From: Wade T. Smith (wade.t.smith@verizon.net)
Date: Fri 03 Jan 2003 - 04:26:16 GMT
Subject: Orangutans Said to Exhibit Hallmarks of Culture
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/02/science/02CND_APE.html?ex=1042543952&e
i=1&en=d197daff344e472d
The New York Times January 2, 2003
By CAROL KAESUK YOON
Orangutans, those red-haired, knuckle-dragging apes, are loping today
into the upper echelons of the hominid hierarchy. According to research
reported in the journal Science, they exhibit what was until very
recently considered a uniquely human attribute: culture.
Drawing on decades of research and hundreds of thousands of hours of
observations from six different sites in the wild, an international team
of scientists found evidence that orangutan groups differ in everything
from bedtime rituals to eating habits to sexual practices - patterns of
behavior, passed from generation to generation, that scientists call
culture.
Other researchers reported four years ago that chimpanzees differ in the
way they groom one another, hunt and eat ants and so on. Scientists say
the new work suggests that the two remaining great ape species, gorillas
and bonobos, are likely to have culture as well and that great ape
culture dates back at least to the origin of the entire group 14 million
years ago.
The finding has been of particular interest as orangutans have long been
thought to be loners, leaving little possibility for the creation of
culture. Yet researchers found that at one site all orangutans gave a
Bronx cheer before going to sleep, while at other sites this curious
ritual was absent. In some forests, orangutans had a characteristic way
of hunting and killing a beast known as the slow loris or extracting
seeds from the stinging fruit of the Neesia tree. Yet in other forests
where the loris and Neesia were found, orangutans never took these
meals. And while in two forests, orangutans enjoyed masturbation using
sticks, elsewhere such behavior was unheard of.
As is typical whenever scientists aim to award prized attributes of Homo
sapiens to other, wilder creatures, there has been heated reaction.
Some point out that while unlikely, it is possible that the orangutans
behave differently at different sites because of undetected differences
in their forest habitat. Some scientists also object in principle to the
use of the heavily freighted term 'culture', which has long been used to
denote something peculiarly human - like wearing white rather than black
to funerals, say, or shaking hands rather than kissing as a greeting.
Further research on orangutan culture may be difficult, however, because
the species as a whole is threatened as people steadily encroach on its
habitats.
But others said that great ape cultures were just the tip of the
iceberg.
"In the coming 20 years, we will have a host of studies on culture in
all sorts of animals," said Dr. Frans de Waal, primatologist at Emory
University, saying data have been coming in suggesting cultural
differences among rats, birds and even fish. "We will not think of
culture as a monolithic thing, but a concept that includes songbirds,
the great apes and human culture."
The study grew out of a workshop that gathered orangutan researchers who
had worked for years in isolation from one another at remote field sites
on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, the only places orangutans can be
found in the wild.
"You know your own animals and all of them do particular things," said
Dr. Carel van Schaik, biological anthropologist at Duke University and
lead author on the paper. "So you think all orangutans do these things.
Nobody thought there'd be so much variation between the sites."
Dr. van Schaik said there was no evidence of ecological differences or
genetic differences that would lead to such differences in behavior. In
addition, at sites where orangutans spent more time together there were
more of these widespread behaviors, as would be expected with behaviors
that can be spread through association. In addition, the closer sites
were to one another, the more behaviors those sites shared, again as
would be expected.
But Dr. Bennett Galef, animal behaviorist at McMaster University,
cautioned that it can be difficult to decipher what is causing
differences in behavior among populations in the wild.
For example, in a classic example of chimp culture, chimpanzees are
known to use very different methods for extracting ants from ant nests
in eastern and western Africa. But in a recent study, researchers
reported finding a new group of chimpanzees that will use either method,
depending on how aggressive the ant they are hunting is. Dr. Galef said
the finding suggests that even this classic chimp cultural divide might
have a hidden ecological explanation as simple as the difference in what
kinds of ants are available to chimps in different areas.
Most work so far has relied on simply observing animals in the wild. Dr.
Galef said the only way to definitively answer many of the key remaining
questions will be through experiments in the field.
Unfortunately, researchers say some of the newly uncovered cultures have
likely already been destroyed.
Dr. van Schaik said that one site in Sumatra, home of the goodnight
Bronx cheer and the hunting of the slow loris, has been devastated over
the past several years by an intense wave of illegal logging despite
being within a national park. Another of his long-term study sites in
Borneo has been devastated by civil war and is still too dangerous to
return to.
But even if he were able to go back, Dr. van Schaik said, "probably all
the orangutans we knew there are gone."
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