MONKEY BUSINESS: Primates want equal pay too

From:news.com.au 

November 20, 2012 1:58PM

IT sounds like monkey business. But a study of primates by researchers at Emory University in the US has found that capuchin monkeys care about equal pay for equal work.

In a TED presentation, primatologist Frans de Waal shows video of an experiment where two monkeys are fed.

At first both monkeys are given grapes and they are very satisfied.

But when one the primates is fed cucumber while the other is provided delicious grapes in plain sight, the monkey dealt the less delicious hand is not pleased.

The cucumber recipient goes ape, rattling on his plastic fence in rage.

The primate behaviour expert Frans de Waal compared the monkeys' behaviour to humans who participated in the Occupy Wall St movement.

"That's basically the Wall St protest right there," he said.

Human kind is not being treated so well either, figures from the Bureau of Statistics indicate.

Australian men earned 17.4 per cent more than women in the quarter ending February 2012.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/the-other-side/monkey-business-primates-want-equal-pay-too/story-e6frfhk6-1226520390470

Primate Behavior: Chimps Select Smart Tools, Monkeys Intentionally Beg

ScienceDaily (July 18, 2012) — Chimpanzees use weight to pick the best tool, and monkeys beg more when they're paid attention to, as reported in two independent research reports published July 18 in the open access journal PLoS ONE.

In the chimp study, researchers found that the chimpanzees used weight to choose the best hammer to crack open nuts. Nut cracking is one of the most sophisticated instances of tool use in chimpanzees, and learning how to do it has been shown to be very difficult for some chimps. In work led by Cornelia Schrauf of the University of Vienna, the researchers showed that the chimps were able to choose the best tool to crack nuts based solely on the weight of the tool. Schrauf notes, "Experience clearly affected the subjects´ attentiveness to the relevant tool properties. Whereas the most skilled chimpanzee showed a preference for the most efficient hammers from the early beginning of the experiment, the unskilled individuals became selective over time."

Continued:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120718192005.htm

Inner Ear May Hold Key to Ancient Primate Behavior

ScienceDaily (June 13, 2012) — CT scans of fossilized primate skulls or skull fragments from both the Old and New Worlds may shed light on how these extinct animals moved, especially for those species without any known remains, according to an international team of researchers.

The researchers looked at the bony labyrinth in fossil remains and compared them to CT scans previously obtained from living primate species. The bony labyrinth of the inner ear is made up of the cochlea -- the major organ of hearing -- the vestibule and the three semicircular canals which sense head motion and provide input to synchronize movement with visual stimuli.

"Almost in every case where there is a fossilized skull, the semicircular canals are present and well preserved," said Timothy Ryan, assistant professor of anthropology, geosciences and information sciences and technology, Penn State. "They are embedded in a very dense part of the skull and so are protected."


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120613102420.htm