science Daily)

11/04/2013UncategorizedInteligência animal, Interação humanos-animais, Linguística, Socialidade animalrenzotaddei

Apr. 10, 2013 — A new study from the University of Pennsylvania has shown that children as young as 2 understand basic grammar rules when they first learn to speak and are not simply imitating adults.

Nim Chimpsky. (Credit: Image courtesy of Herbert Terrace, who began Project Nim in the early 1970s)

The study also applied the same statistical analysis on data from one of the most famous animal language-acquisition experiments — Project Nim — and showed that Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee who was taught sign language over the course of many years, never grasped rules like those in a 2-year-old’s grammar.

The study was conducted by Charles Yang, a professor of linguistics in the School of Arts and Sciences and of computer science in the School of Engineering and Applied Science. It was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Linguists have long debated whether young children actually understand the grammar they are using or are simply memorizing and imitating adults. One of the difficulties in resolving this debate is the inherent limitations of the data; 2-year-old children have very small vocabularies and thus don’t provide many different examples of grammar usage.

“While a child may not say very much, that doesn’t mean that they don’t know anything about language,” Yang said, “Despite the superficial lack of diversity of speech patterns, if you study it carefully and formulate what having a grammar would entail within those limitations, even young children seem very much on target.”

Yang’s approach was to look at one area of grammar that young children do regularly display: article usage, or whether to put “a” or “the” before a noun. He found a sufficient number of examples of article usage in the nine data sets of child speech he analyzed, but there was another challenge in determining if these children understood the grammar rules they were using.

“When children use articles, they’re pretty much error free from day one,” Yang said. “But being error free could mean that they’ve learned the grammar of article usage in English, or they have memorized and are imitating adults who wouldn’t make mistakes either.”

To get around this problem, Yang took advantage of the fact that most nouns can be paired with either the definite or indefinite article to produce a grammatically correct phrase, but the resulting phrases have different meanings and usages. This makes the combinations vary in frequency.

For example, “the bathroom” is a more common phrase than “a bathroom,” while “a bath” is more common than “the bath.” This difference has nothing to do with grammar but rather the frequency with which phrases containing those combinations are used. There are simply more opportunities to use phrases like “I need to go to the bathroom” or “the dog needs a bath” than there are phrases like “there’s a bathroom on the second floor” or “the bath was too cold.”

This means that the likelihood of using a particular article with a given noun is not 50/50; it is weighted toward either “the” or “a.” Such lopsided combination tendencies can be characterized by general statistical laws of language, which Yang used to develop a mathematical model for predicting the expected diversity of noun phrases in a sample of speech.

This model was able to differentiate between the expected diversity if children were using grammar, as compared to if they were simply imitating adults. Due to the differences of these frequencies, an adult might only say “the bathroom” — never saying “a bathroom” — to a child, but that child would still be able to say “a bathroom” if he or she understood the underlying grammar.

“When you compare what children should say if they follow grammar against what children do say, you find it to almost indistinguishable,” Yang said. “If you simulate the expected diversity when a child is only repeating what adults say, it produces a diversity much lower than what children actually say.”

As a comparison, Yang applied the same predictive models to the set of Nim Chimpsky’s signed phrases, the only data set of spontaneous animal language usage publicly available. He found further evidence for what many scientists, including Nim’s own trainers, have contended about Nim: that the sequences of signs Nim put together did not follow from rules like those in human language.

Nim’s signs show significantly lower diversity than what is expected under a systematic grammar and were similar to the level expected with memorization.

This suggests that true language learning is — so far — a uniquely human trait, and that it is present very early in development.

“The idea that children are only imitating adults’ language is very intuitive, so it’s seen a revival over the last few years,” Yang said. “But this is strong statistical evidence in favor of the idea that children actually know a lot about abstract grammar from an early age.”

Journal Reference:

C. Yang. Ontogeny and phylogeny of language.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2013; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1216803110

Monkey Study Reveals Why Middle Managers Suffer the Most Stress (Science Daily)

05/04/2013UncategorizedAnimais, Inteligência animal, Interação humanos-animais, Psicologia, Socialidade animalrenzotaddei

Apr. 2, 2013 — A study by the universities of Manchester and Liverpool observing monkeys has found that those in the middle hierarchy suffer the most social stress. Their work suggests that the source of this stress is social conflict and may help explain studies in humans that have found that middle managers suffer the most stress at work.

