Great Ape research and woo

[Sloe_Bohemian]

I seem to remember that someone in this forum has some experience working with great apes and this line of study.

I would like to hear from them, or anyone else with some knowledge about this area.


Here, in Des Moines, they have opened the Great Ape Trust facility. It's not open to the public as a zoo, but it's gotten plenty of favorable press. In part because everyone loves primates and partly because taxpayers donated the lands and I believe a good portion of material.

At first I was excited that actual research facilities for something important would be coming to the area. But it appears they are pushing quite strange ideas. They are using a control pad of glyphs to teach the apes to communicate and give the apes control over their own environment. OK, that doesn't sound like extremely unusual research to me... but they built them bathrooms with toilets and showers... and they have a working kitchen too. Not the researchers... the apes. And no wimpoy electric stove... that would be difficult for the basic simian minds. So they used something more primal... a gas stove with open flame.

So, I'm quite concerned now that I've heard this.

The original research was being done at Washington DC in the zoo there, as I understand it. One of the two Orangatans moved from that facility died shortly after arriving here. So.. this whole story bothers me and I was hoping to here from someone more familiar with this topic and maybe even with these researchers in particuliar.

 

[Orangutan]

Originally posted by Sloe_Bohemian One of the two Orangatans moved from that facility died shortly after arriving here.[/B]

Sorry nothing to add other than:

O.

Ps It's Orangutans.

 

[drkitten]

Here, in Des Moines, they have opened the Great Ape Trust facility. It's not open to the public as a zoo, but it's gotten plenty of favorable press. In part because everyone loves primates and partly because taxpayers donated the lands and I believe a good portion of material.

At first I was excited that actual research facilities for something important would be coming to the area. But it appears they are pushing quite strange ideas.

Of course they are pushing some quite strange ideas. If they knew what they were doing, it wouldn't be called "research." The lead researcher in the project is Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, who is probably the single best primate biologist in the world. She is famous, some would say "notorious," for pushing strange ideas that happen to be true. But she's also been working with great apes for thirty or so years and has an excellent safety record.

I don't think you have any reason at all to be worried.

 

[athon]

I for one am curious to know what will happen. Will the apes make use out of such facilities? I couldn't imagine an ape taking their meat over to the barbeque for a roast, but I could imagine the alpha male silverback standing over the grill, 'Kiss The Cook' apron on with a stubby in one hand and a pair of tongs in the other, talking about how his latest wife just can't pick his fleas like his ex could.

I don't think it is a matter of intelligence as much as desire to use such facilities. Ok, a toilet area might be useful for those folks who have to clean the monkey cage, but a shower?

I think a giant, push-button banana peeler might be better.

Athon

 

[Sloe_Bohemian]

Re: Re: Great Ape research and woo

Of course they are pushing some quite strange ideas. If they knew what they were doing, it wouldn't be called "research." The lead researcher in the project is Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, who is probably the single best primate biologist in the world. She is famous, some would say "notorious," for pushing strange ideas that happen to be true. But she's also been working with great apes for thirty or so years and has an excellent safety record.

I don't think you have any reason at all to be worried.

I'm glad to get the reassurance. We already have the Maharishi University of Management nearby, let alone the College of Osteopathic Medicine. We don't need another large institute promoting woo in the guise of science and research. Believe it or not, not all research is based on sound scientific principles and I was concerned by some of the reports I was hearing.

Let's be honest about one thing; providing open flame cooking stoves for bonobos has more in common with zoo acts and traditional attempts to entertain the public by dressing chimpanies as small people than it does with what most of us imagine Jane Goodall's work to look like. It may very well be valid research, but I don't think I was out of line at all to characterize such fiery facilities as something that "appears to push quite strange ideas". Their research may prove so amazing that I will change my view of what appears "quite strange"... but at this stage, I think my comments were reasonable.

In these forums, I've seen many members argue against the validity of Koko's ability to use sign language. I've also seen a specific member who mentioned working with a researcher who is very well respected, but they had worked with her and learned that she may be suffering mental illness and is making questionable decisions in her daily and professional life. Based on what I've learned, or read, in these forums on the matter I considered it worthwhile to bring this discussion to JREF.

I don't know anything about Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh. Thank you for the testimonial on her behalf. The person who has been visible in the local media has been Dr. Schumacher. It was one of his two Orangutan's who died shortly after arriving.

Again, thanks for your input. I'm glad to learn that this is not a woo project because I really like the idea of having an important research program located in the area.

 

[drkitten]

Re: Re: Re: Great Ape research and woo

Let's be honest about one thing; providing open flame cooking stoves for bonobos has more in common with zoo acts and traditional attempts to entertain the public by dressing chimpanies as small people than it does with what most of us imagine Jane Goodall's work to look like.

