The basic chimpanzee gesture ‘dictionary’ has been translated, are the capuchins next?

kilimi thinkingMembers of the Scottish Primate Research Group from the University of St Andrews, have revealed what wild chimpanzees are trying to say when they communicate with their body and hand movements.

Dr Catherine Hobaiter and Professor Richard Byrne created a ‘dictionary’ of meanings behind chimp gestures such as arm raises, ground slaps and foot stomps by observing over 80 wild Ugandan chimpanzees.

The results have just been published in the journal Current Biology. Although it has been known for some time that apes use gestures to communicate, it wasn’t until now that we have worked out what they are actually trying to say.

Professor Byrne, explained:

“There is abundant evidence that chimpanzees and other apes gesture with purpose. Apes target their gestures to particular individuals, choosing appropriate gestures according to whether the other is looking or not; they stop gesturing when they get the result they want; and otherwise they keep going, trying out alternative gestures or other tactics altogether.’

In a significant first step towards answering this question, the researchers studied the behaviour of chimpanzees in the Budongo Forest, Uganda.  They used video to record communicative interactions, and extracted over 4500 instances of gesturing. They looked specifically at non-playful uses (because in play, gestures may not be used with their ‘real’ meaning) and identified specific meanings for most of the chimpanzee repertoire of 66 gestures.

Amongst the meanings discovered, they found that when a chimpanzee taps another it means ‘stop that’; a hand fling or slapping an object means ‘move away’; while an arm raise means ‘I want that’ or ‘give me that’.

Dr Hobaiter explained:

Just as with human words, some gestures have several senses, but importantly the meanings of chimpanzee gestures are the same irrespective of who uses them. Chimpanzees may use more than one gesture for the same purpose – especially in social negotiations, where the final outcome may be a matter of some give and take”.

The next steps will involve the St Andrews researchers investigating possible variations in meaning behind certain chimpanzee gestures.

Dr Hobaiter added, “Now that the basic chimpanzee gesture ‘dictionary’ is known, we can start to tackle other interesting questions. Do some gestures have very general meanings, where their intended sense is understood from the context? Or do subtle variations in how a gesture is made determine which sense was meant?”

Our question at Living Links is will someone try and match this type of study for our capuchins? We do see a variety of gestures from our monkeys that are linked with social responses from the rest of the group, any SPRG members up for this challenge?

   gesture capuchins

The paper, ‘The meanings of chimpanzee gestures’ is published by Current Biology on Thursday July 3. The paper is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.05.066

BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-28023630

Jane Goodall welcomed back to Living Links

Jane Goodall DBE, who opened Living Links with Sir Michael Atiyah in 2008, revisited the Centre on 30 April 2014. We were delighted to be able to show her how Living Links has flourished in the six years since opening, with our innovative combination of research and public engagement in a zoo setting.

Jane Goodall and Andrew WhitenResearchers from the Scottish Primate Research Group who work at Living Links and the Budongo Trail were on hand to meet Dr Goodall to discuss their research and, despite overcast conditions, Dr Emily Messer was able to give a demonstration of her work on capuchin fur rubbing (see our video Monkey Medicine for more information).

Professor Andrew Whiten, Director of Living Links, said: ‘It was an enormous pleasure to welcome Jane Goodall back to Living Links. We were able to show her the progress we have made in the Centre and we were delighted to have this pioneering primatologist take her place in our “My Primate Family Tree” mural.’

Dr Goodall spent the day at the zoo and gave the first in RZSS’s ‘Tribal Elders: Words of Wisdom’ lecture series.

Jane Goodall and RZSS researchers

Living Links is a Winner in Public Engagement

andy public engagement

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our founding director of Living Links Professor Andrew Whiten from the University of St Andrews, is to be awarded the Senior Public Engagement Prize 2014 from the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) for his extensive, creativity and unique forms of public engagement at the Living Links Centre and beyond.

Each year the RSE highlights some of the UK’s most outstanding talent through its Royal Medals and Prize Winner awards. The awards are given to those working at the present time, and include those who have reached the pinnacle of their discipline and are regarded as such internationally.

President of the RSE, Sir John Arbuthnott, said: ‘One of the great privileges of my role is meeting the Royal Medalists and Prize Winners. These are our highest accolades. They reflect the Enlightenment spirit of the RSE’s Royal Charter of 1783 and its remit to advance learning and useful knowledge. My warmest congratulations to all of this year’s recipients.’