Female Barbary macaques at Trentham Monkey Forest. (Credit: Image courtesy of Manchester University)

Katie Edwards from Liverpool’s Institute of Integrative Biology spent nearly 600 hours watching female Barbary macaques at Trentham Monkey Forest in Staffordshire. Her research involved monitoring a single female over one day, recording all incidents of social behaviour. These included agonistic behaviour like threats, chases and slaps, submissive behaviour like displacing, screaming, grimacing and hind-quarter presentation and affiliative behaviour such as teeth chatter, embracing and grooming.

The following day faecal samples from the same female were collected and analysed for levels of stress hormones at Chester Zoo’s wildlife endocrinology laboratory.

Katie explains what she found: “Not unsurprisingly we recorded the highest level of stress hormones on the days following agonistic behaviour. However, we didn’t find a link between lower stress hormone levels and affiliative behaviour such as grooming.”

She continues: “Unlike previous studies that follow a group over a period of time and look at average behaviours and hormone levels, this study allowed us to link the observed behaviour of specific monkeys with their individual hormone samples from the period when they were displaying that behaviour.”

Another key aspect of the research was noting where the observed monkey ranked in the social hierarchy of the group. The researchers found that monkeys from the middle order had the highest recorded levels of stress hormones.

Dr Susanne Shultz, a Royal Society University Research Fellow in the Faculty of Life Sciences at The University of Manchester oversaw the study: “What we found was that monkeys in the middle of the hierarchy are involved with conflict from those below them as well as from above, whereas those in the bottom of the hierarchy distance themselves from conflict. The middle ranking macaques are more likely to challenge, and be challenged by, those higher on the social ladder.”

Katie says the results could also be applied to human behaviour: “It’s possible to apply these findings to other social species too, including human hierarchies. People working in middle management might have higher levels of stress hormones compared to their boss at the top or the workers they manage. These ambitious mid-ranking people may want to access the higher-ranking lifestyle which could mean facing more challenges, whilst also having to maintain their authority over lower-ranking workers.”

The research findings have been published in the journalGeneral and Comparative Endocrinology.

Talking about the research, Susan Wiper the Director of Trentham Monkey Forest, said: “Katie has conducted a thorough study with very interesting results based on the natural groupings and environment that the Barbary macaques live in here. We are always pleased when more data is found on this fascinating endangered species of non-human primate.”

Katie is currently based at Chester Zoo where she is studying hormone levels in relation to behaviour in a bid to encourage Black Rhinos to reproduce more frequently.

Journal Reference:

Katie L. Edwards, Susan L. Walker, Rebecca F. Bodenham, Harald Ritchie, Susanne Shultz. Associations between social behaviour and adrenal activity in female Barbary macaques: Consequences of study design. General and Comparative Endocrinology, 2013; 186: 72 DOI: 10.1016/j.ygcen.2013.02.023

Chimps: Ability to ‘Think About Thinking’ Not Limited to Humans (Science Daily)

04/04/2013UncategorizedDireitos animais, Inteligência animal, Interação humanos-animais, Socialidade animalrenzotaddei

Apr. 3, 2013 — Humans’ closest animal relatives, chimpanzees, have the ability to “think about thinking” — what is called “metacognition,” according to new research by scientists at Georgia State University and the University at Buffalo.

Humans’ closest animal relatives, chimpanzees, have the ability to “think about thinking.” (Credit: © Ambigreen / Fotolia)

Michael J. Beran and Bonnie M. Perdue of the Georgia State Language Research Center (LRC) and J. David Smith of the University at Buffalo conducted the research, published in the journalPsychological Science of the Association for Psychological Science.

“The demonstration of metacognition in nonhuman primates has important implications regarding the emergence of self-reflective mind during humans’ cognitive evolution,” the research team noted.

Metacognition is the ability to recognize one’s own cognitive states. For example, a game show contestant must make the decision to “phone a friend” or risk it all, dependent on how confident he or she is in knowing the answer.

“There has been an intense debate in the scientific literature in recent years over whether metacognition is unique to humans,” Beran said.

Chimpanzees at Georgia State’s LRC have been trained to use a language-like system of symbols to name things, giving researchers a unique way to query animals about their states of knowing or not knowing.

In the experiment, researchers tested the chimpanzees on a task that required them to use symbols to name what food was hidden in a location. If a piece of banana was hidden, the chimpanzees would report that fact and gain the food by touching the symbol for banana on their symbol keyboards.

But then, the researchers provided chimpanzees either with complete or incomplete information about the identity of the food rewards.