Well, that's Sue for you. At the risk of vastly oversimplying (and insulting two of the top biologists of the 20th century), Jane studies primate behavior, while Sue studies primate cognition, so it's rather to be expected that she would be pushing apes into what might seem to be somewhat "unnatural," and even human-like behavior.

As it happens, I have one of her books on my shelf : Kanzi, The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind. That title's not a bad summary of her research; she's interested in how "apes" like Australopithecus first acquired human-like behaviors of which language is an obvious example -- and how the human capacity for these behaviors differs from modern great apes'. So teaching Kanzi language is one example, but chapter 8 of the book ("Pan, the tool-maker") is about some related experiments about whether or not apes, and specifically her wunderkind Kanzi, could/would learn to make stone tooks, the way early humans did. "[The research] proposal was to motivate Kanzi to make stone flakes, not teach him with structured lessons.... Something enticing would be put into a box, and the lid would be secured with a length of string." Kanzi, presumably, would eventually make a stone flake suitable for use as a knife and cut the string. Further experimental details upon request (or read the book yourself, it's not at all wretched).

It makes sense to see whether bonobos (or indeed other apes) could similarly be motivated to make use of fire, either for tool improvement or to cook their own food for whatever reason. Although I use the phrase "makes sense" above with due fear and trepidation -- I would never have thought of it myself, and I'm not sure that I believe that bonobos prefer cooked food to raw, or how the motivation would work, or whether I expect any degree of success at all.

Which, I suspect, is why I'm only me and Sue is Sue.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Great Ape research and woo

...

"[The research] proposal was to motivate Kanzi to make stone flakes, not teach him with structured lessons.... Something enticing would be put into a box, and the lid would be secured with a length of string." Kanzi, presumably, would eventually make a stone flake suitable for use as a knife and cut the string. Further experimental details upon request (or read the book yourself, it's not at all wretched).
..

Why ' presumably ' and not ' wishfully ' or ' hopefully ' ?

I suspect he didn't.. ( make a knife and cut the string )

I also suspect the ' details ' involve a lot of speculation about why he didn't, and liberally laced with humorous anecdotes about Kanzi's failure to do what apes don't normally do..


Ahh, but we do have a book, and the funding continues...

Forgive my cynicism, but it is my job...

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Do I hear Noam Chomsky flailing about somewhere?

~~ Paul

 

[drkitten]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Great Ape research and woo

Why ' presumably ' and not ' wishfully ' or ' hopefully ' ?

Because as the experiment turned out, it was neither wishful thinking or unrequitedly hopeful. Sue states at the outset that she wasn't especially optimistic of success. But as it turned out, there wasn't much problem either with getting him to understand the idea of using a stone flake to cut string, or with getting hiim to make crude flakes himself (although it took some practice).

I suspect he didn't.. ( make a knife and cut the string )

I also suspect the ' details ' involve a lot of speculation about why he didn't, and liberally laced with humorous anecdotes about Kanzi's failure to do what apes don't normally do..

Not quite. He had no difficulty either making the knife or cutting the string. The speculation and humorous anecdotes are mosly about why he didn't use "appropriate" techniques, to the delight of Dr. Savage-Rumbaugh and the horror and depression of the anthropologists. Again, quoting from the book [p. 213]

One day during the fourth month, I was at the tool site with Kanzi, and he was having only modest success at producing flakes. He turned to me and held out the rocks, as if to say "Here, you do it for me." He did this from time to time and mostly I would encourage him to try some more, which is what I did that day. He just sat there looking at me, then at the rock in his hand, then at me again, apparently reflecting. I wondered what he was thinking, because he did seem to be pondering weighty matters as he gazed at the rocks. Suddenly he stood up bipedally and, with clear deliberation, threw a rock on the hard tile floor with a tremendous amount of force. The rock shattered, producing a whole shower of flakes. Kanzi vocalized ecstatically, grabbed one of the sharpest flakes, and headed for the tool site.

There was no question that Kanzi had reasoned through the problem and had found a better solution to making flakes. No one had demonstrated the efficacy of throwing. Kanzi had just worked it out for himself. I was delighted, because it demonstrated his ingenuity in the face of a difficult problem. I quickly telephoned Nick [a collaborating anthropologist], and told himi what had happened. I was so excited by the event that I didn't give a thought to the fact that Nick might not be delighted too. He wasn't. He was disappointed. "The Oldowan tool-makers used hard-hammer percussion, not throwing," he said. "If Kanzi throws the rocks, the percussion marks will be random, and we won't learn anything."

To summarize much of the rest of the chapter -- Kanzi apparently (meaning, I have never seen the films of this and so have only Sue's word for it) had no trouble either learning about how stone flakes could cut string, or in figuring out a "better" way to make the necessary stone flakes than Oldowan-style hammer techniques. Covering the floor with carpeting, for example, he simply pulled back the carpet and hurled the rock at the underlying concrete subfloor. When they moved the experiment outside (no concrete), he learned to throw one rock at another to break it. Quoting again:

As far as I was concerned, we had presented Kanzi with a problem and he had figured out the best way to solve it -- three times.

