monkeys use tools to dig for food...hmmm

heard it on Radio Scotland this morning then looked for the press article online.

<snip>

Monkeys have been observed digging with stones, a feat that suggests the intelligence gap that separates them from humans is less than was thought.

<snip>

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/12/10/nchimp10.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/12/10/ixhome.html

this report indicates that monkeys appear to have surpassed the intelligence of people who vote republican!

"People of the Forest" about Jane Goodall's Gombe chimps, they not only use tools, such as twigs to dig for termites, but they teach their young to do the same.

Does this not indicate culture?

In the absence of language, I'd be hesitant to suppose that the Gombe chimps had a true culture. Just my opinion.

It will be surprising for many to see evidence of this behavior in a lowly old monkey. Poor monkeys. Never get no respect.

Define culture. What characteristics do you think differentiate us (humans) from other great apes?

Not trying to be pushy, but interested in a potentially intellectual thread.

Culture. I'll start with Kroeger and Kluckholm, who offered this definition:

"The sum total of a way of life of a people; patterns experienced by individuals as normal ways of acting, feeling, and being."

A lot of assumptions in that definition. I would emphasize the concepts of wholism and pattern. Among the students of Boas, Benedict most famously developed and articulated the concept of cultural patterns or "configurations" in her Patterns of Culture, which for all of its shortcomings remains illuminating. "Experienced as normal" refers to a phenomenon that gets torn apart and reassembled in many ways. I'm not enamored of cultural descriptions in statistical terms (normal, deviant...), which I would argue is an aspect of the Boasians' understanding of the culture concept and not an overzealous reading on my part. Nonetheless, I will need something like "experienced as normal" to convey how I am conceptualizing culture here--perhaps already you can see where language might be related--for that I will jump to Pierre Bourdieu's theory of practice, and in particular the concept of habitus.

Bourdieu defines the habitus it seems in more ways than Kuhn defines paradigm, if that's possible. My favorite definition is the briefest and perhaps the most opaque: "the durably installed generative principle of regulated improvisations" (Outline of a Theory of Practice, p. 78). A more complete definition:

"a system of lasting, transposable dispositions which, integrating past experiences, functions at every moment as a matrix of perceptions, appreciations, and actions and makes possible the achievement of infinitely diversified tasks, thanks to analogical transfers of schemes permitting the solution of similarly shaped problems, and thanks to unceasing corrections of the results obtained"

(Outline, p. 82-83, emphasis in original.)

(NB: For a true "outline" of Bourdieu's theory of practice I would recommend his Logic of Practice, esp. Chapter 3.)

Now, this concept seems to cover a lot of human capabilities, well beyond considering the question of how it is that the patterns of thought, feeling and activity that constitute a way of life come to be experienced as ordinary. Yet I think it's addressing the same essential phenomenon, or a very similar set of problems.

Bourdieu brings to the discussion one idea, particularly germaine to our discussion here: that of schemes. I don't think it's entirely unrelated to what Kant or the neoKantian people in cognitive science talk about as perceptual schemata, but of course for Bourdieu it not a purely mental function. I will also note that Bourdieu sees them being used analogically, and we can see that same capability as a key to the transposability of dispositions--a characteristic of the habitus which Bourdieu often emphasizes. This tranposability in fact relates to a primary characteristic of human language: Displacement, or the ability to talk about stuff that happened in other places or times. I haven't actually delved into the ape language studies on this, but it is my sense that the evidence for displacement in ape communications is relatively weak.

So regarding the monkey tool use, the questions I would have concern whether it appears to be schematic, transferable and the like. Can they move their tools easily from the left hand to the right? Can they subsititute one kind of stone for another? Can they apply their digging skills to various problems? Can the skill be taught to other monkeys? Can it be communicated to other monkeys at a time and place where it is not actually being performed? Can they pretend or fake digging?

I'm not quite proposing a Whorfian conception of culture, but depending on one's understanding of language and thought, such a viewpoint may not be far off the mark--at a very primitive level, you know. I'm talking about how reality is defined, and whether tool use is part of the Capuchin reality in the manner of a concept or, more exactly, an apperceptive scheme. I don't expect that would be likely without a language capability. But who knows?