In some cases, the chimpanzees had already seen what item was available in the hidden location and could immediately name it by touching the correct symbol without going to look at the item in the hidden location to see what it was.

In other cases, the chimpanzees could not know what food item was in the hidden location, because either they had not seen any food yet on that trial, or because even if they had seen a food item, it may not have been the one moved to the hidden location.

In those cases, they should have first gone to look in the hidden location before trying to name any food.

In the end, chimpanzees named items immediately and directly when they knew what was there, but they sought out more information before naming when they did not already know.

The research team said, “This pattern of behavior reflects a controlled information-seeking capacity that serves to support intelligent responding, and it strongly suggests that our closest living relative has metacognitive abilities closely related to those of humans.”

The research was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

Journal Reference:

M. J. Beran, J. D. Smith, B. M. Perdue. Language-Trained Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) Name What They Have Seen but Look First at What They Have Not Seen. Psychological Science, 2013; DOI:10.1177/0956797612458936

Dogs May Understand Human Point of View (Science Daily)

21/03/2013UncategorizedAnimais, Inteligência animal, Interação humanos-animais, Socialidade animalrenzotaddei

Feb. 11, 2013 — Domestic dogs are much more likely to steal food when they think nobody can see them, suggesting for the first time that dogs are capable of understanding a human’s point of view.

Dr Juliane Kaminski and her dog, Ambula. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Portsmouth)

Many dog owners think their pets are clever or that they understand humans but, until now, this has not been tested by science.

Dr Juliane Kaminski, of the University of Portsmouth’s Department of Psychology, has shown that when a human forbids a dog from taking food, dogs are four times more likely to disobey in a dark room than a lit room, suggesting they take into account what the human can or cannot see.

Dr Kaminski said: “That’s incredible because it implies dogs understand the human can’t see them, meaning they might understand the human perspective.”

This is the first study to examine if dogs differentiate between different levels of light when they are developing strategies on whether to steal food. It is published in the journal Animal Cognition. The research was funded by the Max Planck Society, Dr Kaminski’s former employer.

Dr Kaminski said: “Humans constantly attribute certain qualities and emotions to other living things. We know that our own dog is clever or sensitive, but that’s us thinking, not them.

“These results suggest humans might be right, where dogs are concerned, but we still can’t be completely sure if the results mean dogs have a truly flexible understanding of the mind and others’ minds. It has always been assumed only humans had this ability.”

The research is an incremental step in our understanding of dogs’ ability to think and to understand which could, in turn, be of use to those working with dogs and those who keep them as pets.

Dr Kaminski ran a series of experiments in varied light conditions. In each test, a dog was forbidden by a human from taking the food. When the room was dark, the dogs took more food and took it more quickly than when the room was lit.

The tests were complex and involved many variables to rule out that dogs were basing their decisions on simple associative rules, for example, that dark means food.

There is no evidence on how well dogs can see in the dark, but the results of this research show dogs can differentiate between light and dark.

Dr Kaminski said: “The results of these tests suggest that dogs are deciding it’s safer to steal the food when the room is dark because they understand something of the human’s perspective.”

Dogs’ understanding may be limited to the here and now, rather than on any higher understanding, Dr Kaminski said, and more research is needed to identify what mechanisms are controlling dogs’ behaviour.

In total, 42 female and 42 male domestic dogs aged one year or older took part in the tests. They were chosen only if they were comfortable without their owners in the room, even in complete darkness, and if they were interested in food. “Some dogs are more interested in by food than others,” Dr Kaminski said.

Previous studies have shown chimpanzees have a sophisticated understanding and seem to know when someone else can or can’t see them and can also remember what others have seen in the past. It is not known how sophisticated dogs’ understanding is in comparison. Many earlier research papers have found that, for dogs, a human’s eyes are an important signal when deciding how to behave, and that they respond more willingly to attentive humans, than inattentive ones.

Journal Reference:

Juliane Kaminski, Andrea Pitsch, Michael Tomasello. Dogs steal in the dark. Animal Cognition, 2012; DOI:10.1007/s10071-012-0579-6

Pioneiro da epigenética fala sobre relação entre ambiente e genoma (Fapesp)

18/03/2013Uncategorizedciência, Epigenética, Genética, Inteligência animal, Interação humanos-animais, Socialidade animalrenzotaddei

Moshe Szyf, da Universidade McGill, participa de simpósio internacional organizado pela FAPESP e pela Natura. Discussões do evento embasarão edital para a criação de centros de pesquisa (foto: Edu César)

Especiais

14/03/2013

Por Karina Toledo

Agência FAPESP – Um dos primeiros cientistas a sugerir que os hábitos de vida e o ambiente social em que uma pessoa está inserida poderiam modular o funcionamento de seus genes foi Moshe Szyf, professor de Farmacologia e Terapêutica da Universidade McGill, no Canadá.