To get an overview of our public engagement activities click on the link below http://www.living-links.org/visitors-2/public/.

Young Primatologist Wins Prestigious European Science Prize

Erica van de WaalCongratulations to St Andrews researcher Dr Erica van de Waal who has been awarded the 2014 Niko Tinbergen Award of the Ethologische Gesellschaft, the Society which organises the annual European Conference on Behavioural Biology (ECBB).

Dr van de Waal will give a plenary lecture at the ECBB meeting in July in Prague.

For the past three years, Dr van de Waal has been a research fellow studying social learning in wild African Vervet monkeys, part of an international collaboration between the Universities of Neuchatel, Zurich and St Andrews, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation(SNSF). This year, she begins her own postdoctoral fellowship in St Andrews to continue her collaboration with Professor Andrew Whiten, funded by the SNSF.

BBC2 – Wild Brazil Researcher at Living Links

Next week we will be welcoming Camila Galheigo Coelho a PhD student from Durham University who has been studying wild capuchin behaviour.

Some of her work will be featured in the BBC2 three part documentary Wild Brazil which airs January 14 – 16th at 9pm.

She has been studying ‘Social dynamics and the diffusion of novel behaviour patterns’ in capuchin monkeys and our monkeys here will now have a chance to take part in tasks that their wild counter parts have done.

BBC2 researcher wild brazil

 

 

Please Knock

inti says please knock

 

 

 

 

Reliably signalling a startling husbandry event improves welfare of zoo-housed capuchins (Sapajus apella)

Kristina Rimpley and Prof Hannah Buchanan-Smith of Stirling University examined the effect of giving the capuchins a reliable signal (a knock on the door) 3 seconds prior to a keeper entering the enclosure to perform a husbandry event. The study hypothesised two main things;

1. That unreliable signals that indicate husbandry events may have a negative impact on capuchin behaviour.

2. Making a husbandry event predictable will decrease anxiety related behaviours prior to the husbandry event.

To address these hypotheses the researchers studied 12 of the capuchins at Living Links, 6 from the West and 6 from the East. Behaviours that were used as indicators for anxiety levels were scratch, vigilance and jerky motion.behaviour categories for please knock

 

 

 

 

 

Baseline information was gathered on the monkeys’ behaviour 5 minutes before and after door events, with a door event being defined as the opening and/or closing of any door in the keeper area which could be heard by the capuchins.

knock before you enter diagram

 

 

 

 

 

As you will see in the figure above there are many doors in the keeper area and they may be opened or closed for a variety of reasons. Thus hearing a door could not predictably signal a keeper would enter a capuchin enclosure. In fact only 30% of door events resulted in a keeper entering a capuchin enclosure.

Therefore the researchers implemented the treatment of the door knock 3 seconds prior to a husbandry event to allow the capuchins a predictable indicator that a keeper was about to enter. The capuchins were given 2 weeks to get used to knocking as a signal then observed again to see if their anxiety levels had changed towards door events.

picture 2 for please knock

 

 

 

 

 

 

The results indicate that there was a decrease in anxiety related behaviours of the capuchins in the after door event in the treatment phase, thus supporting the notion that giving the animals a predictable indicator of events can benefit the overall welfare of the monkeys.

This is a great technique that can be implemented very easily for no cost and no additional time and can have a great benefit to all our monkeys’ well being.

Reference

Rimpley, K and Buchanan-Smith, H (2013). Reliably signalling a startling husbandry event improves welfare of zoo-housed capuchins (Sapajus apella). Applied Animal Behaviour Science. 147, 205-213.

Dr Jane Goodall, DBE receives honorary degree

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Dr Jane Goodall and Hillary Clinton

Dr Jane Goodall DBE, who opened Living Links in 2008, was recently recognised by receiving an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science by the University of St Andrews as part of its 600th Anniversary Celebrations. Other Honorary Graduands included Hillary Clinton, former USA Secretary of State, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, Lord Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, and Professor Mary Beard, Classicist. The laureation for Dr Goodall was given by the Director of Living Links, Professor Andrew Whiten, and the ceremony was also attended by Professor Chris West, RZSS CEO.

graduands

                       

 

 

 

Honorary Graduands and Laureators of the Graduation Ceremony of 13th September 2013 marking the Academic Celebrations of the University of St Andrews’ 600th Anniversary. Front row, 3rd and4th from left: Dr Jane Goodall DBE, Ethologist and Conservationist, and laureator Professor Andrew Whiten.