On the other hand, Kanzi's attempts at using hard-hammer percussion techniques per se were not as successful; from a purely technical standpoint, his flake angles are too steep, he doesn't use the right amount of force, the flakes he produces aren't very sharp, and they're not typically as large as the genuine human artefacts. Of course, Kanzi had about eighteen months of practice, and the early hominids probably had generations of expertise.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

[cynicism on ]Sounds like the ape learned how to break rocks, which pleased his trainer and earned him some kind of reward.[/off]


All kinds of amimals can be taught tricks, that have the appearance of manipulating tools.. The kicker is, that none of them pass it on to their offspring..

 

[drkitten]

[cynicism on ]Sounds like the ape learned how to break rocks, which pleased his trainer and earned him some kind of reward.[/off]

Cynicism has its place, but there comes a point where it verges on the pathological. In the passage quoted above, S-R explicitly stated that no one had taught him to break rocks -- "Kanzi had just worked it out for himself." So unless you're accusing S-R of deliberate fraud, you might want to re-evaluate that particular hypothesis.

All kinds of amimals can be taught tricks, that have the appearance of manipulating tools.. The kicker is, that none of them pass it on to their offspring..

I'm not sure exactly what you're saying here. Tool manipulation in nature has been observed, by Jane Goodalll among many others; the exact tools used (for identical purposes) vary from group to group, suggesting a certain degree of cultural dependence instead of genetically-determined instinctual behavior (I think that Dawkins discusses some of this in Ancestor's Tale), and primates have been observed in the process of transmitting cultural acts -- the most famous example is the potato-washing behavior in Japanese macaques, which Junichiro Itani observed being "passed on" from mother to offspring. (Dont' be fooled by the appallingly badly written Hundredth Monkey newage claptrap; although the idea of some sort of global consciousness has been amply disproven, and in fact, not even all monkeys on that island learned to wash their potatoes, the potato-washing behavior itself is quite real and the parental teaching is quite well-documented.)

There's also the well-documented case of Loulis, who "learned" sign language from her adopted mother Washoe -- although there weren't any signs of Washoe performing active teaching, Loulis picked up a fair number of signs simply by imitating Washoe and was able to use them correctlly, which mirrors how much of human language acquisition occurs (through imitation). Even if you consider Loulis' signs "a trick," it's a trick that he was never taught by a human.

So all the elements of tool-making as a cultural hand-me-down are there and have been observed by researchers other than S-R; tool-making itself, the existence of cultural groups among chimpanzees, and within-group learning of culture from parents and other troupe members. Kanzi himself was never taught human language but learned it by imitation while his mother was undergoing experiments in language learning. When he was first formally observed, he had "acquired" a number of aspects of Yerkish that they had tried to teach his mother without success. Quoting again,

We had spent two years systematically trying to teach Matata a small number of symbols, with meager success. Kanzi appeared to know all the things we had attempted to teach Matata, yet we had not even been attending to him -- other than to keep him entertained. COuld he simply have picked up his understanding through social exposure, as children do? It seemed impossible.

I admit that a healthy skepticism towards overblown claims of ape cognitive capacity is appropriate. But you might actually read the papers -- or at least, the book -- before reflexively dismissing them offhand.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

admit that a healthy skepticism towards overblown claims of ape cognitive capacity is appropriate. But you might actually read the papers -- or at least, the book -- before reflexively dismissing them offhand.

I see someone counting the hits ( data mining ) and pretty much ignoring what must be a lot of misses.. It's the misses that tell us there is not much there.

Sure, some individuals show a spark that is lacking in others, but that is the reason they get more attention and more results.

I see someone who is spending years with animals, training them, and calling their tricks ( Clever Hans, anyone? ), evidence of language ability, that others ( peers ) do not agree with or find the study of, worth pursuing..


I don't think she is lying or fraudulent, but I get a sense of delusion and finding what she wants to find and ignoring contradictory evidence.


This is just my un-learned opinion, and I would certainly entertain contrary opinion, but it would have to come from someone beside SUE and her fan club..

 

[drkitten]

This is just my un-learned opinion, and I would certainly entertain contrary opinion, but it would have to come from someone beside SUE and her fan club..

So go look for the opinions. But if you dismiss anything pro-Sue as being "from her fan club," then you're obviously not going to find anything pro-Sue from somewhere else. Speaking for myself only, I have never met the woman or even heard her speak, but I find her papers fascinating and her arguments much more convincing than the opposition. I have never found If that puts me in her "fan club," so be it. I'm equally, and for identical reason, in Einstein's fan club.