Szyf também foi pioneiro ao afirmar que essa programação do genoma – que ocorre por meio de processos bioquímicos batizados de mecanismos epigenéticos – seria um processo fisiológico, uma espécie de resposta adaptativa ao ambiente que começa ainda na vida uterina.

Entre os mecanismos epigenéticos conhecidos, o mais comum e o mais estudado por Szyf é a metilação do DNA, que ocorre quando um conjunto de partículas de hidrogênio e carbono se agrupa na base de alguns genes e impede que eles se expressem.

Embora o processo seja fisiológico, pode se tornar patológico quando acontece no contexto errado. Por exemplo, quando os genes que deveriam nos proteger contra o câncer são desligados.

Pesquisas realizadas pelo grupo de Szyf e colaboradores nos últimos anos mostraram que o padrão de metilação do DNA pode ser alterado por fatores como a qualidade do cuidado materno nos primeiros anos de vida ou a exposição a maus-tratos na infância, criando marcas epigenéticas que perduram ao longo da vida.

Os resultados de alguns desses estudos foram apresentados por Szyf durante o Simpósio Internacional Integração Corpo-Mente-Meio, realizado na sede da FAPESP no dia 12 de março, em parceria com a Natura.

Em um trabalho de 2004, feito com o neurocientista Michael Meaney, também da Universidade McGill, foram comparados dois grupos de ratas: aquelas que tinham recebido lambidas frequentes de suas mães quando ainda eram bebês e aquelas que não haviam recebido cuidados maternos.

Os resultados mostraram que os animais lambidos pelas mães se tornaram adultos mais tranquilos. Isso porque o amor materno alterou os níveis de metilação nas regiões do hipocampo que regulam o gene do receptor de glicocorticoides, ou seja, alteraram a regulação dos níveis de hormônios do estresse durante toda a vida adulta.

Para mostrar que essa lógica se aplicava também a humanos, os pesquisadores da McGill se associaram ao Instituto Universitário de Saúde Mental Douglas, também do Canadá, e ao Instituto de Ciências Clínicas de Cingapura, para analisar cérebros de vítimas de suicídio.

Por meio de seus históricos médicos e de entrevistas com familiares, foi possível identificar entre os suicidas aqueles que tinham sofrido abuso severo durante a infância – seja verbal, sexual ou físico.

Os pesquisadores viram que nesse grupo que teve uma infância difícil os genes que regulam os receptores de glicocorticoides estavam 40% menos ativos quando comparados aos dos suicidas que não sofreram abuso e também quando comparados aos do grupo controle (pessoas que morreram por outras causas, como acidentes de carro).

Os resultados sugerem, portanto, que o abuso infantil deixou essas pessoas mais sensíveis aos danos causados pelo estresse no cérebro; eles foram publicados em 2009 na revista Nature Neuroscience.

Em outros estudos apresentados durante o evento, o cientista mostrou que o padrão de expressão dos genes também pode ser influenciado pela condição socioeconômica na infância e pelo estresse vivenciado pela mãe durante a gestação.

“O avanço no conhecimento sobre a relação entre o ambiente e o genoma ajuda a combater o determinismo genético, ou seja, aquela ideia de que, se você nasce com genes da inteligência, você será inteligente, e se você nasce com genes saudáveis, você será saudável, não importa o que você faça a respeito. Isso coloca mais peso em nossas escolhas. Mostra que temos controle enquanto pais, enquanto formuladores de políticas públicas e enquanto sociedade. Isso pode definir novos modelos para políticas públicas”, disse Szyf à Agência FAPESP.

Para o pesquisador, muitas coisas na prática médica e no cotidiano têm sido feitas sem levar em conta as consequências disso no futuro, mas o avanço no conhecimento sobre a epigenética deve mudar a atitude das pessoas.

“Quando eu era um jovem pai, a ideia predominante era deixar a criança chorar para ela aprender a se virar sozinha. Hoje não fazemos isso porque temos medo do estresse que isso vai causar e de suas consequências. Da mesma forma, temos feito fertilização in vitro, barriga de aluguel, cesarianas desnecessárias sem pensar muito sobre as consequências disso para a criança. Precisamos começar a avaliar o custo-benefício e tomar decisões conscientes, com base em informações”, defendeu.