As for humans and the other apes, I tend to see a lot of diversity among the apes, so many differences that have been theorized about seem minor to me. Estrus? Bipedalism? Well, it's a real shock to compare Lucy's hips to the other apes. I'm not denying the difference, or that it marked an important speciation event in hominid evolution. But as for what makes Homo sapiens so very different, bipedalism in itself isn't the most crucial. Basically we're talking about tool culture (Homo) and language (sapiens)--and of course one of those should be in quotes, I'd say the first, but it would take some teasing out:

Tool use--> Tool "culture"--> Material Culture

I am not an archaeologist, but my general impression is that the tool culture of early Homo was not very sophisticated. I could opine that its ability to apply analogical schemes was extremely limited, but that would be rank conjecture. I'll have to pass on providing a definition of "culture light" for the moment.

.

Ya know this thread is just a softball toss for that kinda line.

The only difference between apes and humans is we don't let them have the remote or pick the movie.

i have always thought we are the outlier in the bell curve of primates.

" Planet of the Dicks "

nor is it very spectacular.

some birds to use stones to crack open eggs they steal from other birds.

some apes use stones and tree trunks as hammer and anvil to crack open nuts.
it takes young apes a long time to learn this by example from elder apes.

still, these animals use exsisting object as tools - they don't actually create tools, certainly not 'composite' tools (ie stone plus piece of wood to make a hammer) as humans do.

"still, these animals use existing object as tools - they don't actually create tools"

Actually, they do. In order to fish for termites, there is a learned method for picking the right shape of stick, peeling off the bark, as well as a methodology for the correct ways in which to fish termites out of a hill. And yes, it does take a while to learn.

This is only one example.

This also doesn't take into account some of the social practices of chimps, binobos, and the like.

It's actually extremely interesting.

A sea otter will dive to the ocean floor and pick up a rock. He will then roll on his back, put the rock on his belly and use it to break clams open with.

Many animals use tools.

That was TOO good!

I got a million of em...

like using sticks to dip into ant hills and pull out old school shish-kabobs (sp?).

Sea otters use stones to break open shells. This may be another case of science making a claim (only humans use tools) by projecting their own hypothesis rather than actually performing the research.

and other hard objects to get me to come to the back door. He'll drop the rock (or pipe, tile, broken beer bottle, etc.) if I give him some food in return for it (I've got a basket with about thirty confiscated objects near the back door). I don't know how he figured it out, but he's under two years old and obviously very clever. So, is what he does considered tool use?

uses it; he bangs it against the glass door, and it makes a horrible racket. Even wearing ear plugs doesn't allow me to sleep through the night if the raccoon finds a big enough rock!

And a fascinating little factoid I learned in a zoology project I did on communication between humans and other primates:

Chimps and gorillas who have been taught sign language use profanity. In the case of one, for example, she was made at her trainer and called her "you green shit" in sign language.

They are amazingly intelligent.

ETA - I think I meant termite hills.

Researchers have been following a family of chimps for decades now and they have taught them 200 words in sign language. The chimps can use each individual sign to create 3 different words. So they have a vocabulary of 600 words.

Check out the documentary
Why dogs smile & Chimpanzees cry.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0208570/

It will completely change your idea about animals, well unless you are one of those enlightened few that already knew animals were give short shrift.

that much of what they consider to be thier mystical human specialness simply comes from the design of our vocal cords.

Humans have been ignorant about animals for so long we just take it for granted now.

I think humans have been very knowledgeable about animals, but not very knowledgeable about humans, as in not thinking of humans as animals.

Humanity insists on placing humans on some different level, which certainly does denigrate animals.

I discussed this with my fundy in-laws once. I said that we are animals and she got all pissed off.

researchers have found that meerkats on sentry duty will bark if a jackal approaches, hiss if there's a snake nearby or screech if they spot a hawk. Since these are warnings for specific threats (and the animals mimic the sounds of each threat) scientists say that meerkats use a language to communicate.

There's far more to most animals than we realize!

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.