Monkeying Around at Work!

Seems we can learn quite a bit about ourselves and our workplace by looking at chimps in the wild. By knowing how they work, we can defend ourselves from the uprising! From The Australian:

IF you occasionally walk into the office thinking “this place is run by chimpanzees”, you may well be right.

Humans do share traits with chimpanzees and, according to chimp scholar Jane Goodall, there is much the monkey can teach the modern chief executive about his staff.

For example — see if this doesn’t ring a bell — in a typical chimp group, there will be an alpha male who is the most powerful. As the alpha male becomes more powerful, he brings his supporters through the ranks with him.

When an alpha male is displaced, it causes changes in the whole group. A displaced alpha male can quickly slide in the ranking, and almost overnight can become one of the lowest-ranked chimps.

A male that is seeking to become the next alpha male will, as much as possible, keep out of the alpha male’s way and be respectful to his face.

 

Cracking the DaPunky Code

All that monkey chatter might be adding up to something. But is it good that we know what they are saying or bad that they can communicate better than we originally thought? From Science Daily:

What happens when linguistic tools used to analyze human language are applied to a conversation between a language-competent bonobo and a human? The findings, published this month in the Journal of Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, indicate that bonobos may exhibit larger linguistic competency in ordinary conversation than in controlled experimental settings.

The peer-reviewed paper was written by Janni Pedersen, an Iowa State University Ph.D. candidate from Denmark whose interests in the language-competent bonobos at Great Ape Trust of Iowa led her to the United States, and William M. Fields, director of bonobo research at Great Ape Trust.

Their findings run counter to the view among some linguists, including the influential Noam Chomsky, professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who argue that only humans possess and use language. In his hierarchy of language, Chomsky believes that language is part of the genetic makeup of humans and did not descend from a single primitive language evolved from the lower primate order, and it must include formal structures such as grammar and syntax.

 

Punkeys Claim Victory with Victory Dances

Punkeys are always looking for credibility. They usually convince myopic scientist into suggesting everything started with monkeys. Even our victory dances. From The Los Angeles Times:

Chimps do it. Gorillas do it. Michael Phelps does it too.

The exuberant dance of victory — arms thrust toward the sky and chest puffed out at a defeated opponent — turns out to be an instinctive trait of all primates — humans included, according to research released Monday.

Scientists from the University of British Columbia and San Francisco State University looked at thousands of photographs of judo matches taken during the 2004 Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games in Athens, for such classic in-your-face victory moves as clenched fists, thrown-back heads and outstretched arms.

The images of the 140 blind and sighted athletes from 37 countries revealed that Paralympic athletes blind from birth struck the same triumphant stance as sighted Olympic athletes. Since the blind athletes could not have learned the victory dance by watching others, the scientists concluded that the behavior was innate.

 

Keeping it on the Down Low

What do you call a female that screams for the men, only to keep quiet from the other women so she can have all the men to herself? Normally the word “whore” would spring to mind. Well, that’s exactly what female chimps do in the wild. And depending on the male, she’ll go wild for high ranking males while barely making a peep for lowly joe shmoes. From Science News:

When a chimp has sex in the forest, will she make a sound?

Depends in part on who’s listening, literally, says a scientist who has spent months recording chimp sex sounds in the wild.

With lots of other females within earshot, a female chimp typically doesn’t give a call, says Simon Townsend of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. With a largely male audience, though, she’s more likely to give what primatologists call copulation squeaks or screams.

And partners matter. Even if she is not fertile, she’s more likely to vocalize when she’s with a high-ranking male than with some low ranker. The benefit of this strategy could be that she avoids attacks from other females while confusing males about who’s going to be the dad, Townsend and his colleagues propose in the June PLoS ONE.

 

Chimps: The New Online Predator

With all the hubbub about social networking and how predators are surfing the interwebs looking for hapless victims, I found this item to more than just a bit distressing. From AppScout:

The next time you add a friend on Facebook, he or she may in fact not be a person. Meet Albert, a 20-year-old male chimpanzee, who was the first ape to join the social network. He paved the way for three other chimps to follow, including Mr. Jones, Sheena, and Britney.