No campo da medicina, a epigenética traz outras implicações importantes. Uma delas é a possibilidade de identificar biomarcadores que permitam identificar a população mais vulnerável a desenvolver doenças como câncer, infarto, pressão alta ou transtornos mentais.

“O maior desafio é encontrar formas de intervir antes que os sinais clínicos apareçam e a situação se deteriore. Por isso, é tão importante entender o que torna as pessoas vulneráveis. Esse conhecimento também vai nos guiar quanto ao tipo de intervenção mais adequada”, disse.

No rol das intervenções epigenéticas possíveis, afirmou Szyf, estão as drogas capazes de reverter as alterações no padrão de expressão dos genes – algo que já é feito na área de oncologia e começa a ser testado na área psiquiátrica.

Intervenções epigenéticas podem ser feitas também por meio de psicoterapia ou de políticas públicas que promovam a mudança do comportamento. “A grande revolução virá quando aprendermos como nos comportar para atingir o mesmo efeito que as drogas são capazes de promover. Descobrir como intervir no sistema de forma que se possa reverter adaptações epigenéticas adversas unicamente pelo comportamento”, afirmou.

Parceria entre FAPESP e Natura

O Simpósio Internacional Integração Corpo-Mente-Meio também contou com a participação do professor Paul Rozin, da Universidade da Pennsylvania (Estados Unidos), que falou sobre as perspectivas na área de Psicologia Positiva – definida como o estudo das forças e virtudes que permitem aos indivíduos e às comunidades prosperar.

Também participaram os brasileiros Silvia Koller, da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Mirian Galvonas Jasiulionis, da Universidade Federal de São Paulo (Unifesp), e Edson Amaro Júnior, da Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo (FMUSP). Respectivamente, eles apresentaram o cenário nacional das pesquisas em Psicologia Positiva, Epigenética e Neurociências.

Segundo o diretor científico da FAPESP, Carlos Henrique de Brito Cruz, as discussões do evento vão embasar a elaboração de um edital que será lançado pela Fundação e pela Natura para a criação de um ou mais centros de pesquisa nos moldes do CEPID (Centros de Pesquisa, Inovação e Difusão), caso em que o financiamento pode durar até dez anos.

“Queremos aprender mais sobre os desafios relacionados a esses temas para que possamos definir como será o financiamento, qual é a melhor forma de montar a armadilha para o conhecimento e obter bons resultados. Nem sempre é simples acertar o relacionamento entre as pessoas das universidades e as pessoas das empresas. Sempre há objetivos não convergentes. Nossa tarefa é achar as convergências possíveis”, afirmou Brito Cruz.

Além do diretor científico da FAPESP, também participou da abertura do evento o diretor de Ciência e Tecnologia da Natura, Victor Fernandes. “Estamos aqui tentando entender qual é a interface científica entre três ciências muito relevantes: Neurosciência Comportamental, Psicologia Positiva e Epigenética. O objetivo é entender como o comportamento e o cotidiano influenciam o comportamento biológico e, em cima disso, buscar oportunidades de fomento à ciência e à inovação”, destacou.

Doing Business With a Parrot: Self-Control Observed in Cockatoos (Science Daily)

14/03/2013UncategorizedAnimais, Animismo, Cognição, Inteligência animal, Interação humanos-animais, Psicologia, Socialidade animalrenzotaddei

Mar. 13, 2013 — Alice Auersperg from the Department of Cognitive Biology from the University of Vienna and her team has for the first time succeeded in observing self-control in cockatoos.

The results of this research project appear in the current issue of the journal Biology Letters.

Waiting: a clever move

In the 1970’s, self-control of human infants was investigated using the prominent ‘Stanford Marshmallow Experiment’: the children were presented with a marshmallow and were told they could either eat it now or wait and receive a second one if the first one was still intact after a time delay of several minutes. Interestingly, children that were able to wait for the delayed reward showed greater success in adult life than the ones that ate the first marshmallow right away.

Schematic presentation of the Procedure: The birds were first shown both food types inside the open hands of the experimenter and are then allowed to pick up the item of lower quality. Thereafter the animals have to decide to either eat the lower quality food straight away or to wait out the time delay to earn the better food. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Vienna)

The ability to anticipate a delayed gain is considered cognitively challenging since it requires not only the capacity to control an direct impulse but also to assess the gain’s beneficial value relative to the costs associated with having to wait as well as the reliability of the trader. Such abilities can be considered precursors of economic decision making and are rarely found outside humans. Only few, typically large-brained animals, have been shown to be able to inhibit the consumption of an immediate food reward in anticipation for a bigger one for more than one minute.

