Michael, Your memory about the monkeys & potatoes is pretty good. I don't remember the original authors, but the monkeys under study were a colony of Japanese macaqques on one of the Japanese islands. To support the colony, the humans would dump food (e.g., potatoes) on the beach. The researchers observed that the animals learned to wash the sand off before eating. One of the interesting reports by the researchers was that this behavior began among the younger, adolescent animals, but then spread to the older adults. Whether this is evidence of higher cognitive function, I'll leave to others to debate. It could potentially be explained via conditioning.
As for chimps eating ants, what do you suppose they're doing when they groom each other? They're picking bugs off. No sense letting that protein go to waste, so why not eat them? -- John Serafin Psychology Department Saint Vincent College Latrobe, PA 15650 john.sera...@email.stvincent.edu > From: michael sylvester <msylves...@copper.net> > Reply-To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)" > <tips@fsulist.frostburg.edu> > Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2010 13:18:37 -0400 > To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)" > <tips@fsulist.frostburg.edu> > Conversation: [tips] Who's on first? > Subject: Fw: [tips] Who's on first? > > Not referring to an Abbot and Costello flick, but I saw a program on Jane > Goodall where she saw chimps use sticks to fetch ants from an ant hill.She was > fascinated by their tool utilization and alerted the scientific community who > initially remained skeptical. However ,when I was at Wichita State in the > early 1970s,I knew a prof at WSU > by he name of Neil Pronko who published a text of articles in a work titled > PANORAMA > OF PSYCHOLOGY where he had a piece on monkeys on a Pacific island > that washed potatoes before eating them. > For monkeys to wash potatoes before eating them certainly implies higher > cognitive function. I do not remember the time line for the both of those > animal observations. > Anyway why were Goodall's chimps eating ants? Ain't those Bozo types > vegetarian? > --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=6010 or send a blank email to leave-6010-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