 

Living Links to Life Long Learning – U3A Study Day

On the 5th of June, University of the Third Age (U3A) members from across Scotland came to their third annual study day here in Edinburgh Zoo. The theme for this year was Primatology.

With so many amazing projects happening at Budongo Trail and Living Links we felt this was an ideal opportunity for our researchers to engage with life-long learners.

The conference was set in the Budongo Trail Lecture Theatre and included a keynote speech from Professor Andy Whiten, presentations from our current PhD students, and Dr Katie Slocombe gave the delegates a live demonstration of how we study chimpanzee communication.

chimp com bannerOur guests also had a chance to explore the two enclosures with many of our staff, eoin discusses researchvolunteers and researchers on hand to answer questions.

Click here to see the full programme of the day’s events.

 

Does a Capuchin’s Openness to Participate Bias our Science?

When studying animals in the wild or in captivity it is very easy to unintentionally create selection biases even when we are aware of them and try to collect data in a random fashion. One particular factor that may cause a bias is the personality of our animals.

Personality is defined as – consistent differences in an individual’s behaviour and decision making over time. Thus if we are studying animal cognition the animal’s personality will have an impact on how we get and interpret the results of our studies.

Selection biases may occur for variety of different reasons

  1. Self-selection of study subjects – The animal chooses to take part.
  2. Targeting a specific area/population
  3. Ending a study once you get the desired result
  4. Excluding data on arbitrary grounds.

A recent study by Blake Morton, Prof Phyllis Lee and Prof Hannah Buchanan-Smith of Stirling University tested to see if the capuchins at Living Links had any specific personality traits and if so did that affect how much they participated in research and also how well they performed.

The research indicated that our capuchins do have at least 5 different personality dimensions, shown in the table below.

morton et al table

The researchers then examined if these personalities affected their participation and performance in our studies so they created two tasks for the monkeys.

Task 1 The monkeys had to choose which cubicle to enter. If they chose the one with the reward in front of it they received the reward. If they chose the one without a reward they did not receive anything.

task 1 pic 1

Task 2 – The monkeys had to choose which cubicle to enter. If they chose the one with the larger cup in front of it they received the reward. If they chose the one with the smaller cup they did not receive anything.

task 2 pic 1

 

In both tasks the monkeys that scored higher on ‘openness’ and lower on ‘assertiveness’ performed better at the tasks and were also more likely to participate in the trials.

This is a very interesting result so we decided to ask Blake a few questions about the study.

Science Communication Officer (SCO) – Is there any way to avoid a personality selection bias in cognitive studies?

Blake – One possibility would be to classify subjects according to their personalities, then test for differences in task performance within those groupings. However, most studies of animal cognition do not have access to large study populations, and must therefore rely on using small sample sizes. At this point in time, we encourage researchers to consistently report the existence (or lack thereof) of a personality bias in subjects selected for testing.

SCO – Why do ‘open’ individuals perform better than ‘assertive’ individuals?

Blake – Open individuals are typically more curious and willing to engage in tasks. As a consequence, they often perform better than less Open individuals. As for Assertiveness, one intriguing possibility, which we discuss in our paper, is that more aggressive individuals (called ‘Assertive’ in our study) have a tendency to emphasize speed over accuracy when making decisions. Thus, as a consequence of such hasty decision-making, aggressive individuals may be more likely to score incorrectly on trials. To formerly test this latter possibility, however, further research on the Living Links capuchins will be necessary.

SCO – Are there any cognitive studies that would benefit from having a bias towards ‘open’ individuals?

Blake – Based on our study and others, individuals that score higher on Open traits (e.g. curious, active) typically are more willing to engage in experimental research. As a consequence, they generally learn faster and perform better on tasks compared to less Open individuals. Thus, from a logistical point of view, yes, a study might benefit from having a bias towards more Open individuals because it potentially means that less training/testing is needed. However, as we discuss in the paper, caution should be used when comparing data to other studies.