Speculative trading of the Goffin cockatoos

A new study at the University of Vienna, on an Indonesian cockatoo species — the Goffin’s cockatoo — showed notable results. “The animals were allowed to pick up an initial food item and given the opportunity to return it directly into the experimenter’s hand after an increasing time delay. If the initial food item had not been nibbled by this time, the bird received another reward of an even higher preferred food type or of a larger quantity than the initial food in exchange” explains Isabelle Laumer, who conducted the study at the Goffin Lab at the University of Vienna. “Although we picked pecan nuts as initial reward which were highly liked by the birds and would under normal circumstances be consumed straight away, we found that all 14 of birds waited for food of higher quality, such as cashew nut for up to 80 seconds,” she further reports.

Evolution of self-control

Alice Auersperg, the manager of the Vienna Goffin Lab says: “When exchanging for better qualities, the Goffins acted astonishingly like economic agents, flexibly trading-off between immediate and future benefits. They did so, relative not only to the length of delay, but also to the difference in trade value between the ‘currency’ and the ‘merchandise’: they tended to trade their initial items more often for their most preferred food, than for one of intermediate preference value and did not exchange in a control test in which the value of the initial item was higher than that of the expected one.” She adds: “While human infants or primates can hold the initial food in their hands, one should also consider that the birds were able to wait, although they had to hold the food in their beaks, directly against their taste organs while waiting. Imagine placing a cookie directly into a toddler’s mouth and telling him/her, he/she will only receive a piece of chocolate if the cookie is not nibbled for over a minute.”

Thomas Bugnyar, who previously conducted similar studies on ravens and crows, says, “Until recently, birds were considered to lack any self-control. When we found that corvids could wait for delayed food, we speculated which socio-ecological conditions could favor the evolution of such skills. To test our ideas we needed clever birds that are distantly related to corvids. Parrots were the obvious choice and the results on Goffins show that we are on the right track.”

Journal Reference:

A. M. I. Auersperg, I. B. Laumer, T. Bugnyar. Goffin cockatoos wait for qualitative and quantitative gains but prefer ‘better’ to ‘more’. Biology Letters, 2013; 9 (3): 20121092 DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2012.1092

Uma (in)certa antropologia

An (un)certain anthropology

Arquivo da tag: Socialidade animal

Some Monkeys Have Conversations That Resemble Ours (Wired)

Chimpanzees of a Feather Sit Together: Friendships Are Based On Similar Personalities (Science Daily)

Orangutans Plan Their Future Route and Communicate It to Others (Science Daily)

Face-Off With a Deadly Predator (National Geographic)

Primate Calls, Like Human Speech, Can Help Infants Form Categories (Science Daily)

The Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography (Cultural Anthropology)

Abstract

Questions for Classroom Discussion

About the Authors

Editors’ Footnotes

Dolphins gain unprecedented protection in India (Deutsche Welle)

Wild Cat Found Mimicking Monkey Calls; Predatory Trickery Documented for the First Time in Wild Felids in Americas (Science Daily)

Social Animals Have More Social Smarts (Science Daily)

Social Networks Could Help Prevent Disease Outbreaks in Endangered Chimpanzees (Science Daily)

Chimpanzees Have Five Universal Personality Dimensions (Science Daily)

Ants and Carnivorous Plants Conspire for Mutualistic Feeding (Science Daily)

Oldest Evidence of Split Between Old World Monkeys and Apes: Primate Fossils Are 25 Million Years Old (Science Daily)

Tamed fox shows domestication’s effects on the brain (Science News)

Convívio entre homens e cães criou semelhanças genéticas (O Globo)

Fish Win Fights On Strength of Personality (Science Daily)

‘When in Rome’: Monkeys Found to Conform to Social Norms (Science Daily)

Chimpanzees Use Botanical Skills to Discover Fruit (Science Daily)

Young Children Have Grammar and Chimpanzees Don’t (Science Daily)

Monkey Study Reveals Why Middle Managers Suffer the Most Stress (Science Daily)

Chimps: Ability to ‘Think About Thinking’ Not Limited to Humans (Science Daily)

Dogs May Understand Human Point of View (Science Daily)

Pioneiro da epigenética fala sobre relação entre ambiente e genoma (Fapesp)

Especiais

14/03/2013

Doing Business With a Parrot: Self-Control Observed in Cockatoos (Science Daily)